How Should I Apply Scripture?
Before I get to the bulk of my post today, I had the honor of being on the Created Verse podcast back in December. I would love it if you go over and take a listen. It was a great honor to be there, and they were excellent hosts.
An important discipline for Christians is reading the Bible. Psalm 1 tells us that the person who is well-watered with Scripture will be like a tree that is planted by streams of living water. The tree will produce fruit in due season (Ps 1:1–4). Someone who knows how to read the Scripture will produce fruit that is timely. The problem is that knowing how to do this is not always so obvious. When someone opens up to 1 Samuel 17 and reads the story about David conquering Goliath, how should they apply that Scripture? Are they David? What is Goliath in their lives? If they are not David (and they’re not), then is it wrong to find any kind of moral lessons in the passage? In essence, how should Christians seek to apply Scripture to their own lives?
I think the apostle Paul details this in 2 Timothy 3:14–17:
“Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
We might get two general purposes for Bible-reading out of this passage:
The first is that Scripture makes us wise for salvation through faith in Christ. In essence, whenever we read the Bible, we should ask what this particular passage means for my salvation; we should grow skillful in finding the gospel thread in every passage. Returning to the story of David and Goliath, this passage gives us a powerful picture of how one hero might win the victory on behalf of others. In other words, it teaches me that salvation is, in some sense, substitutionary. This seems to cohere well with the fact that Jesus Christ died for sinners (cf. Gal 2:20). Paul tells us that the Scriptures are capable of making me wise for salvation. Every passage in some way reveals my sin and thus shows me my need for my savior. Sometimes a passage will give me a direct prophecy about the Christ who is to come, sometimes a type of the Messiah who will come. Sometimes, it might tell me a truth about God which is most clearly manifest in the life of Christ. Every passage is meant to help us be wise about our need for salvation, specifically, that comes through faith in Christ.
Spurgeon’s line is well known, ““Don’t you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text of Scripture there is a road to Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, now, what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if ever I do find one, I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.””1
The second principle way to apply Scripture is “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Every passage is to be applied in part, that I might be a more faithful Christian. Returning to the idea of David and Goliath, for example, I think one might helpfully learn from this story what it means to trust the Lord in the midst of doubters and danger. I see nothing wrong with drawing a moral lesson from David’s faithfulness against Goliath (Hebrews 11:32 certainly does it!). When we read the Bible, we ought to leave equipped for every good work.
The mistake would be to read the Bible for one of these and not the other. Every time we read the Bible, we ought to be increasingly wisened for our need of salvation through faith in Christ. Every time we read the Bible, we ought to be increasingly equipped for every good work. In other words, in Scripture, we should see two movements:
Law => Gospel
Gospel => Law
My Bible reading should show me where I am woefully inadequate, where I need a savior, where I fall short. My Bible reading should also show me where I need to progress, and grow, and strive for the holiness without which I will not see the Lord (Heb 12:14). When I approach the Scriptures I am at once both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, both the legalist and the libertine. My soul goes astray in both directions at once. Mercifully, however, the Lord meets me on both the left and the right to bring me back to his sacred path.
Read the Bible to get wise for salvation.
Read the Bible to be equipped for every good work.