Application Strategies

The challenge, of course, is that the Bible does not always tell us the “why” behind some of its instruction. Why did God tell Israel not to boil a baby goat in its mother’s milk (Deut. 14:21)? We don’t exactly know why. A good guess is that it had something to do with the worship of other gods in Canaanite practice. The principle was thus not to serve any gods but Yahweh. We might also hear an overtone of cruelty in the practice as well, fulfilled clearly in Jesus’ command to love our enemy (Matt. 5:44). 

Because the Bible is not always clear on the reasons behind instruction, because the Bible is not always clear on the context of various commands, we need to put several safeguards in place as we look to apply the Bible to today. Here are three important suggestions we should put into practice:

The application of Scripture is a spiritual task. We can try to make it scientific. We can look for points of continuity and discontinuity. We can identify underlying principles. We can connect it to today directly when their are points of continuity and move to the level of principle when there are points of specific cultural or situational discontinuity. There’s nothing wrong with doing this.

But the application of Scripture is ultimately a spiritual task. When we only treat it as a science, we can rationalize what we want over what God wants. We also have to fill in gaps, and our minds are fallible. We need to pray, pray, pray so that the Spirit protects us from the evil one and from our own failings. We need to pray, pray, pray so that we get where we need to go. Openness to the leading of the Spirit is essential, because the Spirit can “cut through” the thoughts and intentions of our hearts (Heb. 4:12-13).

Earlier in this lesson, we saw the importance of reading individual passages in the light of the whole of Scripture. The New Testament gives us the definitive lens through which to read the Old Testament. For example, the New Testament applies the Old Testament Scripture to Gentile communities of faith. Paul gives us an inspired lens for Gentiles to apply those Scriptures.

If a subject only appears in a single verse, we should be very careful about how we apply it. For example, 1 Corinthians 15:29 mentions baptism for the dead. 1 Peter 4:6 mentions the gospel being preached to the dead. Jude 9 talks about the archangel Michael arguing with the Devil over the body of Moses. These are very unique verses that most of us don’t quite know what to do with. It would be dangerous to build a theology out of them.

Reading the Bible in a community of faith is also more important that we as individualists might like to acknowledge. First of all, Philippians 2:12 encourages us to work out our way to final salvation together with fear and trembling. Paul wrote that to the Philippians in the first century, and our situation today remains in complete continuity with them.

There are two aspects to this community dimension of reading Scripture. First, there is the “communion of saints” through the ages. We do not have to reinvent the wheel and figure everything out ourselves. There are aspects of reading the Bible on which most Christians have agreed for two thousand years. We might call these sorts of beliefs the “rule of faith.”

For example, Christians have consistently read Scripture to teach:

• God is all powerful. God is all knowing, including the future. God is everywhere present.
• God is one God who exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must not worship any other god.
• Jesus is fully God and fully human, eternally God, co-equal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. 
• God created the world out of nothing. Therefore, the creation and our bodies were created good although currently marred by evil.
• The entire creation is marred by the power of Sin, and we cannot come to God apart from his grace.
• Jesus Christ is the only path to be reconciled to God on the basis of his death, resurrection, and our faith in him.
• All the ethical expectations of God are captured in the command to love God and love others.
• Christ will come again to judge and restore the world, and we will live with him forever.
• The Scriptures include at least 66 books and are God’s revelation to us.

A second aspect to reading Scripture with the community of faith is reading it in current community. If the Spirit lives within the body of Christ, then the more connected we are to the rest of God’s Church, the more likely we are to hear the Spirit’s leading today accurately. That does not mean we should all be in one church. God may use our groupings to preserve certain emphases. But we should be in constant communication with the rest of the body of Christ. Iron sharpens iron (Prov. 27:17).

Reading for Transformation

Some have warned us that the process of historical-cultural exegesis can treat the Bible a little like dissecting a frog. You don’t even have to be a believer to follow the steps to read the Bible in context. That does not mean that the process is not legitimate. It means that it can be used to avoid what we really need from Scripture, which is to encounter God and be changed.

A similar tangent is when we read the Bible only for information rather than formation. We read the Bible as an answer book to our questions but do not grow any closer to God in the process. Perhaps we read the Bible because we are curious about the second coming or because we think it supports our political or social agenda. We read it as if we are its master rather than God’s obedient servants.

God wants to change every aspect of who we are so that we are conformed to Christ and so that the image of God is restored in us. Certainly, this transformation involves what we think and believe. But God also wants to renew our attitudes too. He wants to empower us to love others. He wants to sanctify our feelings. He wants to restore and empower our relationships.

If you think about it, the various genres of Scripture are incredible, inspired tools to change us. The stories of Scripture are a way for God to show us who we really are while by-passing our rationalizing defence mechanisms. Remember when Nathan the prophet revealed David’s sin to him through a story (2 Sam. 12)?

 

This is an important principle. We need to know the why behind biblical commands if we are truly to fulfill them. As one person put it, “Doing what they did isn’t doing what they did if it does not have the same significance as it had in the ancient world.” Not trimming the edges of our beard (Lev. 19:27), wearing a head veil (1 Cor. 11:6), not consuming blood or the meat of animals that were killed by strangling (Acts 15:20) probably would not accomplish what they accomplished in biblical times if we did them today. Accordingly, most Christians do not think these practices are binding on us today.

The prophetic writings and writings of the New Testament church under persecution can give us hope. Their examples of faithfulness can inspire us to keep going (e.g., Heb. 11). The Psalms can both purge and redirect our emotions when we are sad or angry. They can focus our thanksgiving and praise. Jesus has given us in the Sermon on the Mount one of the most potent expressions of Christian ethics in all of the Bible.

 

All we need to do is surrender ourselves to the Lord. God takes us as we are. He meets us wherever we are in our understanding, our attitudes, our emotions, our choices, our relationships. Then he takes us from there, transforming us from glory to glory to become more like Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). This process does not need to be separated from study but can happen as we study.

May the Lord be with you in your ongoing study of the Bible until the day of the final revelation of Jesus Christ!