“We have moods, and verbs also have moods! But when we are talking about grammar, mood is really a variation of mode-how a verb works. For our purposes, the two most important moods are:
(1) the indicative mood, where the verb expresses a fact, and
(2) the imperative mood, where the verb issues a command.
Now, with this in mind, think about Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus again. Jesus states a fact: to see and enter the kingdom of God it is necessary to be born again.
Nicodemus essentially asks in return, “How can anyone do this?” He assumes that the way to be accepted in God’s kingdom is by what we do, confusing imperative with indicative.
Don’t most people you know think that way? They think that the way to be accepted by God is to do the best you can, and God will accept you. Sure, you might not be perfect, but heaven helps those who help themselves. So long as you do your best—and can safely assume that’s as good as the next person— you’ll pass.
Putting that in grammatical terms, the instinctive rule people follow is this:
The imperative, “Do your best,”
leads to
the indicative, “If you do that, then God will save you.”
But the gospel uses a different grammar; its rule is this:
The indicative,
“Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3),
leads to
the imperative,
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
Or again, the indicative,
“In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19),
leads to
the imperative,
“Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20).
The indicative and imperative belong together— the one leads to the other- but we mangle the gospel if we confuse the order. Even if an imperative precedes the indicative in the order of a sentence, in the order of the logic of the grammar of the gospel, God’s indicatives are always the foundation for his imperatives. God’s grace is always the ground and motive for our obedience-never the other way around.
The Bible is full of examples of this. From the very beginning, in Genesis 2,
the indicative (grace),
“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden” (Gen. 2:16),
leads to
the imperative (obedience),
“Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen. 2:17).
And just as important for us to notice is the same logic in the giving of God’s Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:
The indicative,
“I am the LORD… who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2),
leads to
the imperative,
“You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:3).
By the time Paul was writing to the Philippians he had been using the grammar of the gospel for years. It had become second nature to him. But he could look back on earlier days when he had used a different language grammar altogether.
At that time, he had believed he possessed “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law” and was “blameless” (Phil. 3:6, 9). His former language essentially worked like this:
The imperative, “Keep the commandments,”
should lead to
the indicative,
“As a result you will be blameless before God.”
But then he met Christ, began to understand the gospel, learned its language fluently, and discovered the opposite:
The indicative,
“Righteousness before God comes through Christ,”
leads to
the imperative,
“Trust in Jesus Christ alone for righteousness, and then you will have a righteousness from God.”
Why belabor this point? Because we tend to forget it or reverse it- and not only before we become Christians but afterward as well. This rule of gospel grammar is unvarying from the beginning of the Christian life to its end:
God’s indicatives are the foundation for all of His imperatives; His resources are the source of our transformation.
We are never thrown back on our own resources but are always invited into His.
So, when we read Paul’s imperative “Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ,” we must ask, “On what indicative of God’s grace does this imperative rest?” For this is an overwhelming imperative.
It could crush us, and on its own it will. So, what sustains it? Yes, it is right to ask, “How can I do this?” But we must first ask, “What does God do to make this possible?” and we must absorb His resources.”
–Sinclair B. Ferguson, Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 24-28.
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