The Grammar of the Gospel

This week on Things Unseen, I want to think about a subject that may have bored you in elementary school. And perhaps it still bores you today, but it is actually enormously important, and I want us to think about how important it is in the school of Jesus Christ. “Well, what’s that?” you might ask. Well, it’s the rules of grammar.

What’s grammar? Well, here’s how the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary defines it: grammar is “that department of the study of a language which deals with its inflectional forms or other means of indicating the relation of words in the sentence and with the rules for employing these in accordance with established usage.” Well, now you might think I’m just confusing you, but that’s just a technical way of saying this: grammar is about how the language we use actually works.

If you’ve ever had to learn a foreign language, then you’ll know that every language has its own grammar, and one of the first challenges for us may be discovering that the way that other language works is different from the way our own language works. So, in order to speak it properly, to make sense, you’ve got to follow the rules of its grammar.

Now, most of us at first learn grammar not from textbooks but, as we grow up, from listening to others speak, by a kind of osmosis. And the same is true in the Christian life, because my point is the Christian gospel has its own grammar, but it’s a foreign language to the natural man. By nature, we speak another language and use a different grammar. And the more we use it, the more natural and, actually, the more right it seems to us. And as a result, we’re not able to understand the language of the gospel.

Remember how Paul says this when he writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2:14? They were overly impressed by this world’s language and wisdom, and he says: “Look, the natural man doesn’t accept the things of the Spirit of God. They’re folly to him. And he’s not able to understand them because they’re spiritually discerned.” By contrast, he says the gospel comes “in words not taught by human wisdom . . . interpreting spiritual truths” and spiritual language. Now, I’m quoting there from the English Standard Version. Paul isn’t saying that the gospel can’t be expressed in English, obviously, but he is saying that the gospel’s grammar is different from the grammar of the natural man, and so the natural man has difficulty understanding it. It’s like a foreign language to him.

Nicodemus is a powerful illustration of this, isn’t he? His conversation with Jesus, probably in Aramaic, or maybe, for all we know, since Nicodemus was a scholar and Jesus had lived in Galilee of the gentiles, it’s just possible it was in Greek. So, Nicodemus would’ve had no difficulty in understanding Jesus’ words. But by his own admission, he didn’t understand what Jesus was saying. He was trying to understand Jesus according to the grammar of a natural fallen man. Remember how Jesus told him that unless he was born again, he couldn’t see or understand the kingdom of God? Nicodemus had no problem with the words, but he did admit that he couldn’t understand what Jesus was saying. “I can’t follow You. I can’t see this,” he said to Jesus. “How can a man be born when he’s old like me? He can’t go back into his mother’s womb again and be born, can he?”

You see, Jesus was telling him something he couldn’t understand. And paradoxically, Nicodemus was telling Him he couldn’t understand it. He could follow the words that Jesus was using, but he didn’t understand their grammar. He couldn’t see the logic of the gospel. Why was that? It was because the rules of grammar he knew had taught him that the way into the kingdom of God was by being circumcised, by being a Jew, by reading Torah, by keeping the commandments—and this dear man took that with all seriousness. That’s something quite admirable about him. He was a Pharisee. In fact, Jesus calls him the teacher in Israel—the great theology professor, we might say. And he seems to have been modest enough and thoughtful enough to come secretly, yes, to talk to Jesus. And then we read later on in John’s gospel that he helped his friend, Joseph of Arimathea, to anoint Jesus’ body and lay it in the garden tomb. In a way, you can’t help loving this dear man. And yet, when we first meet him in John 3, the grammar of the gospel was a complete mystery to him. He needed to go back to gospel grammar school.

You know, when you hear a great sports star speak, they’ll often talk about making sure their fundamentals are in place, because if they’re not, things are bound to go wrong. And it’s the same with gospel grammar. That’s why I think it’s really worthwhile for us to spend the rest of this week on Things Unseen talking about the grammar of the gospel. And here’s a clue about what we’ll talk about tomorrow, it’s this, listen carefully: I hope you’ll be in the mood when you listen. So, join us tomorrow.