How do you gain instruction from the Bible for your life today?

To take a principal from the Bible and allow it to instruct you today is called application. Application is defined as putting something to use. To apply the Bible means to be a doer of the word and not just as hearer, as the book of James instructs us to do.

A few convictions help in this process. The Bible is a book unlike other books with the power to radically change your life! Nothing in the Bible was written by accident; it is all important. The Bible is not merely to be heard or understood, but lived and practiced.With these convictions in mind, perhaps the most important thing we will ever do is discover how to live out and practice what the Bible is teaching!Some passages are very straightforward and need little help with application. "Do not steal". Application could be made helping us to think of stealing in some different ways than we normally do, but all understand what stealing is. Do not steal makes for easy application because it is both specific and makes sense within our culture.

What about Jesus command to love your neighbor as yourself? This command is easy enough to understand within our culture, but how many ways can you say, "I love you" to someone? If this command is to be lived out daily we must make it more specific. How will I love people today? God's word fleshes this command out throughout Scripture. For example there are 52 "one another" commands in the New Testament that help flesh out specifically how to love our neighbors ... greet one another, serve one another, bare with one another, forgive one another, etc. To live out loving our neighbor we must make it specific.

Sometimes the Scripture will already be very specific, but it is speaking of things that are foreign to us culturally. An example of this is Paul’s instructions about eating meat sacrificed to idols in I cor. 8. In Paul’s day a debate arose about if it was wrong to eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol. The meat could be purchased by people at a discounted rate and many believers saw nothing wrong with eating it; since they did not participate in the pagan worship. Other believers thought it was wrong to eat this meat precisely because it was used in the worship of another god. Paul weighs in on the issue and teaches that if a believer whose conscience is offended by eating this meat sees another brother eating it then he may be tempted to eat also. If the weaker brother eats it and his conscious is offended then it is wrong for him. Because whatever we do we should do out of faith and not fear. So Paul’s instruction to those who have no problem eating the meat is: "Don't do it if it causes your weaker brother to stumble".

This passage was used during the 60's to condemn men for wearing their hair long. People would say you don't need to do anything that offends your brothers and the older folks are offended at your long hair. If you loved Jesus and your brothers you would cut your hair they would say. The problem with this application is that when you take a specific principal of Scripture and generalize it to fit life today you must take all of the teaching precisely as it was taught then. Paul’s concern was that weaker brothers might be tempted to engage in activities that their conscious told them was wrong. In this case they would eat out of fear instead of faith. There was no temptation for older people in the 60's to wear their hair longer. The passage was incorrectly applied because those using it only applied half the teaching ... the part about not doing stuff that offended people. In that case the teaching could have been used the other way to say, you who are older should get over people having long hair and not be offended because they are younger in age and possibly in the faith.

A more accurate application of this text in our day would deal with drinking alcohol. There is not a command that says, thou shalt not drink, but there are many warning passages that tell us it is unwise. Obviously it is a divisive issue just like eating idol meat was in Paul’s day. It could be said if a brother is offended in conscious, but sees you who are stronger drinking and is tempted themselves to drink then you have destroyed your weaker brother so that you could drink.So when a passage is general you must make it more specific to live it out and when it is specific and different from your culture you must generalize it, making sure you take all of its teaching into account.

What changes are you making in your life today because of the teaching of the Bible?