Spreading the Word

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 – I am sure you are aware that even in the Greek text, this is not a command.  There’s a footnote to this in the NASB that reads, “Or Having gone (Gr aorist part.).”  If in fact the tense is aorist, it simply cannot be an imperative.  How could you give a command that is already finished in the past?  The Greek here is the verb poreúomai.  It is actually an aorist, passive participle.  The aorist makes it an action already accomplished, but that isn’t quite the end of the story.  It is also a participle, so it should be “having gone,” and it is passive so it should be “having been sent” or “having gone for yourself.”  The second option might remind you of another crucial Hebrew expression lĕk leka’.  Do you remember where that Hebrew expression is found?  Try Genesis 12:1.  What does God tell Abraham?  “Go out from yourself,” that is, “Do more than leave.  Leave your old self behind.”  Do you suppose the disciples were not attuned to the same words from the lips of the Messiah?  [Of course, Yeshua was not speaking to them in Greek!]  It seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it?  The Messiah tells his followers that they have already left the old way and are now engaged in going differently.  This is descriptive, not prescriptive.  This is a statement of their present condition, not a demand that they evangelize the world.

But we didn’t read it like that, did we?  We read it as “The Great Commission,” that is, as a requirement to recruit.  And boy, did we do that!  We printed millions and millions of Bibles.  We sent missionaries all over the globe.  We pumped billions of dollars into converting the nations.  What was the result?  William Graham notes: “At the least, we can observe in the past century or more that, just as availability of the biblical text has greatly increased through growth of literacy and the ubiquitous presence of printed Bibles, the strong biblical saturation of Western culture has sharply decreased.”[1]  We delivered the message without the necessary transformation.  We forgot that it wasn’t an imperative.  It was a statement of changed life.  But because we thought it was a command, we concluded that once we delivered the message we had fulfilled the condition.  Then it was up to God to convert the heart.

Yeshua didn’t give a command because giving such a command was unnecessary and distracting.  What he did was acknowledge that life has changed, and because it has changed, living would be different.  So, as those disciples went about their daily lives, they discovered that their daily lives weren’t the same anymore.  The change was undeniable.  And that’s what got noticed.  “Brothers, what are we to do?” is the result (Acts 2:37).  Perhaps we should have noticed that the more Bibles we made, the less impact they had.  Something more than the words was missing.

Topical Index: Bibles, print, evangelism, Go, lĕk leka’, poreúomai, Matthew 28:19

[1] William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 167.