“The One who speaks in Holy Scripture always issues the lordly summons: ‘Follow me.’ Understanding the Bible is never simply a matter of following its words. Understanding the Bible is ultimately a matter of following the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6).
Because application always emerges as a response to the triune Lord of the covenant, application requires us to ask:
- Who is God according to this text and what does he promise to be for us as “our God” (i.e., the God of the covenant)?
- What has God done in the past and what does he promise to do in the future?
Having addressed these questions, we may ask:
- What is the requisite response to God and to his covenantal actions?
- What negative examples of covenant infidelity does this text exhibit (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1–11; Heb. 3:16–4:10)?
- What positive examples does it give us to follow (cf. Rom. 4:1–12; Heb. 11)?
- And how do we help each other get there (cf. Heb. 3:13; 12:15)?
As an aspect of our ongoing conversion to Jesus’ lordly summons in the scriptures, application involves considering what a given text requires of the whole person.
How does the text inform, encourage, and console our faith, hope, and love in the various dimensions of those virtues (cognitive, volitional, affective, and active)?
- What thoughts, attitudes, and actions does our text require us to “put off”?
- What thoughts, attitudes, and actions does our text require us to “put on” (Rom. 13:12–14; Eph. 4:21–24)?
Application involves considering what our text requires of all people in general (e.g., repentance, faith, endurance, etc.) and also what it requires only of some people in particular (e.g., believers and unbelievers, the teachable and the stubborn, men and women, married and single, husbands and wives, parents and children, ministers and congregants, young and old, rich and poor, etc.).
Furthermore, application requires us to consider how a given text proclaims Christ, presenting him both as the guarantor of all that God is for us and as the one through whom God grants all that he requires.
There is no true application of Holy Scripture apart from a living embrace of the Christ freely offered to us in the gospel. Through Holy Scripture, God communicates Christ to us. In application, we receive him and respond to him.
For this reason, one of the most fitting corporate modes of scriptural application is the sacraments. Through the sacraments, Christ visibly and personally communicates himself and all his benefits to those who by faith receive them.
And, through the sacraments, faithful recipients express their gratitude to God and extend their witness to the world. The community that with the Word faithfully receives the water, the wine, and the bread will be a community that renders glory to God and that reveals the gospel to the world.
The ultimate end of application is adoration. As John Webster states, the exercise of exegetical reason brings us “to apprehend, cleave to, and obey God—to ‘contemplate’ in the sense of intelligent adoration.”
“My soul keeps your testimonies; I love them exceedingly” (Ps. 119:167). The God who knows and loves himself makes himself known to us in Holy Scripture that we might know and love him as well (Jn 17:3).
To this end, application invokes the Spirit’s presence, who sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts (Rom. 5:5) and who sanctifies our self-offering to God (Rom. 12:1–2; 15:16): “Let my soul live and praise you, and let your rules help me” (Ps. 119:175).”
–Scott R. Swain, Trinity, Revelation, and Reading: A Theological Introduction to the Bible and Its Interpretation (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 134-136.
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