Some very important grammar

The other day I read a very interesting sentence in a book about preaching. It was in the context of urging people to live out the Christian life. The sentence went something like this, "the imperative must always be grounded in the indicative."

Now I will be totally honest with you. If I had read that sentence three years ago I would not have understood it. The first reason why I would not have understood is that three years ago I hadn't got much of an idea of what imperatives and indicatives were. I wasn't taught grammar at school, thankfully I have been at Bible college. Secondly, that little sentence contains a truth about the Christian life, and links two aspects of the Christian life, that I had previously missed, or at least not clearly understood.

So first let me tell you what you will already know, if you know grammar.

An imperative is used when a command or request is given to someone or something. It says what you must and must not do.

The indicative is used for factual statements about what someone or something is. It describes what you are.

So what has this got to do with the Christian life then? Actually an awful lot.

A lot of people think of Christianity as a whole lot of dos and don'ts (you can insert your own list of dos and don'ts here). What they all have in common is that they are imperatives. Commands, requests. If you keep the imperatives, that makes you a Christian, if you don't, you're not.

If you are a Christian though, you know that you didn't become one by observing all the dos and don'ts. You couldn't keep all the imperatives, so you asked God to forgive you and trusted in Jesus who kept them for you. You put your faith in Christ, and his work, his work only, in order to be saved.

So far so obvious to many Christians.

Then something strange often happens.

Though we know that we are not brought in to God's family (saved) by keeping the imperatives, we seem to thinks that God will disown us if we don't keep them perfectly from the day of our conversion onwards. Too often we approach the living out of the Christian life as if it is just a whole list of imperatives. Pray more, read your Bible more, witness more, love people more, go to more meetings. Be more holy. Woe betide if you don't!

Now let me be clear here - I'm not an antinomian. In other words I'm not someone who thinks we can ignore God's law (God's imperatives) because God will just forgive us anyway. No, no, no, no, no. God expects us to make every effort to please him, and I would expect any Christian to want to do exactly that, to please God.

But here's where the problem is. Is our observance of the law, of the imperatives, what keeps us in God's good books? Is that what stops him disowning us? Certainly not.

Now to the indicative.

The indicative is a factual statement about what someone or something is. It is what you are. The Bible describes the Christian as a new creation, in Christ. So if you have put your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your failure to keep the imperatives, that means that the indicative that applies to you is that you are a new creation in Jesus. That is who you now are, and that is the only grounds of your acceptance before God from the day you first trusted him, up until today, and on in to eternity.

That indicative about who you now are should transform the way you view the imperatives of God's word. No longer do those commands need to be seen as a harsh taskmaster, constantly berating you for your failure to keep them, but as a God given gift to help you become like the one who has saved you already, and who you now have union with. They're there to shape you and mould you in to the person that God intends you to be - a reflection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

So yes, yes, yes, try to keep those imperatives, they're for our good and God's glory, but do so in full knowledge that you are accepted in Christ, you are united to Christ, you are a new creation in Christ, and that your failures cannot undo his success.

In other words, keep those imperatives grounded in the indicative.

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