Application – Part One: Doers of the Word
We have been discussing “How to Read the Bible” for several weeks at this point. If you have followed the process so far, then you have learned to observe the text, mining the passage for all of its important minerals. Then you have begun interpreting the text by asking and answering the crucial questions from those observations. These two steps are the foundation of reading the Bible as it is meant to be read. But if we stop there, we haven’t really read the Bible for all it is worth. If we stop at interpretation, it would be like buying a new vacuum, opening up the box, inspecting the parts, putting everything together, but then setting it aside in the corner and never actually vacuuming.
The last step of Bible reading, the step in which the Spirit uses the Word to change us, is application. Application means taking the meaning of a passage, the point the author is making, and applying that point to our lives so that unbelievers find salvation and believers become more like Christ. Today, we will not spend our time on actually applying the text (Lord willing, that will come); rather, we need to drive home why this is so important. Listen to the words of James in James 1:21,
“Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls…”
James has big expectations for the work of the Word on the hearts of believers. If they will receive God’s Word with meekness (a gentle and lowly spirit), God uses His word to save souls and to grow believers in holiness. So… what does it look like to receive with meekness the implanted word? James goes on in verses 22-25:
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
Receiving the word with meekness means hearing the word and then doing the word; that is, to find true blessing in our bible reading means applying the word to our lives. The word holds up a mirror to us. It exposes our hearts, our desires, our expectations, our beliefs, and it calls us to change by the power of the Holy Spirit. If we look into the mirror, walk away, and forget what we look like, we have missed the point of the mirror. If we read the word, but do not change as a result, we have not really read the Word.
And notice when Christians should be doers of the word: “the one who looks into the perfect law… and perseveres…” We are to persevere in doing what God’s word says. That means we are always applying the Word over and over again, allowing God to change our desires, beliefs, choices, and actions until we are called home or Christ returns to make all things new.
I pray we would be doers of the Word, and not hearers only.
Pastor Mark