Eschatological Evangelism

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,  Matthew 28:19 NASB

Go – Mount up!  Take off!  Sail away!  Just make sure that you get the message out to everyone.  God doesn’t want anyone to be lost.  He has a wonderful plan for your life.  Et cetera, et cetera.  I was with a friend at a large office supply store.  He is very much a man of evangelical Christianity.  As we were checking out, he said to the cashier, “I have a gift for you, something important,” and proceeded to hand her a pocket New Testament.  I was surprised—and a bit perturbed.  It is possible, of course, that this act would change her life, but it was done without context.  He didn’t know her at all.  She was a complete stranger.  He made no effort to get to know her.  In his mind, what mattered was delivery, not companionship.  He was fulfilling the Great Commission.  Get a Bible (or some truncated version) into everyone’s hands and God will do the rest.  It reminded me of those Christian preachers who teach that as soon as a Bible is distributed to everyone in the world, the end will come.

Let me assure you, this is not what “Jesus” says in Matthew.  In fact, I have some serious reservation about whether or not he even said this, or anything like it, but that’s another discussion.  For now, let’s assume that at least the beginning of this verse are words he spoke.  An examination of the Greek text (translated from his Hebrew words) reveals a very different kind of evangelism.  Yesterday we learned that the universalist idea of the Israelite God began with the prophets. Yeshua falls within this category.  Does that mean Yeshua wants you to hand out New Testaments?  Let’s see.

“Go” is the aorist, passive, plural participle of the verb poreúomai.  The verb itself means “to send, to go.”  But notice the grammar.  First, it’s not an imperative.  If Yeshua said this, he wasn’t issuing a command.  Second, it’s plural.  Now, that may only mean that he is speaking to a group, but it might also imply that his view of evangelism doesn’t happen at the individual level.  It’s a communal function.  Third, the verb is aorist.  The aorist tense in Greek is a completed action in the past.  It’s like the English simple past.  In this case, since the verb is not an imperative, it should be translated something like “you (plural) went.”  That hardly makes any sense, so let’s correct it a bit.  You see that this verb is also a passive participle.  The passive character means that the action happens to the subject, not that the subject performs the action.  The “going” is happening to the group.  The group is the recipient of the “going.”  That’s the participle part of this verb.  A participle is a verb ending in “ing” and used as a noun or an adjective.  So the sentence now begins with “you going ones” or better “you caused to be going ones.”  We could simplify this a bit with “As you are caused to go,” because the Greek passive participle reflects the Hebrew incomplete action.  Kind of.

What do we do about the aorist tense?  That’s a finished act.  How can we have a participle (unfinished act) of an aorist (finished act)?  Let me suggest this.  The cause of this ongoing action is finished.  The crucifixion and resurrection are done.  Yeshua’s obedience is the finished cause of the disciples ongoing action.  It makes them go.  They aren’t the reason for their actions.  They are the participants in another person’s action.  Now they will be going, and as they go they will have something to do (that comes next in the sentence).  But they are not commanded to go.  They are commanded to do something as they are pushed along in life, that is, as they are going.

This is the Hebrew idea that life itself as an act of obedience.  “Walking in His ways.”  Yeshua doesn’t command a new way of walking.  He describes what is happening as they will be walking.  In other words, his version of evangelism is everyday life according to God’s direction, exactly what Israel was supposed to be doing for all those years since Sinai.  You don’t “Go!”  You go along living, but now your going along has a new foundation, the finished life of the Messiah, and consequently, you have been recruited into a different perspective about going along in life.

Topical Index: go, evangelism, aorist, passive, plural participle, poreúomai, Matthew 28:19