indicatives

Speaking of never forgetting the indicatives ...


"One is unlikely to assert that we are justified by sanctification, but, whether done intentionally or not, that is what happens when we allow the teaching of Christian living, ethical imperatives, and exhortations to holiness to be separated from and to take the place of the clear statement of the gospel. We can preach our hearts out on texts about what we ought to be, what makes a mature church, or what the Holy Spirit wants to do in our lives, but if we do not constantly, in every sermon, show the link between the Spirit's work in us to Christ's work for us, we will distort the message and send people away with a natural theology of salvation by works. Preaching from the epistles demands of the preacher that the message of the document be taken as a whole even if only a selection of texts, or just one verse, is to be expounded. Every sermon should be understandable on its own as a proclamation of Christ. It is no good to say that we dealt with the justification element three weeks ago and now we are following Paul into the imperatives and injunctions for Christian living. Paul wasn't anticipating a three-week gap between his exposition of the gospel and his defining of the implications of the gospel in our lives. Nor was he anticipating that some people would not be present for the reading of the whole epistle and would hear part of its message out of context." ~ Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching The Whole Bible As Christian Scripture, p. 237 as quoted by John Fonville

Andy Holz helps with the following:

Indicatives Define Us
They are a declaration of:

• who God is;
• what He has done in Christ;
• who we are in Christ as a result.

Imperatives Lead Us
They are how we respond to who God is in Christ and how He relates to us. (God’s Law)

Indicatives Empower Imperatives (Jonathan Edwards Principle)
The indicatives are the roots, the imperatives are the branches.

Examples from Scripture
Luke 6:36 “(imperative) Be merciful, (indicative) just as your Father is merciful [to you].”

Romans 15:7 “(imperative) Accept one another, then, (indicative) just as Christ has accepted you , in order to bring praise to God.”

1 John 4:12 “(imperative) If we love one another, God dwells in us, (indicative) and His love is matured in us.”

Leviticus 20:7-8 “(imperative) Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, (indicative) for I am the Lord your God. (imperative) Keep my statutes and do them; (indicative) I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”

Diagnostic Tool to Examine the Heart
We can tell what we truly believe most deeply in our heart about the way God in Christ relates to us, by the way that we relate to the Lord and other people.

Example:
If we believe that God is still angry at us and will pay us back for our transgressions(indicatives)-then we will have an angry, “pay back” attitude towards others(imperatives).

On the other hand:
If we truly believe that God is gracious, loving and merciful towards us in Christ (indicatives)- then we will normally act graciously towards others forgiving them when they wrong us (imperatives).

Two Possible Errors:

1. Moralism occurs when we put the imperatives ahead of the indicatives.
2. Cheap Grace occurs when indicatives are communicated with no mention of imperatives.