Gospel Indicatives and Imperatives

The gospel’s indicatives—all that God has done for us in Christ—are always the basis for our Christian imperatives—the ways we respond in faith and obedience. Today, Sinclair Ferguson warns against reversing this relationship.

This week’s theme on Things Unseen is the grammar of the gospel. Just as language has rules of grammar that govern how we speak it or write it properly, the same is true of the gospel, in a way. We were reflecting on the New Testament’s teaching that, by nature, we speak a different language, with a different grammar, from the language of the gospel of grace. So, what’s in gospel grammar? I signed off yesterday by saying I hoped you’d be in the mood for today, because that’s where we’re going to begin, moods.

The mood of a verb is just a sophisticated way of talking about the quality or tone of a verb, and there are actually several verbal moods. But for our purposes today, I want to focus on the two that we call indicatives and imperatives. An indicative is a statement of fact, “God loves you.” An imperative is a statement of command, “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.”

Now, here’s the important point in gospel grammar: God’s indicatives are always the basis for God’s imperatives. This is why we often find the word therefore in the New Testament. It’s because of who God is and what He has done for us in Christ that we should therefore respond in a certain way. What God does in His grace, the indicative, is the foundation for what we do in our response of faith and obedience, responding to His imperative.

Here’s another example from 2 Corinthians 5:19. First, the indicative statement of God’s grace, “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,” and then there’s the connection in verse 20, “Therefore,” followed by God’s imperative, “Therefore . . . be reconciled to God.” The imperative is rooted in the indicative.

You get the point, I’m sure. The message of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, God has righteously laid aside His enmity towards sinners. That’s the reason we, in turn, are called to lay down our arms, to abandon our hostility, to come in repentance and faith, and to receive the reconciliation. The problem is that the natural man, who doesn’t understand the grammar of the gospel, always reverses the indicative and the imperative. He thinks, “I know I’m not perfect, but I will make compensation, and I will make that compensation by doing better in the future, and then God will be reconciled to me.” But the truth of the gospel and the only way of salvation is actually the other way around.

But isn’t it true that most people do think something like this: “I’ve been a decent person. I’ve tried to obey the commandments. I’m as good as the next man and probably better. I tried to compensate for anything wrong I’ve done by the good things I’ve done, and I think I’ve probably done enough. Therefore, God will accept me.” And in fact, it’s even common when people are convicted of their sin but still don’t grasp the grammar of the gospel to respond with a new determination to do better, to try to turn over a new leaf, to start again, to try harder. Indeed, sometimes when a Christian explains the gospel to them, that’s exactly how they respond. They’re presented with indicatives: “We are sinners. Christ died for sinners.” But what they hear is: “You need to be better. You need to try harder. You need to be better. You need to try harder.” Their understanding of the grammar of the gospel is so deformed that they hear the indicatives as though they were actually imperatives. The language of the gospel of the free grace of God in Jesus Christ is actually a foreign language to them. That’s why it takes the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help people understand spiritual things. Only He can get the gospel to click in people’s understanding.

But here’s something worth noting: sometimes, even when we’ve been born again and have come to faith in Christ, we can still lapse back into the old grammar again. We make our acceptance with the heavenly Father dependent on how we are doing spiritually or how we think we’re doing spiritually: Did we have our quiet time? Did we do this? Have we stopped doing that? Now, these things are not unimportant in the Christian life, but as John Owen says, we mustn’t confuse the foundation with the superstructure of the building.

So, it’s always important for us as Christians to refresh our grasp of gospel grammar, to make sure that our lives are resting on the foundation of what God has done in the Lord Jesus. Because when that’s true—when the mighty indicatives of God’s grace in Christ are in place—then we know that there is in Christ all the grace and help we need to fulfill the all-embracing, all-demanding, life-transforming imperatives of the gospel. So, let’s keep going back to visit the grammar school of the gospel, and I hope you’ll join us tomorrow on Things Unseen, when we’ll be another day in the school of Jesus Christ.