Shining Light on the Main Application--Twisters Series

Introduction

            Certain things in life can suffer from being overshadowed. For example, certain plants and grasses need direct sunlight in order to thrive. If they are overshadowed by other things, they suffer because of it. Or, when a family has a child with significant special needs, other children in the family can feel like their needs are overshadowed and somewhat overlooked. That is one challenge that can come along in a situation like that.

            In the world of Bible study, Scriptural lessons can sometimes suffer when their primary application to our lives is overshadowed by a secondary application. Applications can sometimes take on a life of their own, and when they do, they may grow to overshadow the main lesson that we should take from the passage.

            Today, we’re going to take a look at 3 passages that have a secondary application that has grown to overshadow the primary application. Its not that we’ve necessarily misunderstood these verses—rather, we’ve just allowed the spotlight to shift a bit away from where it should truly be fixed. Let’s dive into these verses and I’ll show you what I mean.

1 Corinthians 6:19

            In this verse, we have the well-known statement, “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you.” Frequently, when this statement comes up, its in the context of a discussion about diet and exercise. Since our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, we say, then we need to take good care of them and do what we can to maintain our health.

            That encouragement is certainly true, and it’s a fine application of this verse, but would you be surprised to learn that diet and exercise weren’t the main thing on Paul’s mind? He had a rather different concern that led him to pen these words [READ 6:18-20].

            You can see that Paul’s main concern was with our sexual behavior. That area of life is the first place to which we need to apply this idea. The danger here is that by placing more emphasis on a secondary application, we might end up spending more time thinking about how to avoid saturated fat than how to avoid sexual sin! We might have a detailed plan to get a flat stomach, but no plan for remaining sexually pure. Such an oversight would be terribly negligent in light of the main point of this passage.

1 Corinthians 10:31

            This well-known verse states, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” The point of this verse is clear enough—whatever you do in life should be done for the glory of God. But have you ever stopped to ask, “Why did Paul mention eating and drinking?” Why did he choose to mention those activities? And just how do you drink something to the glory of God?

            I asked that question once to an audience of teenagers, and you could just see the gears in one boy’s mind come grinding to a halt! He had never thought about that question before, but now that he’d heard it, he couldn’t get past it.

            It turns out that Paul had been discussing eating and drinking in the context of this verse, which is why he chose to highlight those activities in this command. You may remember that last week, I described how questions about food and drink were a very sticky subject in the early church as Jewish believers and non-Jewish believers were trying to come together as followers of Christ. In this passage, Paul was encouraging the Corinthians to put their own personal freedom on the backburner in order to promote God’s glory in every context [READ 10:23-33].

            We can see from the context, then, that Paul’s command wasn’t simply to glorify God. Rather, it was to choose to glorify God rather than choosing something else—namely, choosing to flaunt our personal freedom in Christ.

            The danger in this case is that we might become very faithful in small matters, but unfaithful in more important matters. You might perform a volunteer cleaning job here at church with all your might, but meanwhile, your relationships are strained because you’re very inconsiderate of others in the way you make decisions. It’s the same danger about which Jesus warned the Pharisees when he said, “you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others (Matthew 23:23).”

Philippians 4:8

            This verse is often said to be a helpful guide to follow when you make entertainment choices—when you’re deciding what to watch on TV, for example. And it certainly is! If you follow this list as a guide, you’ll make some pretty good choices in that area.

            There’s only one problem with that application—it certainly couldn’t have been the application that Paul had in mind, since TV’s didn’t exist back then! Let’s see what his concerns were in the context [READ Phil 4:1-9].

            From the context, we can see that Paul’s main desires were for the Philippians to trade anxiety for joy, and that they could live in peace with each other. The main application of verse 8, then, would be along those lines. By focusing on thoughts of this kind rather than their worries or fears, the Philippians could enjoy peace of mind and know joy in their lives. They could also find peace with each other to be much more attainable if they would think about each other along these lines.

Arriving at the Primary Application

            The problem we’ve seen in all of these examples is that the main or primary application of the verse has been overshadowed by a secondary application—an application that may be true and good, but that might nevertheless take the spotlight away from the primary application.

            So when we’re studying a passage, how do we arrive at the primary application? How do we come to know the main thing that the Lord wants us to do? The essence of the process is this—after we’ve understood the application for the original readers, we then want to extract a universal principle from that application, which we can then apply to our own lives. Let’s look at the steps of this process in a bit more detail.

1. Determine what the author wanted the original readers to do

            This step is the most important step in the whole process because it sets the trajectory for everything else that follows. This step is like putting an address into your GPS. If you enter the address incorrectly, it doesn’t matter how closely you follow the turn-by-turn directions—you’re going to end up in the wrong place, because you made a mistake in the very first step.

            Even though this step is the most important one, it is the step that we so often rush through. After all, our main concern is our own lives, right? We’re not as concerned about people who lived so long ago. But we cannot ignore or neglect this step if we want to get it right.

2. Broaden the original application into a principle

            At this point, we can now look beyond the application for the original readers to the principle on which that application was based. Why did the original author want them to do that specific thing? What larger principle is at work?

3. Look for points of contact with your own life

            Once you’ve deciphered the principle behind the original application, then you’re ready to apply that principle to your own life. And you can do so with great confidence that you’ve gotten it right!

A Test Case—Philippians 4:2-3

            Let me walk you through this process using some verses that we just read—Philippians 4:2-3. These verses are helpful to use for this exercise because as Paul writes them, he’s referring to a very specific situation involving some very specific people. Nevertheless, we can use this process to discern an application for ourselves today. Let’s read these verses again to jog our memories [READ Phil 4:2-3].

So how do we use this process with these verses? Let me lay out the steps again, and we’ll talk through it.

1. Determine what the author wanted the original readers to do

            For this step, I would encourage you to write out the original application in a statement like this: “Paul wants Euodia and Syntyche to live in peace with one another, and he wants the ‘true companion’ to help them.” Its helpful to name any people who are named in the verses because it keeps our thinking back in that time, which helps us avoid rushing forward too quickly.

2. Broaden the original application into a principle

            What we then want to do with our application statement is take any words that are highly specific and replace them with words that are more general. This step will move us toward the underlying principle behind the application. In this case, we will end up with a statement like this: “God wants believers to live in peace with one another and He wants other believers to help them.”

            This application is now general enough to allow us to apply it to any context. It is just as applicable today as it was back then, and its applicable right now in any culture or country or setting. With this kind of flexibility, then, we can apply the principle to our own lives.

3. Look for points of contact with your own life

            Now that we have our general principle in mind, we can look at how this principle should play out in our own lives. Be as specific as possible when you assess your life! With this principle, rather than remind myself to live at peace with believers in general, I should consider if I specific relationships where the peace has been broken. So I can write out the statement like this: “God wants me to live at peace with Brother Bob and He wants me to be willing to receive help in doing this.” Or in this case, we might also think of situations in which we have a real opportunity to help others live at peace. In that case, we might write the statement like this: “God wants my siblings to live in peace, and he wants me to help them do this.”

            So now we have a very specific way to apply these verses to our own lives. We can be very confident that it is based on the same principle that Paul was drawing on way back then in order to give his instructions. With that confidence to spur us on, we will be well-positioned to keep the main application in the spotlight.

"PEACE-ing Together a Decision? Colossians 3:15--Twisters Series

Introduction

            I imagine we’ve all done some pretty silly things in our lives as we’ve sought guidance from God about our decisions. I can remember using some rather silly ways to ask God whether I should ask out girls when I was in 5^th grade (which is WAY too young, as I see it now!). When I was thinking about asking a girl to be my girlfriend, I wanted to get some guidance from God—because that’s a huge decision in 5^th grade! You might spend the next two weeks of your life dating this girl, so you don’t want to mess up that decision!

            Normally, as I would prepare to call the girl, I would say something to myself like, “Okay, if someone answers the phone after the 3^rd ring, I’ll take that as a sign that I’m supposed to ask her out. If the phone keeps ringing for a 4^th ring, I’ll just hang up, because that’s my sign that I’m not supposed to ask her out.”

            Now don’t laugh too hard at me—you know you’ve done things like that, too! We all want guidance from the Lord about our decisions. But one thing’s for certain—we better be careful in how we go about it. We don’t want to seek guidance from God through some method that He never intended to use for that purpose. Otherwise, we may end up making a poor decision, yet all the while we’ll be thinking that God told us to do it!

            Today, we’re going to take a look at a statement from Scripture that often comes up in the context of decision making. It comes from Colossians 3:15, and it says, “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”

A Common Interpretation

            A fairly common interpretation of this verse relates it to the process of decision making, and it argues that a sense of inner peace is the defining influence that God uses to lead us in making decisions. The idea is that as you consider your options, God will give you a remarkable sense of peace about the option that He wants you choose. That feeling of peace is thus seen as His “seal of approval” on the choice that He wants you to make.

            This interpretation puts a lot of weight on the word picture that is painted by the verb “rule.” In the original Greek wording behind this translation, the verb used is the word for serving as a judge or an umpire at a sporting event. If we could paraphrase this statement then, we might say, “let the peace of Christ be the umpire (or referee) in your hearts.”

            Now, the referee in a sporting event is, of course, the one who determines if a player commits a foul or if he’s stepped out of bounds or broken a rule. In a sport like figure skating, the judges are the ones who determine who wins. They look over all the details of each performance, and then they decide who gets the gold.

            When this metaphor is applied to decision making, the “peace of Christ”—or a sense of inner peace—is said to act in this role of a judge. As you consider all the details of each option, it is said that you should choose the option about which you feel the greatest peace, because that feeling is said to be God’s way of showing you which choice to make.

But is this phrase “the peace of Christ” talking about a remarkable sense of inner peace? Is this whole phrase even talking about making decisions concerning things like a job offer or a move to a new town? Let’s take a closer look at the context to see what this statement means.

The Correct Interpretation

            In Colossians 2, we discover that this congregation was apparently divided over questions of Christian practice. Was it okay to eat certain foods or drink certain drinks, or should they avoid them? Were they required to worship on a certain day, or was there more freedom in this matter?

            These questions were very common in the early church, because the Holy Spirit was merging together two very different groups of people—Jews and non-Jews, or Gentiles. The Jewish people had very distinct lifestyle traditions based on the Law of Moses that dated back over 1,000 years. The various non-Jewish people in all of these cities also had their own traditions, so as you can imagine, as these people started to join together through their shared faith in Jesus, there was bound to be a clash of cultures—and we read about that quite often in the New Testament.

            Now again, in Colossians 2, we read that some people in the church were looking down on others who didn’t hold the same opinions as they did about some of these lifestyle questions. So Paul tells them, in a very godly, mature sort of way, to knock it off! He reminds them that their union with Christ by faith is far more important than regulations about things like food and drink that perish as they are used (to use Paul’s language from 2:20-22).

            He then encourages them instead to focus on the attitudes and actions that will foster unity among them. Let’s read a bit of this, starting at 3:12 [READ 3:12-17].

            From this context, we can see that when Paul talks about peace in v. 15, he’s not talking about a sense of inner peace in your heart—he’s talking about the peace that they should have in their relationships with each other. When he says, “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,” I believe he’s saying that they should prioritize peace with each other over their personal opinions on lifestyle questions. Rather than berate others who thought differently about matters of food and drink and when to worship, they were to befriend them as fellow Christians.

            So rather than saying that we should allow inner peace to guide the way when we’re trying to decide who to date, Paul is saying that our unity in Christ should lead us to live at peace with other Christians.

What’s the Danger?

            So what’s the danger of embracing the misinterpretation of this verse? To put it simply, we could end up using a poor or even unbiblical process of decision making, and yet think we are actually following God’s will! That misunderstanding could lead to tragic decisions.

            Perhaps you’ve known a Christian young person in your life who has chosen to marry an unbeliever, and their rationale was, “Why would God give me such a peace about this if its wrong?” Or maybe you’ve known someone who has walked away from their marriage during a difficult time, and in explaining their actions, they simply said, “Doesn’t God want us to be happy? This marriage simply doesn’t make me happy anymore.”

            But I imagine the more likely danger for most of us is failing to obey a biblical command because it requires something unpleasant, and we feel unsettled because of that unpleasantness. So instead of obeying the command, we fall back on whatever makes us feel more at ease. We can find ourselves in that situation quite often—when we need to ask someone to forgive us for a sin, when we need to have a difficult conversation with someone whose sin is hurting themselves and others, when we are called to show kindness to someone who is not kind to us, when we consider an extraordinary act of generosity that will require us to make a personal sacrifice.

            In all of those situations, we’re likely to feel very unsettled about the task at hand. I don’t know anyone who feels totally at peace when they have to ask someone to forgive them! And yet, in those situations, we have to push through our feelings in order to do what’s right.

            Now, when we’re faced with a decision, should we recklessly go forward with a certain course of action even if we aren’t at peace about it? No—of course not! We should certainly ask ourselves why we feel uneasy about a certain choice or a certain opportunity. There is some truth to what we call a “hunch” or a “gut feeling.” Life experience can teach us that certain choices probably aren’t going to work out well, even if we can’t explain specifically why we feel that way.

            The warning that I’m trying to give you today is to avoid elevating a feeling of peace from simply being a factor in your decision to being the factor in your decision—the factor that trumps all others. When you’re faced with a decision, you should consider your feelings about it along with any Scriptural commands on the issue, and advice that you should solicit from mature believers. We just simply want to avoid letting our feelings override the wise council of God and others.

Interpretive Error

            So where did we go wrong to arrive at the wrong interpretation of this verse? Essentially, by taking this statement out of context. We’ve seen this error before in this series, haven’t we? And we’ll see it again, because this error is the cardinal sin of Bible study. It is the Bible study equivalent of leaving your starting pitcher in the game to face the Royals in the 9^th inning! It will come back to haunt you every time!

            When you take a biblical statement out of its context, you lose the resources of the context to help you answer the questions you have about the statement. When that happens, you’re most likely then going to supply answers for your questions from some other context—maybe your own personal opinions, maybe the popular thinking of your culture. It could come from anywhere, because you’ve lost the controlling influence of the original context.

            Context is to a statement what rails are to a train. It is not at all likely that a train will veer off toward the right if the rails are veering off toward the left. The rails guide the train and keeping it pointed in the right direction.

            Likewise, it is much less likely that you’ll misinterpret a verse if you read it in its context. The context will keep you pointed in the right direction, so as long as there isn’t some other interpretive malfunction along the way.

            Last week, we received an e-mail update from Brad and Maddie Fox, our missionaries in Alaska. An 11-year-old girl that they’ve been ministering to has recently committed to read through the Bible. Her name is Elizabeth, and her comment about her decision was this: “Is there a better way to understand the Bible than to read it all?” She’s on to something, isn’t she? There is no better way to understand the Bible than to just keep reading more of it, and more of it, and more of it! Don’t just pick out small phrases here and there—read it in large servings, saturate your mind with it. As you fill your mind with the Word of God, your understanding of it will grow accordingly.