Right Application of the Word of God

by | Posted April 20th at 2:16am

I testify to everyone who hears the words of prophecy in this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. (Revelation 22: 18-19)

Many teachers of Scripture like to subject a biblical text to their situations while they believe this is an appropriate method.

A teacher might use Jonah’s poor attitude toward the Ninevites to warn against the evils of prejudice—an issue that the text does not address. Such a forced “relevance” of this application can side-step the actual point of the narrative—God’s compassion toward sinful people.

Mishandling Scripture is an insult to Sovereign God, for it irreverently self-justifies twisted applications about what the Lord seeks to reveal about himself. Teachers of the Word of God should recognize and communicate Scripture’s message as intended. Avoid extracting hidden mysteries or adding text not provided in the Scripture to create an artificial significance — embellishing Scripture like a dramatist or false prophet. 

Teaching Scripture must be Bible-based to allow the text to set the agenda to speak for itself. If we place our programme above that of the scriptural canon, we are twisting Scripture — teaching the story wrongly. Moreover, if what we teach strays from — does not align with the authority of the text, we’ve missed what is most important to God via His inspired prophet. 

For example, it is irrelevant in John 11, regarding the raising of Lazarus, that Jesus had friends. Far more onerous, are those who extremely embellish a biblical text such as this bit, that erroneously presumes that Jesus thought He was guilty, when in fact he was dying for humanity’s sins, for which we all are collectively guilty, past, present and future:

He felt as if He were the guiltiest sinner who ever lived, suffering the condemnation He deserved. 1

No way — Christ died absolutely guiltless and He knew that! For anyone who reads the Word of God daily, the above example of bad teaching is not just absolutely ludicrous — it is a harmful misleading about the union of Christ with the Father as the creator of this universe. (Col 1:16; John 1:3-4; Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6) Jesus knew his mission was to redeem mankind, planned since the foundation of the world. I am convinced that Jesus was lucidly aware of His redemptive mission to the end. He spoke to John about caring for his mother (John 19:27); of the salvation to the thief on the cross, and to His Father just as he died. (Luke 23:43, 46) But this kind of pretentious twisting of scripture still occurs among those of the false prophetic pseudo-teaching realm. Hebrews 9: 26 states Christ’s awareness of his crucifixion before he came to earth: he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Further, he spoke of his authority to die in our stead, and his resurrection powers ahead of the cross in John 10:18: No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded. And to His Father in the garden of Gethsemane, he restated his awareness of his forthcoming torturous death, “your will be done”. (Luke 22:42). And he felt anyone off-track with this was doing the will of Satan (Matthew 16:21-23)

Four common ways a teacher can draw a lesson away from scriptural authority. 2

    1. Illegitimate extrapolation. This occurs when a lesson is improperly expanded from a specific situation to all situations. For example, Exodus 3–4 shows that God commanded Moses to do a hard thing and helped him do it, but the lesson mistaught from the text is that God will also help you do a hard thing—anything of your choosing. In such cases, we pass by the teaching of the text in favour of what we want to say, thus neglecting biblical authority.
    2. Reading between the lines. Teachers or students read between the lines when they analyze the thinking of the characters, speculate on their motives, or fill in details of the plot that the story does not give. When such speculations become the centre of the lesson, the authority of biblical teaching is lost because the teaching is supplied by the reader rather than by the text.
    3. Missing important principle. This occurs when the lesson pinpoints an appropriate message but loses a connection necessary to drive the point home accurately. It is not enough, for instance, to say that God wants us to keep his rules; we must realize that God has given us rules to display his character and to show us how we ought to respond to him in our actions.
    4. Focus on people rather than on God. The Bible is God’s revelation of himself, and its message and teaching are primarily based on what it tells us about God. This is particularly true of narrative (stories). While we tend to observe the people in the stories, we cannot forget that the stories are intended to teach us about God more than about people. The tendency to focus overly on people also shows up in questions such as “Who are the Goliaths in your life?” The text is more interested in “Who is God in your life?” 

I believe it is especially dangerous to misappropriate divine authority. If we present something as God’s Word when it is not, we are misusing God’s name. We present scripture in such a way to reduce the glory ascribed to the Father and Son who work in harmony to redeem humankind.

I believe that students of the Bible or congregants at church, expect their teachers to present the authoritative teaching of God’s Word as given by the inspired authors – not embellished by the teacher with words, not in the Bible. If we substitute this teaching for some idea we think is essential or believe we are inspired equally with the original author, students may not notice the difference. However, we violate the third commandment because we have attributed God’s authority to what is only our idea. We must not substitute what we want to teach at the expense of the biblical author’s message. (Exodus 20:7; Revelation 22:18-19)

1 False teaching noticed in a Facebook Post.

2 Walton, J. H., & Walton, K. E. (2010). The Bible Story Handbook: A Resource for Teaching 175 Stories from the Bible (pp. 23–25). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Article posted by Glen R. Jackman, founder of GraceProclaimed.org

Glen has optimized his eldership role to teach the full scope of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ without boundaries.
You can read his testimony.