Lesson 9: The Heart of Interpretation
A Biblical Template
Now let’s talk specifically about how to apply the Bible. This step contains a template for applying the Bible, and the next step describes the biblical balance of application.
The Template
Jesus gave us a template for applying the Bible near the end of Matthew 22. In verses 34–36, an expert in Moses’ law tried to trip Jesus up by asking him to identify the greatest commandment. Jesus answered,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. —Matthew 22:37–39
Then Jesus summarized the entire Old Testament in one stunning sentence:
On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. —Matthew 22:40
The two great commandments are like a coat rack, and everything that the Law requires (and by implication what the New Testament requires) is like coats hanging from it. Every divine command depends on them, and every biblical exhortation can be summarized under them: Love God (vertical application) and love each other (horizontal application).¹
Thus loving God and neighbor is a simple and biblical template on which we can list everything God wants us to do.
Vertical Application
In verse 37 of our passage, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5, where Moses began his summary of the Law by commanding Israel to love God wholeheartedly. Let’s take a closer look at this passage to understand what it means to love God.
First, notice the threefold “all.” According to Leon Morris, Moses repeats this word to emphasize “that love for God should be wholehearted, involving all that we have and all that we are.”²
Secondly, notice the triad of “heart,” “soul,” and “mind.” Each word brings a specific nuance to the command. Nolland writes that “‘[y]our heart’ denotes a response to God from the innermost personal center of one’s being; ‘your life’ ... conjures up the role of the life force that energises us,” and “‘your mind’ signals the inclusion of the thinking and planning processes.”³ Together, these words call us to love God completely.
This is the one essential call of our relationship with God. Therefore, when we seek to apply any part of God’s Word, we must aim at loving God by obeying his Word.
Commands: “How does this passage teach me what it means to love God?”
Means: “How does this passage empower me to love God?”
Motivations: “How does this passage motivate me to love God?”
Anchors: “How does this passage anchor my love for God in truths about him?”
Horizontal Application
The Bible is clear: love for God involves love for others. Under this second requirement, the Bible provides at least five spheres in which we love others. We could view these spheres of love as five overlapping circles within the larger circle of love for others (horizontal application).
- Church: God calls us to teach others in song, to give thanks always, and to submit to one other (Eph 5:18–21).
- Family: God calls wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to sacrificially love their wives, after the pattern of Christ and the church. God also calls children to obey their parents, and fathers (and by implication mothers) to bring up their children in godliness (Eph 5:22–6:4).
- Work: If you are an employee, God calls you to work hard as one who ultimately serves Christ. If you are an employer, God calls you to supervise humbly and justly as a co-servant of Christ together with your employees (Eph 6:5–9).
- Government: God calls you to submit to governing authorities, honor them, and pay taxes (Rom 13:1–7; 1 Pet 2:13–17). At the same time, he calls us to live as citizens of his kingdom in a manner worthy of Christ (Mk 12:17; Phil 1:27; 1 Pet 2:9–12).
- Everyone: God calls you to do good to everyone, especially to fellow Christians (Gal 6:10) and to the poor and marginalized (Deut 10:17–18; Gal 2:10; 1 Tim 5:3; Jas 1:27).
This list of five spheres is not absolute. You could certainly add other categories to the list. Nevertheless, these five spheres are biblical categories that should structure your thinking as you apply the Bible to your life. When reading any passage of Scripture, ask yourself, “What does this passage require of me in relation to people in my church, in my family, at my work, in my government, and beyond?”
In what other spheres of love does the Bible call us to apply its teaching?
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Which of these five spheres is the most difficult for you to apply?
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Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.
1 Peter 2:16–17 (NIV)
A Biblical Reminder
Before we leave this step, I want to set up a guardrail to help you avoid a cliff as you test-drive this template.
We cannot ultimately separate love for God from love for neighbor. We find this guardrail in Matthew 22:39. Jesus says that the second command is “like” the first.
What does Jesus mean? He could mean that “this commandment is of equal importance” to the first.⁴ He certainly means “that these two commandments belong together in their claims on humanity.”⁵ What is for sure is that you cannot ultimately separate love for God from love for others.
1 John 4:20 makes this point clearly:
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. —1 John 4:20
Notice the last part of the verse: if you don’t love a Christian brother or sister, you don’t love God!
Thus the two greatest commandments are super-glued together: you cannot truly love another person without loving God, and you cannot love God without loving his image-bearers. As Leon Morris concludes,
Wholehearted love for God means coming in some measure to see other people as God sees them, and all people as the objects of God’s love. Therefore anyone who truly loves God with all his being must and will love others. —Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew in the Pillar New Testament Commentary, 563.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or a sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:16–18 (NIV)