Padmanabhapuram Palace

Nearly 20 km (or 12 miles) from my hometown in India, Nagercoil, is an old palace called Padmanabhapuram Palace (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padmanabhapuram_Palace). It was constructed around the 1600s and was the palace of the high king, Maharaja, of Travancore (a region inclusive of portions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala; after independence, that region and its kings were dispersed).

I’ve often taken friends and visitors to this palace. Its beauty lies in its ancientness. Everything in the palace is from the 1600s. One can walk through the palace and understand how ancient kings and queens lived.

The palace has a large chamber where the ancient kings met with their guests. Whereas the kings entered from their chambers through large and ornate doors, the guests had to enter through a short door, nearly 4 feet tall (1.2 meters). The guests had to stoop low, almost crawl, to enter the chamber. Soldiers who guarded this narrow entrance gauged whether the guests were dangerous or harmless. If they thought they were dangerous, they chopped their heads to protect the king. (The story of Ehud and the Moabite King Eglon comes alive in such a context, Judg 3:12-30.)

Large cities like Jerusalem, too, had two sets of gates: broad gates that were opened during daytime and peacetime so that people could freely enter and leave the city for commerce, worship, recreation, and visiting relatives, and narrow gates that were opened in the evenings and wartimes so that the soldiers at the gate could determine the threat of the visitors and let the innocent in and keep the harmful visitors out. To the question, “Lord, only a few are being saved(sozo)?” (Luke 13:23), Jesus replied,

“You strive (agonizomai) to enter through the narrow gates. I tell you: Many will seek to enter but are not strong enough to do so.” (13:14)

Ancient cultures (or modern-day countries in turmoil) understood this imagery. Imagine the king or president announcing that the city’s people had just 12 hours to enter the city before the narrow gates were closed (and the broad gates were already closed); what panic would ensue in such a situation? People would be trampling upon each other to enter through the slightly opened narrow gates.

The Lord Jesus wanted his disciples and audience to feel the same level of urgency: agonize to enter through the narrow gates because the number of people wishing to enter the city was far greater than the number of people that could enter the city through those narrow doors. Even though many wished, they were not strong enough to enter the safe city.

Israel had all along faced tremendous threats from neighboring countries, whether Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Syrians, Philistines, Arabians, Greeks, or Romans. They were familiar with their large doors being shut, people being ushered in through the narrow gates, and some left out of the city and into the hands of the enemies as the narrow gates were shut for good. Jesus wanted his people to feel the same urgency about entering God’s kingdom/rule. Outside of God’s rule was danger; inside his rule was safety. People’s focus shouldn’t be on “Are only a few being saved?” Instead, their focus should be, “Am I agonizing to enter the safety of God’s rule?”

We have entered the safety of God’s rule. But that shouldn’t make us complacent and not help the weak to enter his rule. Many people outside are not strong enough on their own to enter God’s safety. We give them helping hands and bring them in.