There is a reason schools do not make grammar classes optional. Who wants to know about syntax, verb moods, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, clauses, or punctuation? Right? Diagraming sentences is right up there with eating spinach. Yet effective communication, both spoken and written, depends on grammar. A missed place comma or wrong verb tense can change the meaning of a sentence. Communication is hard enough as it is without adding poor grammar.
Launched on July 22, 1962, Mariner 1 was the first planned fly-by of Venus to collect scientific data. It never made it. Less than five minutes after launch, an error in the computer code took it off course, necessitating its intentional destruction, sending $673 million up in smoke. The problem? A misplaced hyphen. It was called “the most expensive hyphen in history.” Even computers need grammar.
Since God is writing his story into the fabric of our lives through Scripture and our life landscapes, we need to apply spiritual rules of grammar to understand what he is saying. In writing to the Corinthian church, Paul said, “Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by just looking at you. Christ Himself wrote it—not with ink, but with God’s living Spirit; not chiseled into stone, but carved into human lives—and we publish it” (2 Cor. 3:2-3 MSG).
Here are a few spiritual grammar rules to help us understand what God is writing.
Rule #1: Don’t put a question mark where God put a period.
Satan’s strategy is to get us to violate this spiritual rule of grammar, causing doubt about what God has clearly said. God gave an explicit command to Adam and Eve, yet when Satan engaged Eve in a discussion on what God said, he replaced a period with a question mark.
Now the serpent … said to the woman, “Has God really said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'” The serpent said to the woman, “You certainly will not die!” (Genesis 3:1-4).
Every generation of believers must struggle with “What has God said?” There are areas of uncertainty when it comes to Scripture. Still, our most significant problems are not the hard-to-understand passages but the easy-to-understand ones we do not want to accept. It is then that Satan whispers in our ear, “Surely, that is not what it says, nor what it means – You certainly will not die!”
Rule #2: Don’t assume a period where God put an ellipsis.
The word ellipsis may not be familiar to you, but the (…) is. The word comes from the Greek meaning “to leave out.” It is an omission from the text without altering its meaning. An ellipsis can also indicate a break in the action: “to be continued.”
In our own narrative, we may come to a point where it looks like the end of the story. Nothing will ever change; it just is what it will be. But rather than the end, think of it as only an uncomfortable break in the story. Think of it as a “to be continued” moment.
With man’s rebellion in Genesis 3 and the resulting consequences, it looked like it was all over: Satan sabotaged God’s plan. Satan won. However, God interjected an ellipsis by promising a Redeemer who would bring ultimate victory. There is a great deal of painful history between man’s exile in Genesis 3 and his homecoming in the Book of Revelation, but there is no break in God’s plan.
Between the events in the books of Malachi and Luke, there are 400 years of divine silence. Was it a period or an ellipsis? The book of Malachi ends with the promise of a prophet who would “turn the hearts of the fathers back to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6). Four hundred years later, Luke picks up Malachi’s theme as the angel of the Lord came to Zechariah and quoted Malachi referring to Zechariah’s future son, John the Baptist, “He will turn many sons and daughters of Israel back to their God” (Luke 1:16). While generations of Jews waited, God was working (Isaiah 64:4).
During an ellipsis, we need to believe God is working while we are waiting. During an ellipsis, we may feel our life is on hold, that we are on an unexpected and unwanted detour. King David had a 20-year ellipsis between being anointed king and becoming king. David’s men wanted him to end the ellipsis by eliminating King Saul, but David had the wisdom to know that God would restart the storyline when he was ready. In the meantime, David gained wisdom through experiences that helped prepare him for his role as King of Israel.
Rule # 3: Don’t substitute a subjunctive for an imperative
The subjunctive is a verb form used to express a hypothetical scenario, wish, or desire. When God states an imperative (command), he intends that it is to be obeyed and not considered optional.
King Saul failed to understand this grammatical rule, costing him his kingdom. The prophet Samuel passed on God’s instructions to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15. Saul, acting as God’s hand of justice, was to eradicate Amalek and his people (vs. 15:3). Maybe it sounded too harsh to Saul, or maybe he considered it a waste of good resources, but whatever his rationale, he considered God’s imperative to be an option: a suggestion rather than a command.
Moses also forgot this rule of grammar when God told him to provide water for the people by speaking to the rock. Moses changed God’s imperative by striking the rock (after all, it worked before), costing him entrance into the Promised Land (Numbers 20:7- 11).
Rule #4: Recognize the use of a synecdoche.
You may not be familiar with the word synecdoche, but chances are good that you have used it in casual conversation. A synecdoche is a figure of speech that uses a part to reference a whole. It is a form of literary shorthand. We say, “He offered his hand in marriage,” referring to his whole person. A lookout shouts to his captain, “Four sails on the horizon,” referring to four ships. Or a new car owner might say to a friend, “Come over and check out my new wheels,” referring to his new car.
If we understand the context, the synecdoche is easily understood. Scripture often uses a synecdoche as shorthand, referring to a much larger picture. Returning to our Genesis story, God used a synecdoche when he said rebellion would end in death (“You shall die”). If we think God was only referring to physical death, we make the mistake of thinking of tires vs. cars. The result of rebellion is not only physical death but guilt, shame, fear, exile, conflict, alienation, slavery, blindness, etc. If we think only a part of the whole, then what Jesus accomplished by his life, death, resurrection, and ascension is truncated, and we miss the grandeur of the big picture. We cannot truly appreciate the mission Jesus Christ completed unless we understand the term “death” as a synecdoche.
Applying this rule of grammar to discipleship means moving from the parts to the whole. We need to move from:
- Commands to alignment
In the great commission, Jesus said we should “teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.” Jesus wasn’t suggesting we look up all the imperatives in the Gospels and teach them, replacing the Mishnah with a new list of rules. He was referring to aligning our lives with everything he taught about living in his kingdom.
- Obedience to love
Jesus said in John 14:21 that we express our love by keeping his commandments and that he rewards obedient love with greater intimacy with the Trinity. Obedience is the tires; love is the car.
- Compliance to abiding
Jesus summed up his three years of teaching in his final discourse with the disciples (John 15). He raised the disciples’ eyes from simply obeying to actually having an abiding, intimate relationship with Christ. He related obedience as a part but abiding as the whole. Therefore, abiding is much more than compliance.
If we are to interpret what God is saying correctly, we need to pay attention to the spiritual rules of grammar. Each one helps clarify the message, the “song” God is writing in our hearts, which can then be composed and passed on to the next generation.
For Reflection
- Reflect on a time in your life when you thought there was a period, but discovered later it was only an ellipsis.
- Thinks of other Scriptural examples when a person took God’s command as a suggestion.