No, it shows that there is not a wide range of beliefs or personal effort that can get you in. Instead, the gate to destruction is so wide because so may enter through it and the gate to eternal life is narrow because few pass through it. Where do you come up with the idea that there is effort to pass through the gate?
Ann,
I agree with your first sentence. The second sentence has the people determining the size of the gate. This does not make sense to me. These commentators express the idea of effort better than I, but effort or difficulty is expressed in this text.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Enter ye in at the strait gate - Christ here compares the way to life to an entrance through a gate. The words "straight" and "strait" have very different meanings. The former means "not crooked;" the latter, "pent up, narrow, difficult to be entered." This is the word used here, and it means that the way to heaven is "pent up, narrow, close," and not obviously entered. The way to death is open, broad, and thronged. The Saviour here referred probably to ancient cities. They were surrounded with walls and entered through gates. Some of those, connected with the great avenues to the city, were broad and admitted a throng; others, for more private purposes, were narrow, and few would be seen entering them. So, says Christ, is the path to heaven. It is narrow. It is not "the great highway" that people tread. Few go there. Here and there one may be seen - traveling in solitude and singularity. The way to death, on the other hand, is broad. Multitudes are in it. It is the great highway in which people go. They fall into it easily and without effort, and go without thought. If they wish to leave that and go by a narrow gate to the city, it would require effort and thought. So, says Christ, "diligence" is needed to enter life. See Luke 13:24. None go of course. All must strive, to obtain it; and so narrow, unfrequented, and solitary is it, that few find it. This sentiment has been beautifully versified by Watts:
"Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there;
But wisdom shows a narrower path,
With here and there a traveler."
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
Mt 7:13-29. Conclusion and Effect of the Sermon on the Mount.
We have here the application of the whole preceding discourse.
Conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7:13-27). "The righteousness of the kingdom," so amply described, both in principle and in detail, would be seen to involve self-sacrifice at every step. Multitudes would never face this. But it must be faced, else the consequences will be fatal. This would divide all within the sound of these truths into two classes: the many, who will follow the path of ease and self-indulgence-end where it might; and the few, who, bent on eternal safety above everything else, take the way that leads to it-at whatever cost. This gives occasion to the two opening verses of this application.
13. Enter ye in at the strait gate-as if hardly wide enough to admit one at all. This expresses the difficulty of the first right step in religion, involving, as it does, a triumph over all our natural inclinations. Hence the still stronger expression in Luke (Lu 13:24), "Strive to enter in at the strait gate."
for wide is the gate-easily entered.
and broad is the way-easily trodden.
that leadeth to destruction, and-thus lured "many there be which go in thereat."
