Don't you just love the Greek infinitive? I do. And I'm thrilled I get to teach that subject in class this coming Monday. Let's look at a couple of examples from the Greek New Testament, shall we? In Phil. 1:21, Paul writes, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." I've underscored the infinitives. Like verbs, infinitives have tense (aspect). Here Paul communicates both a continuing idea ("to live") with a culminative idea ("to die"). He's saying, "For to me, to go on living is Christ, and to die is gain." In ancient Greek, there was a well-known saying, "to zēn chrēstos," meaning "to live is good." Paul drops a zinger when he makes a small phonetic change to "to zēn christos," meaning "to live is Christ." In essence, Paul changes "Life is good" to "Life is Christ." For the believer, life is occupied with Christ in everything he or she does!
Let's look at another example. In Acts 20:7 we read "On the Lord's Day, when we gathered to break bread ...." Why did the early church meet? It met in order to observe the Lord's Supper! This is a beautiful truth. The infinitive "to break bread" describes a central practice of the early church. These believers did not gather mainly to worship. The worship of God belongs to every activity of life. If we are alive, we are worshipping God, including when we gather on the Lord's Day. Instead, according to verses like Acts 20:7 and Acts 2:42, sharing a meal formed the central activity of the church's gathering and fellowship. The center was not a pulpit or an altar but a table, where the risen Christ was honored and remembered. That's why, in my book Seven Marks of a New Testament Church, I entitled the chapter on "the breaking of the bread" (Acts 2:42) "Christ-Centered Gatherings."
This is a far cry from the pulpit-centricity of our contemporary churches. Christ, not a man, was central. I like how Elizabeth Elliott puts this in her book Shadow of the Almighty: "I am convinced that nothing so dear to the heart of Christ as His Bride should be left without explicit instructions as to her corporate conduct. I am further convinced that the 20th century has in no way simulated this pattern in its method of 'churching' a community." I love that! In the first century, the community gathered as a Christ-centered community. As one writer noted, "From Pentecost forward, sharing a full meal was the assembled community's most frequent and persistent practice."
The infinitive? A great part of speech!