Do Not Turn to the Right or the Left

The "narrow way" is found at a three-pronged fork in the road.

The image that comes to mind when we think of the Christian life often looks like a narrow path on the side of a mountain. There is only one route with one steep slope. Follow Jesus or plummet into the pit.

Or perhaps you picture a fork in the road—one path leads to heaven and the other to hell. In one sense, that’s exactly right. In the end, people will either go to heaven or hell. They either follow Christ or their own selfish desires. Yet that’s merely a bird’s eye view that, when zoomed into the nitty gritty of life, can lead us astray. The picture the Bible gives has three paths—one to follow Christ, and two ways to follow the world.

Deuteronomy 5:32 says, “You shall be careful therefore to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.” This same image is repeated throughout the Old Testament (Deut. 17:11, 20, 28:14; Josh.1:7; 2 Kin. 22:2; 2 Chron. 34:2). Proverbs 4:27 says it this way: “Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil.” (And no, this is not referring to the modern political right and left.) The road between left and right is the narrow way that is walked by the righteous, and the other two are diverting from that. This gives us a picture of a three-pronged fork in the road.

What exactly are the paths? When Jesus arrives, the three groups he interacts with the most are: 1. the disciples and other believers, 2. the scribes and Pharisees, 3. the tax collectors and sinners. The first group represents the righteous (although imperfect) on the narrow path “that leads to life” (Matt 7:14). The second fall into a path of legalism, attempting to appease God through their works. And the third are following a path of license—or going directly against God’s commands—like an unbeliever.

By the grace of God, those from groups two and three don’t always remain there. And as we saw with Judas who turned away from Christ to cater to the evil desires of the Pharisees and worldly wealthy—it’s possible to abandon the narrow road after you’ve seemingly walked on it for a time.

As the New Testament continues, it characterizes many choices in this threefold way. Christians are tossed to and fro by the winds of culture and false teachers. Peter, for example, is one of Jesus’s most devoted disciples. Yet, we read in Acts 10 and Galatians 2 of Peter’s battle with legalism that he eventually overcomes after a vision and a rebuke from Paul. Once Peter repented, he was able to speak against the legalism of many others at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15—a meeting held to debate whether Gentiles must be circumcised in accordance with Old Testament law.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes to the church to address a laundry list of sins that fall onto the path of license. Amidst favoritism for teachers, gross sexual misconduct, disagreement over eating meat sacrificed to idols, and more, the Corinthians held that “all things are lawful for me” (1 Cor 6:12). They took their freedom in Christ to mean that they were free to do as they wished in all realms of life.

Just as Paul rebuked Peter for his legalism, he rebuked the Corinthians for their license saying, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything.” (1 Cor. 6:12).

We can see from these passages that it isn’t just unbelievers that walk the paths of the world. Even the righteous swing from one to the other depending on varying seasons of life or the task at hand. We might be walking a path of legalism in politics while checking Twitter in the morning, the narrow path that leads to life when we parent our kids in the afternoon, and license when we sit down to watch Netflix at night.

We fall into these pitfalls when we overcorrect noticeable problems around us. We’re essentially jumping from the left path to the right and missing the narrow path in the middle like a small child jumping over a crack in the sidewalk. Secular philosophers such as Aristotle and various church fathers such as Aquinas have often described the three-pronged path as moral virtue observing the mean—the middle between excess vice and deficient vice. This is called “the golden mean.”

The paths of vice are not just for or against God’s law, but against his very heart and nature. The law was our guardian (or tutor) until Christ came (Gal. 3:24), teaching us virtue and the nature of God’s character. Now that the law is on our hearts (Rom. 2:15), it is the very character of God that we seek to imitate in this life, not merely in our outward actions, but in our heart. That is why the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23), or virtue, is the evidence of our faith.

In a world increasingly polarized by things such as politics and worldview, more than ever we must not stray either to the right or to the left. When we find ourselves criticizing secular society, be wary of overcorrecting into legalism or even adopting secular ethical systems like “the ends justify the means” (consequentialism).

Likewise, when critiquing fundamentalism and legalism, do not fall instead into license. If the believers around you are earnestly seeking the righteous path but find it in a slightly different place, show them grace—especially since you could be wrong. But most of all, pray for wisdom and cling to the reasonable faith that Christ provides on his narrow way.