Mission Imperatives and Indicatives

"Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'" (Mt 28:18-19).

1. What is the indicative and what is the imperative in Mt 28:18-19 (aka the great commission)?
2. What is 
• an indicative?
• an imperative?
3. Identify the indicatives and the imperatives in the following verses:
• Gen 12:1-3.
• Exo 19:4-6.
• Exo 20:2-3ff.

My "First" Blog Post from 2010

Nov 23, 2009 (I am posting this here for posterity because the website this was originally posted on is being discontinued. My original title was "The imperatives are based on the indicatives," which I subsequently changed. Though I had posted occasionally from 2009, I regard this as my "first" blog post.)

Ben Toh  //  The one Jesus loved 1st, husband of 1, father of 4, grand-father of 2, unrepentant Chicago sports fan of winning teams only, and bi-vocational: pastor and self-employed physician in Chicago.

Religion/Imperatives Versus the Gospel/Indicatives

Bryan Chapell said, "The imperatives are based on the indicatives and the order is not reversible." (Chapell is the President of Covenant Seminary and author of Christ-Centered Preaching. He gave a lecture at the Advance09 conference in Durham, North Carolina titled "Communicating the Gospel through Preaching.") Related post: Imperatives - Indicatives = Impossibilities