Does Jesus Commend Drive-By Evangelism? Some Thoughts on the Great Commission

Matthew 28.18-20 is one of the most familiar passages in the Bible to cradle-Baptists like me. Along with John 3.16, we learned it as Primaries in Sunday School, where we emblazoned it on construction paper with macaroni scroll-work and memorized it during Vacation Bible School. And rightly so: This "Great Commission" contains Our Lord's succinct marching orders for the Church Universal and each believer.

But there is an interpretive issue that my long-suffering first-grade Sunday School teacher never went into, perhaps because that kind of thing doesn't translate well to flannel-graph. Some commentators, noticing that in Greek "make disciples" is the only imperative, while "go," "baptize," and "teach" are all, in fact, participles, have argued that Jesus does not mean to enjoin any specific evangelistic activity. Instead, the command is to "make disciples," and we are to do this "as we are going. Indeed, my own father used this as the basis for his idea of "traffic-pattern evangelism," the idea that we would all share the gospel with whomever we encountered "in the normal traffic-pattern of your life." Some folk go even farther and eschew the whole idea of "witnessing." They argue that instead Jesus tells  us to go, and that as we do so people, noticing our very different (and presumably exemplary) way of life, will approach us and ask us to explain what sets us apart. (Full disclosure: That has never even once happened to me so perhaps I am a little biased.)

But is this reading of the Greek text accurate? Is this kind of if-you-live-it-they-will-come evangelism what Jesus commands? To answer the question, we need to look a little deeper into the language involved.

First of all, it is important to understand that participles in Greek - as in English - can function in different ways. If I say, "The shooting happened yesterday," I turn the participle into a noun; if I say, "Walking down the road, I hummed a tune," I use the participle to show how one action relates to another in time: I hummed WHILE I walked. And, due to the marvelous subtly and flexibility of the Koine Greek language, the Greek participle does things that the English participle does not.

Second, one must understand that, in Greek, participles have tense. In English I say, "eating" and, without some context, there's no hint of when or how long that went on. But in Greek I can express ideas about the duration of the action.

With that in mind, then, consider the following: One shade of the Greek participle is the idea of means. Under certain conditions, we translate the participle with the phrase, "by means of." Among other things, this happens when the participle answers what seems like an implicit and necessary question. Also, if we remove the participle, we lose the point of the main verb. Finally, the participle defines the action of the main verb, makes its meaning clearer.

Now try that with our example: The command is "make disciples." This implies a very necessary question: How are we to do this? "going" would be a part of the answer. Moreover, it seems to answer a necessary question: If someone tells you to do something you've never done before, you are liable to ask, "How?" Third, the idea of "going" sharpens the focus of "make disciples." Greek grammarian Daniel Wallace adopts this reading, which would give a translation like, "By means of going (into the world), make disciples."

If we accept this rendering, "going" ceases to be a while-you're-at-it idea and becomes a how-to-do-it idea. The one problem this raises is that we would need to explain why this participle is in a different tense (aorist) from "baptizing" and "teaching" (present tense).

But there is another possibility. Sometimes Greek uses what is called the participle of attendant circumstance. When this happens, the participle conveys an action that is coordinate with the main verb and is thus translated as a verb. In such a case, the participle takes on the mood of the main verb. There are, according to Daniel Wallace, about five characteristics that occur to signal a participle of attendant circumstance:

1. The participle is usually in the aorist tense.
2. The main verb is usually in the aorist tense.
3. The main verb is usually in the indicative or imperative mood.
4. The participle comes before the main verb both in word-order and in time.
5. This occurs most often in narrative passages.

What about Matthew 28.19? The participle and main verb are, in fact, both in the aorist tense - though the two following participles are not. The main verb is in the imperative mood - a command, in other words: "Make disciples!" The participle "go" comes before the main verb, "make disciples" both in word-order and in time (you go first, then you make disciples) - though, again, the other two participles do not. The passage is not, however, narrative, but a plain directive.

Still, that's four out of five and the most decisive four at that. Wallace lists this reading as "disputed" but it makes good sense: Jesus gives us two commands. The central one is "make disciples" and the sentence signals its primacy by placing it in the imperative. The accompanying command is to "go," to undertake deliberate action to spread the gospel. Though a command, this is an order that makes no sense by itself, since going is useless unless one knows why one goes. The other two participles (which fulfill none of the markers for a participle of attendant circumstance) state the means by which one can fulfill the main purpose: by baptizing and teaching. Toss in the fact that every other use of this particular verb for "go" in this particular form in Matthew is attendant circumstance and the thing looks pretty sound.

And what about the idea that "go" is merely adverbial, meaning "as you are going"? "To turn (the word 'go') into an adverbial participle," writes Wallace, "is to turn the Great Commission into the Great Suggestion!"

To conclude, I would say three things: 1) I believe the best reading of the Greek text here leads us to translate the verb "go" as a command to intentional evangelistic action. 2) Failing that, I would say it at least conveys means: "by going," which has only a slightly weaker emphasis on intention. 3) Reading it as an adverbial participle runs into any number of difficulties. Oh, and I'll throw in one more: The adverbial reading is the most comforting and least demanding - which almost certainly means that it is wrong.