6.1. General Questions and Conclusions:
Ø Q. Who or what is the authority for these commands?
A. Jesus has the ultimate authority, and these statements are made with the full force of that authority behind them
Ø Q. What is Jesus’ mood in giving these instructions/commands?
This teaching is imperative in mood. He’s serious. No hint of optional choices on our part
Ø Q. What should my (our) response be?
A. Salute and obey. These aren’t suggestions, options, and possibilities. These aren’t things to be contemplated. These are simply to be saluted to and obeyed. . No loafers here. No sliders. No hitchhikers on someone else’s’ action. Simple obedience.
Ø Q. Who is to “do” the things Jesus is commanding?
A. The address is to the masculine followers of Jesus as a group. No lone rangers. This is a group thing. The focus on the men in the group.
Ø Q. Are there any pre-requisites? What is necessary before you begin discipling?
A. You have to be moving before you can be discipling. The moving appears to be of your choosing. The discipling is to provide an over-riding goal to whatever “movement” you choose in life.
Ø Q. So what are we to do?
A. Make disciples. The aorist tense in the imperative mood clearly shows Jesus is looking at the full range of discipleship. He’s looking at it as a whole event from start to finish. There may be many parts to it, there may be processes within it, but He looks at it as a single concept.
Ø Q. Who are we to disciple?
A. All the nations (as opposed to the Jews) but now including the Jews (by emphatic use of panta = ALL). Note, these nations are neuter in gender. There is no indication as to men or women. So we must take the object of discipling is all people, men and women, in all nations…no one is excluded.
Ø Q. How many are we to disciple?
A. Emphatically ALL! All the nations. All the people in those nations. Anyone who will listen: men, women, and children.
Ø Q. How are we to disciple? I.e., what is the process?
A. Basically a two-fold process: baptizing and teaching.
Ø Q. With respect to the baptizing, who are we to baptize?
A. Them (referring to the nations, including all the people in the nations). However a very special note must be observed that Jesus switches genders when He directs who is to receive the baptism, it’s the men. This is very subtle, but knowing that Jesus didn’t misuse words, me must not gloss over this subtle change, but must take this subtle change as being important in Jesus’ view.
Ø Q. How is discipling to be accomplished for the women and children?
A. It’s not clearly spelled out here, but elsewhere in scripture, it appears the men in the church and home are to take the leadership—men in the church, and fathers in the home, and disciple the women and children. Men should be baptizing and teaching other men, who should in turn teach and baptize other men. Along the way, the men who are now baptized should baptize the women and children for which they are responsible.
Ø Q. Are there any restrictions on men to baptize their wives and children in their families?
A. No, not here. It would appear that Jesus might have had in mind that His male followers would baptize other men, and those men in turn would baptize the members of their families and other men as well.
Ø Q. Is baptizing a one-time event?
A. The Greek indicates that this baptism should be an on going practice. Since we know we only need to be baptized once, this is strong support for the fact that Jesus intends for “discipling” to be an ongoing process in the lives of His followers.
Ø Q. Into what are we to baptize people? Similarly, into what are these people being baptized?
A. Into the Name jointly owned by both the Father and the Son and also the Holy Spirit. One baptism into one Name. This Name involving the full reputation, nature, acts, plans, etc. of God, represented by three individual persons, all distinct, but sharing one identical nature and a one Name.
Ø Q. How critical is it to be baptized into “the Name”?
A. The importance of the Name of God goes back to Moses[73] and even further back to Abraham.[74] God’s name covers all God’s reputation, God’s power, God’s salvation, God’s provision, God’s glory, and much much more. God’s name means something. Careless use of it was prohibited in the 10 Commandments. Being baptized INTO The Name, has very special meaning. We are being baptized into all the reputation, power, salvation, provision, glory and much more that is God’s. Baptism should never be taken lightly, just as God’s name should never be taken lightly.
Ø Q. What is the focus of this baptism?
A. The focus is being baptized into “the Name.” The mode of baptism (especially single immersion vs. triune immersion) is not in view here. The focus is being placed into the Name which represents the body of Jesus, not the mode of the symbol representing entrance into that body.
Ø Q. How are we to baptize these new converts from the nations?
A. We are to baptize them INTO the Name. This assumes they start “outside” the Name and baptism is part of the process of movement taking them from being “outside” the Name and ending with them “INSIDE the Name.” Clearly there is direction in view here (eis) with motion towards clearly indicated (by the accusative case of eis). We could say they end up fully enclosed by all the reputation, power, love, and plans that God has for them.
Ø Q. What is baptism symbolizing? What does it mean?
A. Beyond the explicit, “being buried with Him in His death and resurrected with Him to new life,” baptism represents the first step in the discipleship process. This is the birthing process. A parallel picture would be to a baby being born. This is entrance into a new family.
Question: Why don’t we celebrate the anniversaries of our birth into God’s family with the same interest and fanfare we celebrate our physical births into our earthly families?
Ø Q. What is the second part of discipling?
A. Teaching
Ø Q. What do we know about teaching?
A. It is a continuous action, just like baptism is to be.
A. Men are to do it, just as in baptism.
Men? Yes, obtained from the gender of the participle to teach which = masculine
Plural. This is to be done by more than one man. Again, no lone ranger teachers here. God provides a safe guard against false doctrine by having teachers be part of a group. This tends to pull in the outliers gently and provides protection for the sheep against those who would sneak in and prey on the sheep for whatever miscreant reasons.
Note: this is completely consistent with other scriptures, such as: I Tim 2:11,12; etc.
Q. Who is to initiate this teaching process?
A. The “you-plural-masculine” of the subject of the sentence. The same ones doing the baptizing. Also the same ones who are to be initially “proceeding” in some way or course of life.
This is not something we wait for the new convert to initiate
Q. Who is to receive this teaching?
A. Again, the focus is on the masculine gender of the neuter nations. The men in the nations. Again, we ask the question, which we’ve already answered under the topic of baptism, what about the women and children? See Men? Yes under baptism for a fuller explanation.
Q. What are you to teach these new disciples?
A. The things, which I (Jesus) have commanded you.
Q. To what extent are these things to be taught?
A. To the full extent of ALL the things Jesus had commanded them.
Note: Because of the importance of this, we should make a clear goal of determining “all that Jesus commanded” them. This would be a good project for a disciple maker, or a leader of a church, or Bible study group.
6.2. Specifics Relative to Baptism & Triune Immersion
Ø From Matthew 28:19, baptism is into “one Name” not into three persons. The clear object of the participle ‘baptizing’ is ‘the Name’ as opposed to three individual persons, not withstanding the incorrect appeal to the grammatical ‘ellipsis’ argument used by Hodge.
Ø Correct grammar calls for the emphasis for the object of baptism to be on the Name into which the new convert is being baptized, not the mode of baptism.
Ø Those three persons (of the Trinity) jointly share ownership of that one Name as shown by use of the genitive case for each person’s name.
Ø The specification of the three persons just identifies “what kind of name” the author has in mind, it’s not Moses’ name or some other name, and it’s the single Name shared in ownership by all three persons of the Trinity.
Ø This is reinforced by grammatical rules for genitive case as opposed to accusative case, where the genitive describes the ‘kind’ of limitations, while the accusative describes the ‘extent’ of the limitations of the substantive (to onama) under question.
Ø Baptism into that one Name in the name of any one of the three persons of the Trinity, and in particular in the name of Jesus, is equivalent to being baptized into the name shared in ownership by all three.
Ø Support for single baptism in the name of Jesus can be found elsewhere in scripture, and is sufficient for any true believer.
Ø Ellipses do not supply “missing words” that would change the basic thrust of the text indicating baptism is into a single Name, not into three separate persons. The focus is the Name, not the persons. The three persons of the Trinity are supplied to make absolutely clear to anyone (including new converts in the early church) that baptism was to be in the name of God, specifically into the Name, which is owned by both the Father, and the Son and also the Holy Spirit (as opposed to some other names that new believers might consider, namely Moses, John the Baptist, and later, Peter or Paul.)
Ø Support for triune immersion cannot be found from the correct grammatical rendering of the Greek text in Matt 28:19
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