Application: what it means for us

Hearers and doers

Observation showed us what is in the text, and interpretation asked what it meant to its first readers (the previous lesson). One step remains: what does this word say to me, and to my church, today? That step is application. James compares someone who skips it to a man at a mirror:

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves. For anyone who hears the word but does not carry it out is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and after observing himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

James 1:22-24

Scripture was not written for its first readers alone. "Everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction," says Paul (Romans 15:4), and what happened to Israel in the wilderness was "written down as warnings for us" (1 Corinthians 10:11). All Scripture is given so that God's people may be "fully equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17).

So when you have read a passage, ask: What does it show of God, and of us? How does it connect with what Christ has done? And what does it ask: a promise to believe, a sin to turn from, a command to obey, a prayer or a thanksgiving to offer? As Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart advise in their introduction to reading the Bible, ask first what a text meant then, and only then what it means now Fee and Stuart.

The lawyer's question

In Luke 10 an expert in the law stands up to test Jesus and asks him, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 10:25). Jesus asks him what is written in the Law and how he reads it, and he answers with the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbour. Jesus tells him he is right: do this, and you will live. Then comes a second question:

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:29

John Wesley, who led the Methodist revival in eighteenth-century England, explains the lawyer's motive: "That is, to show he had done this" Wesley. Draw the circle of those you must love tightly enough, and you can say you have loved them all.

Jesus does not define a neighbour; he tells a story. A man is robbed and left half dead. A priest and then a Levite see him and pass by on the other side. "But a Samaritan on a journey came upon him, and when he saw him, he had compassion" (v. 33): he bandages him, takes him to an inn and pays for his care. Matthew Henry, an English minister, reminds us that the Samaritan came from "the nation which the Jews most despised and detested, and would have no dealings with" Matthew Henry.

Then Jesus asks, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" (v. 36). The lawyer had asked whom he must love; Jesus asks who did the loving. The question has been turned around. The lawyer does not even name the Samaritan:

“The one who showed him mercy,” replied the expert in the law. Then Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Luke 10:37

Application stands on meaning in this way. The story is not advice about lonely roads; it answers "who is my neighbor?" by telling us to be a neighbour to whoever needs us, before we ask where the circle ends. One meaning, many applications: visiting a colleague in hospital, helping a newcomer to the country with a form, sitting beside someone no one sits beside.

Beginning from grace

Not every command came to everyone in the same form. Paul writes, "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Romans 16:16). In his world a kiss was a greeting between people close to one another. Many churches keep its meaning, a warm and holy welcome among brothers and sisters in Christ, with a handshake or a bow; some still greet with a kiss. We tell the meaning of a command from the form it took in its time.

Application is not a resolution to be nicer, either. Read the parable only that way, and we are back where the lawyer began, asking what we must do to inherit life. The gospel's order is grace first:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8-10

The Samaritan "had compassion"; the Greek word is splagchnizō. The Gospels use it again and again of Jesus as he sees the crowds, the sick and the grieving (Luke 7:13), and in his parables of the master who forgave a servant's debt and the father who ran to meet his son. Matthew Henry sees it too: "The blessed Jesus had compassion on us" Matthew Henry. Many of the Fathers saw Christ's saving work in every detail of the parable; the essay Why did Jesus speak in parables? traces how the church has read them. One came near to us first; so we go and do likewise. The Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed churches of the European continent says why those saved by grace do good works:

Because Christ, having redeemed us by his blood, renews us also by his holy Spirit after his own image, that with our whole life we may show ourselves thankful to God for his blessing …

Heidelberg Catechism, Q86

Nor is application done alone. Read a passage with others in your church, and you will hear applications you had missed, and be set right when yours drift from the text. And application turns into prayer. On the days you fall short, do not condemn yourself; ask for strength to do what you have heard.

Try it

Open Luke 10 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open Luke and tap chapter 10: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’. ‘Read Luke 10’ opens the text.

Read verses 25 to 37 twice, and write four lines in Notes. What does the passage show of God, of us and of Christ, and what does it ask? For example: ‘the lawyer asks where the circle of love ends’, ‘Jesus asks who was a neighbour’.

Write one application. Begin from the grace you have received, and name one thing you can do this week: ‘Jesus had compassion on me first. This week I will phone my neighbour who lives alone.’ Then pray for it.

Practice