Commands and Prohibitions

The imperative mood, introduced in lesson 2, presents an action as willed by the speaker of the hearer. Greek has imperatives in the second person, do this, and also in the third person, which English has to render with let or must. It has them chiefly in two tenses, the present and the aorist, and once in a while in the perfect: in Mark 4:39 Jesus says to the sea Σιώπα, πεφίμωσο (siōpa, pephimōso), 'Silence!' and 'Be still!', the first a present active imperative and the second a perfect passive imperative, second person singular, literally be muzzled, with the perfect presenting a state that is to last.

The third person imperative needs a word of warning, because English let sounds like permission. In the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6:9-10 in the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) has ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου (hagiasthētō to onoma sou, let your name be hallowed), ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου (elthetō hē basileia sou, let your kingdom come) and γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου (genēthētō to thelēma sou, let your will be done), three aorist imperatives in the third person, two of them passive in form. The BSB's 'hallowed be Your name' at the end of 6:9, and 'Your kingdom come, Your will be done' in 6:10, keep the old English form. None of these is permission. They are petitions, the imperative used of a request addressed to God, which is why grammarians often call it the imperative of entreaty. In Acts 2:38 Peter says Μετανοήσατε, καὶ βαπτισθήτω ἕκαστος ὑμῶν (metanoēsate, kai baptisthētō hekastos hymōn), 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you', where the second verb is a third person aorist passive imperative: let each of you be baptized, meaning each of you must be.

Greek can also command without the imperative. The future indicative does it in the commandments: Matthew 5:21 quotes Οὐ φονεύσεις (ou phoneuseis, you shall not murder), which the BSB renders 'Do not murder'. The hortatory subjunctive of lesson 2 makes an appeal, let us. The infinitive of lesson 4 can stand as a command, as in Romans 12:15. And participles, as lesson 3 showed, sometimes take on the force of a command from the verb they hang on. When you build your list of commands in a passage, look for all of these, not only the words your tool labels imperative.

Prohibitions, negative commands, come in two main forms, and this is the point on which the rest of the lesson turns. The first is μή (mē, not) with the present imperative: μὴ κρίνετε (mē krinete, do not judge) in Matthew 7:1. The second is μή with the aorist subjunctive: μὴ νομίσητε (mē nomisēte, do not think) in Matthew 5:17. Greek in the New Testament does not normally use μή with the aorist imperative in the second person; for an aorist prohibition it switches to the subjunctive. So when you see μή followed by an aorist subjunctive at the start of a sentence, read it as a prohibition, not as a purpose or a possibility.

Now the anchor. Ephesians 5:18 reads καὶ μὴ μεθύσκεσθε οἴνῳ, ἐν ᾧ ἐστιν ἀσωτία, ἀλλὰ πληροῦσθε ἐν πνεύματι (kai mē methyskesthe oinō, en hō estin asōtia, alla plērousthe en pneumati, and do not get drunk with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled by or with the Spirit). μεθύσκεσθε (methyskesthe, get drunk) is a present imperative, second person plural, passive in form; the passive of this verb is the ordinary way to say become drunk. πληροῦσθε (plērousthe, be filled) is also a present imperative, second person plural, and passive. STEP codes both V-PPM-2P. ἀσωτία (asōtia), which the BSB renders 'reckless indiscretion', is a word for wastefulness and loss of self-control; the related adverb describes the prodigal son's living in Luke 15:13. So the verse sets a present prohibition beside a present command, both passive, joined by ἀλλά (alla, but, instead).

For most of the twentieth century, students of New Testament Greek learned a rule that seemed to unlock the prohibitions. A present prohibition means stop doing what you are already doing. An aorist prohibition means do not start doing something you have not begun. The rule was given wide currency in English by James Hope Moulton's Prolegomena, the first volume of his Grammar of New Testament Greek (1906), which illustrated it with an anecdote passed on by the Cambridge classicist Henry Jackson: a friend of his, Davidson, learning modern Greek, had been puzzled by the distinction until he heard a Greek use the present prohibition to stop a dog that was already barking. Moulton himself warned that stop was only one possible meaning of the present prohibition, but the story stuck and the warning was often forgotten. Grammars and commentaries repeated the rule for generations, and it is still common in sermons.

The rule deserves to be stated at its strongest, because it was not invented from nothing. It rests on a real feature of Greek aspect. The present tense views an action as in progress, from the inside, and a negated present imperative naturally addresses an action as ongoing. When the action is already under way, the natural meaning of do not be doing this is stop. And the New Testament has clear cases where the rule fits beautifully. In Luke 8:52 the mourners are weeping, ἔκλαιον (eklaion, they were weeping), an imperfect, and Jesus says Μὴ κλαίετε (mē klaiete), present imperative, which the BSB renders 'Stop weeping'. In Mark 9:38 John reports that the disciples tried to stop a man casting out demons, with an imperfect, ἐκωλύομεν (ekōlyomen, we were hindering), and Jesus answers in 9:39 Μὴ κωλύετε αὐτόν (mē kōlyete auton), 'Do not stop him', where the sense is clearly stop hindering him. In Revelation 1:17 John has fallen at Christ's feet like a dead man, and Christ says Μὴ φοβοῦ (mē phobou), present imperative, do not be afraid, to a man already terrified.

Defenders of the rule also pointed to John 2:16, where Jesus says to those selling doves μὴ ποιεῖτε τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός μου οἶκον ἐμπορίου (mē poieite ton oikon tou patros mou oikon emporiou, stop making my Father's house a house of trade), which the BSB renders 'How dare you turn My Father's house into a marketplace!' The traders were doing exactly that at that moment. And they pointed to John 20:17, Μή μου ἅπτου (mē mou haptou), present imperative, which the BSB renders 'Do not cling to Me', and which many readers have long understood as stop clinging to me, since Mary had presumably taken hold of him. A reader who knew the rule found these passages vivid, and in every one of them the context agrees with it.

What the old view got right, then, is that in a particular situation where an action is visibly in progress, a present prohibition will usually mean stop. Its claim was larger: that the form itself carried that meaning, so that a preacher could infer from a present prohibition alone that the hearers were already doing the thing forbidden. That larger claim is what the critics tested.

Through the second half of the twentieth century the larger claim came under sustained criticism. K. L. McKay, in an article on aspect in imperatival constructions in Novum Testamentum (1985), argued that the present and aorist in commands differ in aspect, the way the action is viewed, and not in whether it has already started. James L. Boyer, in a statistical study of the imperatives of the New Testament in the Grace Theological Journal (1987), went through the prohibitions one by one and found that the stop doing sense fits only a minority of the present prohibitions: of the 174 he counted, only about forty show the action already happening in the context, and a great many forbid something that, as far as the context shows, was not happening at all, or state a general rule of conduct. Buist Fanning, in Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (1990), connected the present imperative more with general precepts and ongoing conduct, and the aorist more with specific actions in particular situations, while acknowledging many exceptions. Daniel Wallace's Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (1996) summarises the newer consensus: the present prohibition can mean stop doing, but it often means do not make a practice of this, or simply do not do this as a general rule; the aorist prohibition can mean do not start, but it often simply forbids a specific act. Which sense fits is decided by the context, not by the form alone.

You can test the critics' case yourself with the free tools, and the inquiry asked you to begin. Matthew 6:25 has μὴ μεριμνᾶτε (mē merimnate), a present imperative, do not worry. Verses 31 and 34 return to the same subject, for the same audience, each with οὖν (oun, therefore), and use μὴ μεριμνήσητε (mē merimnēsēte), an aorist subjunctive. If the old rule were a rule, Jesus would be saying stop worrying in verse 25 and then, in the same breath, do not start worrying in verse 31, to people he has just told to stop. The BSB, like the other major translations, makes no attempt to bring out such a difference, and rightly.

Ephesians itself supplies more evidence, and close to the anchor. Ephesians 4:26 has ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε (orgizesthe kai mē hamartanete), 'Be angry, yet do not sin', quoting Psalm 4:4. The present prohibition there is not telling angry people to stop sinning; it is a general instruction about anger. Ephesians 4:30 has καὶ μὴ λυπεῖτε τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον τοῦ θεοῦ (kai mē lypeite to pneuma to hagion tou theou), 'And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God', present imperative; nothing in the letter says the Ephesians were grieving the Spirit, and the command reads naturally as a standing instruction. And when Paul does want to say stop, he can say so plainly. Two verses earlier, Ephesians 4:28 has ὁ κλέπτων μηκέτι κλεπτέτω (ho kleptōn mēketi kleptetō), 'He who has been stealing must steal no longer', with μηκέτι (mēketi, no longer) doing the work that the old rule assigned to the present tense.

So where does the argument now stand? It is not a case of one side winning everything. Almost all grammarians now agree that the form of a prohibition does not by itself tell you whether the action was already in progress. That is as near to settled as anything in Greek grammar, and a preacher should not infer a hidden sin in the congregation from a present prohibition alone. At the same time, the defenders of the old view were right that the present prohibition is the natural form to use when an action is in progress, which is why it appears in Luke 8:52, Mark 9:39 and Revelation 1:17, and the critics do not deny those passages. The present and the aorist do differ, in aspect; scholars still debate exactly how that difference works out in commands, along the lines of the wider debate between Porter, Fanning and Campbell that Module 4 described. The method that follows is the one both sides can accept: read the form, then read the context, and let the context decide whether the command means stop, never, or do not as a rule.

Apply that method to the anchor. The prohibition μὴ μεθύσκεσθε is present. Does it mean stop getting drunk? The context of Ephesians 5:15-21 is a run of general instruction: walk carefully, redeem the time, understand the Lord's will. Nothing in Ephesians says that drunkenness was a problem in the churches it addresses, though 1 Corinthians 11:21 shows it could be a problem in another church at the Lord's Supper. The command to be filled is also present, and nobody reads that one as stop being filled. So most interpreters read both as present imperatives of general conduct: do not be people who get drunk; be people who are being filled. If you preach the verse, preach it as a standing instruction for the whole church. You may, of course, apply it where drunkenness is in fact a present problem, and in many congregations it is. But you should not tell a congregation that the Greek proves the Ephesians were drunkards.

Then the passive. πληροῦσθε is a passive command: be filled. How can anyone obey a command to have something done to them? Grammarians call this a permissive or receptive sense of the passive imperative: allow yourselves to be filled, yield to the one who fills. The form could in principle be middle, fill yourselves, since lesson 1 showed that present middle and passive forms are identical, but most interpreters read it as passive, because the filling is something the Spirit does. The present tense, read with the cautions of section 3, presents it as ongoing conduct rather than a single event, which agrees with Acts, where the same people are filled with the Spirit more than once.

And then the words ἐν πνεύματι (en pneumati), which the BSB renders 'with the Spirit'. Here grammarians genuinely disagree. The traditional reading, reflected in the BSB and most English translations, takes the Spirit as the content of the filling: be filled with the Spirit, as the believers in Acts 2:4 'were all filled with the Holy Spirit'. Its defenders point to that passage and to Luke's frequent language of people full of the Spirit, and argue that ἐν with the dative can express content in the Greek of this period. Daniel Wallace argues the other way. He observes that the normal Greek construction for the content of filling is the genitive, as in Acts 2:4, πνεύματος ἁγίου (pneumatos hagiou), with the related verb πίμπλημι (pimplēmi, I fill), and contends that ἐν with the dative after this verb indicates means: be filled by the Spirit. On that reading the content of the filling is found elsewhere in the letter, in the fullness of God and of Christ: Ephesians 3:19 prays 'that you may be filled with all the fullness of God', and 4:10 says Christ ascended 'in order to fill all things'. Both readings make the Spirit the active agent of the Christian life. They differ over whether he is what fills or the one who fills with Christ's fullness. Each side has a real argument from Greek usage, and you should present the question as open.

This lesson will not go further into the doctrine of filling: whether it is the same thing as the baptism in the Spirit, whether it is a distinct experience after conversion, and how it relates to the gifts. Those are live questions between Pentecostal, charismatic, Reformed and other Christians, and the Systematic Theology track's lesson The Holy Spirit sets them out with their texts. Lesson 3 of this module showed what follows grammatically: the five participles of 5:19-21 hang on πληροῦσθε, describing what the Spirit-filled church does, or how it is filled, depending on how they are read. Put the two lessons together and you can show a congregation the whole sentence: a prohibition, a passive command, and five participles running down to the household instructions.

One more passage will let you practise the method on a text where the present and aorist sit side by side. Romans 6:12 begins Μὴ οὖν βασιλευέτω ἡ ἁμαρτία (mē oun basileuetō hē hamartia), 'Therefore do not let sin reign', with βασιλευέτω (basileuetō, let it reign) a present active imperative, third person singular: sin must not be king. Romans 6:13 continues μηδὲ παριστάνετε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν ὅπλα ἀδικίας τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ (mēde paristanete ta melē hymōn hopla adikias tē hamartia), 'Do not present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness', a present imperative, and then ἀλλὰ παραστήσατε ἑαυτοὺς τῷ θεῷ (alla parastēsate heautous tō theō), 'but present yourselves to God', an aorist imperative of the same verb.

Why does Paul switch? The answer most often given, by older and newer grammarians alike, is aspect: the present prohibition addresses ongoing conduct, the habit of handing one's body over to sin, while the aorist command presents the giving of oneself to God as a single whole act viewed from outside. Some on the older view press this into stop presenting your members to sin, and present yourselves to God once and decisively. Others, following Fanning's distinction, would say that the present suits a general rule of life and the aorist a specific act called for in the light of verses 2 to 11. Still others note that Paul uses the aorist of this verb whenever he commands the positive act: Romans 6:19 has παραστήσατε again, and Romans 12:1 the aorist infinitive παραστῆσαι (parastēsai, to present), so the aorist may simply be Paul's usual form for this command.

Notice something in 6:19 that bears on the method. Paul writes ὥσπερ γὰρ παρεστήσατε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν δοῦλα τῇ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ (hōsper gar parestēsate ta melē hymōn doula tē akatharsia), which the BSB renders 'Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity'. That is an aorist indicative, and it describes a long past habit, as the BSB's used to shows. The aorist presents the whole of that former life as one completed whole; it does not mean it happened once. So in 6:13 and 6:19 the aorist command cannot mean, by its form alone, a once-and-for-all act. A preacher may still say that Paul calls for a decisive self-giving to God, because the paragraph supports it, with its talk of death and new life. He should rest that on the paragraph, not on the tense.

This is the pattern for the whole module. Voice, mood, participle, infinitive and the tense of a command each tell you something real. Each has been made, at one time or another, to tell preachers more than it can. The free tools show you the form. The context tells you the sense. Your job, and the job of any honest teacher of the Bible, is to say what the form shows, say what the context shows, and keep the two distinct when you stand up to speak.

Open your verb table for the last time in this module. Add a final column headed Command. For every imperative, every μή with an aorist subjunctive, every hortatory subjunctive and every future or infinitive used as a command in your passage, write the form in full words, and then a sense from this list: stop, never, as a rule, this specific act, request to God, or not sure. Beside each sense write the verse in the context that made you choose it. If you chose stop, the context should show the action in progress, as in Luke 8:52; if it does not, change your answer.

Then look at your table as a whole. You now have, for every verb in your passage, its parsing, its voice and who acts, its mood, and, where relevant, its participle or infinitive function and its force as a command. At the foot of the page, write a paragraph of five or six sentences describing the verbs of your passage as a whole: who acts, and on whom; what is stated and what is commanded; where the participles and infinitives hang; and what the commands rest on. This paragraph is the second piece of your capstone study, after the passage itself. Keep it.

Finally, take one command from your passage that you expect to preach or teach. Write it out from your Bible, then write three sentences under it. The first says what the Greek form of the command shows. The second says what the context adds. The third is the sentence you would say from the pulpit, with nothing in it that the first two do not support. Read the third sentence aloud to one person in your household or your church this week, and ask them what they understood it to mean. If what they heard is more than you said, tighten the sentence until it is not.