Application: Pressing the Text upon the Heart (Part 7)

In our last post we spoke of the different aspects of application. Now we move on to consider the different levels of application. While this topic is more relevant to those who preach and teach or lead Bible studies, there is value in it for every believer. In what follows, I am largely adapting what Mark Dever has done. Be sure to check out the multiple links on that page, especially the sample application grid and the blank application grid.

Our tendency, especially in the West, is to think of application in very personal terms. And in a sense, that is truly where we should begin, since our first responsibility before God when reading his Word is to respond ourselves. But application is much broader than that. There are many levels to application that we should think through:

• Non-Christian: How does the passage speak to the unbeliever? How does it call him/her to repentance and faith? How does it warn, rebuke, correct, prod the unbeliever? What does it say about the danger of the unbeliever's situation, the exclusivity of Christ, the sinner's need for a Savior, or the sufficiency of that Savior as a substitute for the sinner?
• Public: What does the passage say about our lives and roles in the public sphere, both as Christians and non-Christians (e.g., government and/or our neighborhood)?
• Christian: What is the significance of the passage for the individual Christian? How does it call him/her to deeper repentance and faith? How does it warn, rebuke, correct, motivate, comfort or encourage the Christian?
• Local Church: What is the significance of the passage for the corporate life of our local church? How does it call the local corporate body to tend to its corporate life together and corporate witness to the unbelieving community around it?

So let's look at Philippians 1:27-30 and work through each of these levels:

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.

And now for each level I'll suggest some possible application:

• Non-Christian: (1) Since faith is a gift from God, this passage calls the unbeliever to ask God to overcome his/her doubts and give him/her the necessary faith to be saved. (2) Persisting in persecution of God's people will ultimately result in his/her eternal destruction.
• Public: (1) Persecution of Christians is evidence of a culture that is hostile to God and in danger of God's judgment. (2) Because Christians are citizens of God's kingdom, their final loyalty will be to God and not the state.
• Christian: (1) Because suffering is a gift from God it should be embraced as an opportunity for growth rather than avoided at all costs. (2) The gospel of Christ is the measuring stick by which our entire lives are to be evaluated.
• Local Church: (1) Because persecution is to be expected, we as a congregation should be preparing our people to suffer through preaching, teaching, etc. (2) Because unity is so important to standing firm in the faith, we as a congregation must pursue unity in the gospel.

These are just a few of the possible lines of application for each of the levels. But they should be enough to give you a sense of what I mean by different levels of application.

In our next post, we will address the different orders of application.

Application: Pressing the Text upon the Heart (Part 6)

Today we will discuss what I refer to as the four aspects of application. These aspects should be kept in mind both for our own personal application of Scripture as well as attempting to make application when you are teaching or preaching.

For most people, when we think of the area of application, our thoughts turn to asking the question, "What does the next tell me to do?" This can be true for pastors as well, who feel the compulsion to end every sermon with two or three tangible action points that the congregants can do that week. Imagine that a pastor is creative enough to come up with three new action points each week. If he preaches 50 times in a year, the congregation has walked away with 150 things to do over the course of a year. In such a situation is it any wonder that Christians become legalists?

The answer to this problem is to take into account all four aspects of application:

1. Think: What does the text want me to think? What false beliefs does the text correct? Remember that central to what God does in us as believers is transform us by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:1-2). Since we are called to take every though captive to Christ (2 Cor 10:5), it is essential that we allow God to change our understanding of who he is and the world around us.
2. Believe: What does the text want me to believe? What false beliefs does the text correct? It is one thing to understand something, another to put your trust/faith in it. If we are going to take seriously that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Rom 10:17), then we must move from simple comprehension to trust in / reliance upon the truth of what God's Word says.
3. Feel: What does the text want me to feel? What sinful emotions does the text correct? While it is fashionable for people to say that no one has the right to tell them how to feel, God has absolutely no qualms about telling exactly how we should feel. The Psalms are filled with commands to rejoice, while the prophets often tell people to weep over their sin.
4. Do: What does the text want me to do? What sinful actions does this text correct? While we do not want our application to consist solely of doing, that does not mean we ignore the many places where Scripture specifically tells us to do things like pray, speak the truth in love, forgive one another, etc.

Let's take an example to flesh this out. Here is Philippians 4:4-9 (ESV)

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me--practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

So in light of this text, let's walk through each of the different aspects.

Think:

• The Lord is near (both in that he is present with us no matter where we are and in the sense that Christ's return is imminent). 
• The peace of God transcends my ability to completely understand it.
• I must fill my mind with things that are true, honorable, etc.

Believe:

• I must believe that Lord is near even when he does not feel near to me
• I must trust the God's peace is capable of protecting my heart and mind from anxiety no matter what my circumstances
• I must believe that things I have learned and received and heard and see in God's Word are sufficient for my growth in godliness.

Feel:

• I must rejoice in the Lord and not find my joy in the things of this world.
• I must not be anxious because God is the God of peace

Do:

• I must let my "reasonableness" be know to all people, not just those who are easy to along with.
• I must let my requests be made known to God through an active prayer life
• I must practice the things I have learned and received and heard and seen in Paul and other godly examples.

While this is far from an exhaustive list, it should be enough to give you an idea. The important thing is to recognize that application is a much broader concept than simply "do this."

In our next post, we will look what I refer to as the different levels of application.

Application: Pressing the Text upon the Heart (Part 5)

Although I had mentioned in the previous post that I would deal with the different aspects of application next, upon further reflection I have decided instead to address the issue of personal application. In my last post, I walked through several fallen conditions and their corresponding gospel solutions. But if you read closely, you will see that the fallen conditions are expressed in general terms. This was intentional, since my goal is to identify different aspects of our "fallenness" that the text identifies as universal. But now my goal is to articulate how each of these fallen conditions specifically manifests itself in my own life. It is at this point that the process of application moves from general to specific, since a fallen condition may manifest itself differently in my life than it does in yours.

Let's take the example of the parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:13-21. In the midst of this parable, Jesus warns his listeners:

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. (Luke 12:15 ESV)

So a pretty obvious fallen condition would look something like this:

We seek to find life/joy/fulfillment/contentment in the abundance of our possessions

But this fallen condition can show up in a variety of ways. For example:

1. For the person who is wealthy, it may reveal itself in the sense of pride and arrogance that believes all that they have is the product of their own hard work and has nothing to do with God's common grace.
2. For the person who is poor, it may reveal itself in the constant preoccupation with acquiring more money/possessions, believing that if only they had a little more wealth it would solve the vast majority of their problems.
3. Regardless of a person's wealth, it may reveal itself in working long hours at the expense of time with family, believing that life is found in providing a certain standard of living for his family.
4. It may reveal itself in a person who turns to shopping or buying things to deal with the difficulties or frustrations of life, believing that buying one more thing will bring them the joy they are seeking.
5. It may reveal itself in a person who is stingy and refuses to give generously, fearing that if too much is given away the desired lifestyle will not be attainable.
6. In the person who is retired, it may show itself in an attitude that views the retirement years as an entitlement to be lazy or selfish in how time and resources are spent. After all, because of his years of hard work he is now entitled to spend his time and energy on whatever he wants.

Hopefully that gives you a sense of what I mean when I say that the fallen condition identified in a passage can reveal itself in different ways depending on a person's circumstances, personality, upbringing, culture, etc. Because I am not a wealthy person, it could be quite easy to read Luke 12:13-21 and think "Since I am not wealthy, this passage really has nothing or very little to say." But when I realize that the fallen condition is a disease that has a variety of symptoms depending on the person, I am reminded to ask diagnostic questions that reveal the presence of the disease.

The recognition that the fallen condition reveals itself differently in different people is also an important bridge to applying the text to others when you teach or preach. If you were preaching or teaching Luke 12:13-21, it would be tempting for the people in your group/audience who do not view themselves as rich to "check out" because they think the passage has nothing to say to them. But when you help people to see the fallen condition and its various symptoms, it becomes much more difficult for anyone in the group/audience to think "This passage has nothing to say to me."

As a final note on this subject, the more specific you can be, the more clearly you and the people you lead will be able to see the fallen condition at work. Try to give specific examples that reveal the presence of the fallen condition, so that when people recognize their own thoughts, attitudes and actions in what you are describing they will realize that they think, feel or act that way because they are infected with the fallen condition you have identified. The more specific you are in identifying the fallen condition, the more precision you will have in applying the gospel solution. The better you know the specific people you are leading as well as the larger cultural influences that feed the fallen condition you have identified, the better you will be able to speak God's Word into their lives. A friend of mine once referred to this as "reading people's mail." In other words, when you identify the fallen condition and how it shows up in a person's life, you want them to have that moment where they think, "That's totally how I think/feel/act." Once a person is to that point, the gospel solution will seem especially sweet.

Lord willing, next week, we will move to the different aspects of application.

Application: Pressing the Text upon the Heart (Part 4)

In our last post, we looked at identifying the fallen condition. Now we turn our attention to identifying what I will refer to as the gospel solution. By gospel solution, I mean:

the aspect(s) of the Gospel (i.e. the work of Jesus Christ) that are revealed (either explicitly or implicitly) in the text (the passage itself or the larger context) that provide the solution to the fallen condition

In other words, what we are trying to do is apply the benefits of the gospel to the specific fallen conditions that the text has identified. By the power of the Holy Spirit we seek to determine the specific aspects of the work of Christ that overcome the area(s) of sin we have identified. Note that sometimes the gospel solution is not found in the passage itself, but in the larger context of the book or even the canon.

So continuing with our previous post, let's look again at 1 Thess 4:13-18

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Here are the Fallen Conditions that I identified from the passage, but now I have included a corresponding gospel solution:

• Fallen Condition 1: Our ignorance about what happens to fellow believers when they die leads to sinful grief
• Gospel Solution 1: The gospel teaches us that God will gather all of his people to himself when Christ returns.
• Fallen Condition 2: When we lose sight of the hope that we as believers have in Christ, we grieve as those who have no hope (i.e. we grieve like unbelievers who have no hope)
• Gospel Solution 2: Because Jesus has conquered death through his resurrection, we who are joined with him by faith have the hope of sharing in his resurrection. Therefore, even in our grief we have an unshakable hope that death does not have the final word.
• Fallen Condition 3: Our grief when responding to death reveals that deep down we recognize that things are not the way they are supposed to be
• Gospel Solution 3: Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has inaugurated the new creation, which will culminate one day in a new heaven and new earth where there will no longer be any curse or death.
• Fallen Condition 4: We become discouraged when we contemplate the delay in Christ's return
• Gospel Solution 4: Because God was faithful to his promises in sending his Son in the fullness of time to pay for our sin during his first coming, we can be confident that God will once again send his Son back to consummate his purposes for his people.
• Fallen Condition 5: We live our lives with little or no thought of the imminence of Christ's return.
• Gospel Solution 5: When we behold the beauty of Christ our longing for his return will grow and begin to shape how we live.

Hopefully that is enough of a taste to give you an idea of how this works. But essential to this process is a growing grasp of the gospel in all its richness. There is so substitute for reading and reflecting on Scripture itself. But a wonderful tool that will help you to do this is the book pictured to the left: A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God's Love by Milton Vincent. Vincent does a wonderful job of not only summarizing different aspects of the gospel, but also explaining how those different aspects have practical, everyday life implications for the way that we think, feel, speak and act.



In our next post, we will look at what I refer to as the four aspects of application.

How A Gospel-Centered Church Responds to False Teachers (Titus 1:10-16)

This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at my home church on this very subject. You can listen to the sermon here.

Application: Pressing the Text upon the Heart (Part 3)

Two of the most important things that Scripture does are show us who God is and show us who we as human beings are. This is simply another way of getting at what John Calvin wrote long ago:

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. (Institutes 1.1.1)

In my previous post, I focused on the transforming power of seeing Christ as he is revealed in Scripture. Today we will look at seeing our fallenness in the pages of Scripture. The term we will use is "fallen condition", which Bryan Chapell defines this way:

The Fallen Condition Focus (FCF) is the mutual human condition that contemporary believers share with those to or about whom the text was written that requires the grace of the passage for God's people to glorify and enjoy him (Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, 90).

As a means of expanding on this concept here are some questions I have found helpful in prompting my own thinking: (1) What sinful tendencies, habits, thoughts, patterns of behavior, feelings, beliefs are explicitly stated in the text or reasonably implied by the text? (2) What evidence of the effects of the Fall are explicitly stated in the text or reasonably implied by the text that need the redemptive work of God? (3) What God-given human longings that are warped by sin are explicitly stated in the text or reasonably implied by the text that need the redemptive work of God?

In most cases a passage has multiple fallen conditions. Let's take as an example 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Here are just a few of the possible Fallen Conditions that emerge from this passage:

• Our ignorance about what happens to fellow believers when they die leads to sinful grief
• When we lose sight of the hope that we as believers have in Christ, we grieve as those who have no hope (i.e. we grieve like unbelievers who have no hope)
• Our grief when responding to death reveals that deep down we recognize that things are not the way they are supposed to be
• We become discouraged when we contemplate the delay in Christ's return
• We live our lives with little or no thought of the imminence of Christ's return

Notice, by the way, that some fallen conditions are not inherently sinful. For example, this text is not saying that it is sinful to grieve at someone's death. Jesus himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus even though he knew he would raise him from the dead in a matter of minutes (John 11:35). The point here in 1 Thess 4:13-18 is that grieving as if we have no hope is sinful.

At this point, I then want to ask myself how I personally see these different Fallen Conditions manifest themselves in my life:

• It is only when someone I know dies that I am reminded that death is an intruder into God's creation
• Because it has now been almost 2,000 years since Christ promised to return, I can be discouraged into thinking Christ's return will not happen in my lifetime
• Because my life is usually so comfortable here in this fallen world, I find it easy to go significant periods of time without thinking about the return of Christ.

Notice that I have tried to be specific rather than general. The more specific you are able to be, the more targeted you can be in addressing the fallen condition with the gospel.

In our next post, I will consider how to apply the gospel to the fallen conditions that we discover in the text and see at work in our lives.