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.
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