For some, discussion of grammar ranks right up with ingrown toenails. I had a teacher, who once out of frustration said, ‘You fellows wouldn't know an adverb from an adenoid.’ I've tried to do better over the years. Grammar is not just a matter of piddling with idle curiosity. There's really no choice: if you're going to read and understand the Bible, you have to deal with grammar. That's just a fact of life, like it or not.
Matthew 28:19-20 and Its Meaning In Light of Its Grammar is something we've discussed before. Note the key verbs in this passage as they are translated in the KJV [boldface, AA]. ‘Go...teach all nations, baptizing them...and teaching them...’ The typical explanation and application of this passage is: Jesus said we should 1) teach people, then 2) baptize them, and then 3) teach them some more. Whereas it is certainly true that we should do just that, it is not true that this is the meaning of Matthew 28:19-20.
For one thing the first ‘teach’ and the second ‘teaching’ are not the same words. The first one is a form of the Greek verb matheiteuo and the second one is a from of the Greek verb didasko. Just looking at them, it is clear that they are not the same. Matheiteuo is the verb form of the noun metheiteis which means ‘disciple.’ Jesus said, ‘Go disciple all nations,’ or as the ASV says, ‘Go make disciples of all the nations.’ It would be the same as saying, ‘Go make Christians of all the nations.’
The logical question here would be, How does one make Christians out of people in all the nations? Jesus says, by ‘baptizing [and] teaching.’ Paying attention to grammar, one will look at the ending of the words baptidz ontes and didask ontes. People who spent lifetimes in Greek determined that -ontes signifies that the verbs with this ending are present active participles. That's why, when translating into English, they put -ing on the end of the verbs ‘baptizing’ and ‘teaching.’
The granddaddy of Greek grammar, A. T. Robertson said, ‘baptidzontes and didaskontes in Mt. 28:19 f. [are] modal participles.’ (Grammar of the Greek New Testament, p. 1128). ‘Modal’ comes from ‘mode,’ which has to do with manner or method of doing something. Simply put, the modal participles, ‘baptizing’ and ‘teaching,’ are there in order to explain the manner or means by which the apostles were to ‘make disciples of all the nations.’ It would be like saying, ‘Make the car look sharp: washing it, waxing it.’ In such a case, the meaning is not 1) make it sharp, then 2) wash it, and then 3) wax it. ‘Washing,’ ‘waxing,’ explain the mode or manner by which the car is to be made sharp. They are modal participles. Understanding this is not one whit more difficult than learning what a cam shaft is, or what valves and lifters are supposed to do. It's all a matter of desire and effort.
Understanding and applying what is taught by the words and grammar of Matthew 28:19-20 has great practical benefit. First, it knocks in the head the all-too-common practice of teaching people who know zip about the Bible, that there once was a man named Jesus, and then in the next breath, telling them they must be immersed in water. Jesus said, ‘make disciples,’ by not only ‘baptizing’ them, but also by ‘teaching them to observe all thing whatsoever I have commanded you.’ Brother Thomas Warren has said: Obviously, this does not mean that the one who is teaching the prospective candidate for baptism [must teach the candidate-AA] specific details of every individual or particular instruction in the gospel...but it does mean that Christ expects those who preach the gospel to the lost to so teach that, when the lost confess their faith in Christ (just prior to being baptized, Acts 8:26-40; Rom. 10:9-10), they are to have been taught that they are, in that confession, publicly committing themselves to being faithful to Christ-i.e., to all of the law (gospel) of Christ for the rest of their lives. (Keeping the Lock in Wedlock, p. 125).
We simply do wrong when, in our exuberance to get people into the water, we fail to impress upon them that they are committing themselves to a lifetime effort of ‘observing all things whatsoever [Christ] commanded [the apostles].’ The unspoken, yet practiced, doctrine of, Baptize [shoot] first, then ask questions later, is false.
Second, understanding and applying words of Matthew 18:19-20 knocks in the head a false doctrine relative to Christ's teaching on divorce and remarriage.
Readers of the Bible are aware that Jesus said that somebody [‘whosoever’] who divorces his spouse for any reason other than fornication, and then marries another person, commits adultery. With divorce now as common as drinking water, the teaching of Jesus has come to be seen as quite an ‘hard saying’ with many, even preachers.
Does Jesus mean to say that 1) anybody, Christian or non-Christian, living this side of the First Century, who 2) divorces his spouse, 3) let's say, because they fought all the time, and then 4) marries another person, whom he loves and with whom he is happy, is 5) a person who commits adultery as long as he lives with his second spouse? Yes.
Some brethren do not agree with this apparent teaching of Jesus based on Matthew 19:9. The disagreement has taken many forms and come from many different angles. Here, I am only concerned with one as it relates to the correct exegesis of Matthew 28:19-20.
The notion that when Jesus said “Whosoever,” he really meant “Whosover” is a Christian married to another Christian” The late brother James Bales was a, if not the, champion of this view. He believed, taught, and promoted the notion that a comparison between Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, and that of Jesus in Matthew 19, warrants the conclusion that Jesus, in 19:9, was speaking only of a marriage between two believers.
First, the notion that there is Christian ‘adultery’ and a non-Christian ‘adultery’ is morally repugnant. Those who accept Bales' teaching here should answer the question, Does ‘adultery’ have any meaning for non-Christians? Is there a Christian ‘fornication’ and a non-Christian ‘fornication’? ‘Effeminacy’? ‘Lasciviousness’? On the surface, this doctrine (that of Bales) is false.
Second, since we are to ‘make disciples of all the nations,’ and since, a part of making a disciple involves teaching that prospective convert that he is ‘to observe all things whatsoever [Christ] commanded [the apostles]; and since, Matthew 19:9 is a part of all the things Christ commanded the apostles, it is therefore the case that the people in all the nations, though not Christians, are under, subject to, amenable to what Christ commanded in Matthew 19:9. Clearly, ‘whosoever,’ in Matthew 19:9 means just that.
How can a non-Christian be made a disciple by ‘teaching them to observe all things’ of Christ's commandments to the apostles, if he is not to begin with subject to those same commands? ‘To observe’ translates the Greek teirein which is a present, active, infinitive verb. It comes from teireo which means to ‘follow, keep, abide by.’ Jesus did not say, Teach the non-Christian, baptize him, and then teach him that he henceforth, and for the first time, shall be morally responsible to keep all my commandments . That non-Christian was/is already subject to ‘all’ of Christ's commandments. In order to become a disciple, to be saved, to receive the remission of sins, he must commit himself to bring his life into harmony with all that Christ has commanded-yes, even what he commanded about divorce and remarriage.
As to ‘all things whatsoever I have commanded you,’ Jesus ‘commanded’ things about: stealing, lying, extortion, fornication, etc. When going out among all the ‘nations,’ and trying turn them from their sins, I am to do so, not only by ‘baptizing’ them, but also, and equally, by ‘teaching’ them to ‘observe’ all that Christ commanded. The notion that they only become amenable to these commands (including the command in Mt. 19:9), and their implication as regards how one would repent of their violation, after becoming a Christian, is flatly wrong. The grammar of Mt. 28:19-20 proves that. Bro. Hugo McCord is reported to have once referred to Bales' doctrine as ‘damnable heresy.’ I agree.This item originally appeared in Banner of Truth (Volume 8, Number 6, June 1999)
