I love purpose statements. I love them because I really don’t like guessing about someone’s motivation. It’s an uncomfortable place to be in. If I’m reading something someone wrote or listing to someone give a talk, I don’t want to be left wondering why they wrote what they wrote or said the things they said. I think this is partly why I like John’s gospel so much.
As the apostle John was drawing his gospel to a close, he thought it would be a good idea to make clear why he wrote it in the first place—to remove the mystery, if there was any. To do that he wrote that, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31, NIV). With that statement, you and I don’t have to wonder or guess about his purpose. John wrote what he wrote so that you and I might believe in Jesus (or continue to believe—there’s some debate about that, but we don’t need to get into it here) and, through believing in Jesus, experience real life.
In other words, what John did with his gospel is to give an opportunity for everyone who reads it to respond to what he wrote. I think that although John is probably the clearest of his fellow biblical authors about his purpose, his purpose is not unique to him. I would guess that if we were able to ask any of the biblical authors why they wrote what they wrote, their answer would be that those who read what they wrote would respond in one way or another to what they’ve read. It’s the same purpose I have in writing what I’m writing here. I want you to respond to it; I don’t want it to be wasted time.
Throughout the church world the language that is often used in relation to what I’m talking about here is application. Most books on Bible reading or Bible study guides will talk about applying the text to our lives in order for it to have any meaning. And I think they’re partly right. If all we ever read the Bible for is to gain knowledge then we’re missing the point, because knowledge alone puffs up (1 Corinthians 8:1, NIV). However, I think talking about application for all biblical texts sets us up for confusion and frustration, because not all biblical texts are equally applicable to us. To be sure, there are plenty that apply directly to us, but there are some—quite a few, actually—that are impossible for us to be able to directly apply to our lives.
Consider this passage from Leviticus 4 as an example of a text that is impossible for us to apply to our lives today: “If the whole Israelite community sins unintentionally and does what is forbidden in any of the Lord’s commands, even though the community is unaware of the matter, when they realize their guilt and the sin they committed becomes known, the assembly must bring a young bull as a sin offering and present it before the tent of meeting. The elders of the community are to lay their hands on the bull’s head before the Lord, and the bull shall be slaughtered before the Lord. Then the anointed priest is to take some of the bull’s blood into the tent of meeting. He shall dip his finger into the blood and sprinkle it before the Lord seven times in front of the curtain. He is to put some of the blood on the horns of the altar that is before the Lord in the tent of meeting. The rest of the blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He shall remove all the fat from it and burn it on the altar, and do with this bull just as he did with the bull for the sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for the community, and they will be forgiven. Then he shall take the bull outside the camp and burn it as he burned the first bull. This is the sin offering for the community.” (Leviticus 4:13-21, NIV)
Right off the bat, it’s clear that this section of Scripture was written to a particular people during a particular time. That people and that time being the whole ancient Israelite community following their exodus from Egypt. You and I aren’t those people and we are not in that time. So if application was our goal in reading this passage, how would anyone today be able to apply it? The short answer is, no one today could appropriately apply it, so why would we ever make application the main goal of reading all the time? This is why I have found it helpful to talk about responding, instead. I think there are plenty of places throughout the Bible where direct application is right and necessary, but the direct application is a fruit of a proper response; application doesn’t arrive on its own.
Even though we are not able to directly apply Leviticus 4:13-21, we are fully capable of responding to it. Our response to that text might be something like, recognizing what God was doing with the ancient Israelite community in how he was being up front about unintentional sin, giving them clear instructions for how to deal with unintentional sin, and how what Jesus did on the world’s behalf in relation to sin somehow relates to what Moses was talking about way back then. I think that’s an appropriate response to Leviticus 4 even though application was never a possibility. And yet there was still a purpose for us with that portion of Scripture—we can still benefit from reading and responding to a section of the Bible that has no direct application to us.
This idea of not being able to apply a text, but still being able to respond to it is not unique to the Old Testament. In fact, we run into the same situation with one of the most famous sentences in all the Bible from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1, NIV). Here we have John reaching back as far as he can into the past and telling his readers what it was like back then. In particular, telling his readers about the Word and his relation to God. How would you apply this text to your life? Is there something you and I are being called to do from this text? I don’t think there’s any direct application for us. There’s nothing in the text for us to do, but that doesn’t mean the text has no purpose for us, because we are still able to respond to it. Our response, though is not by way of application but by way of stirring our imagination in wrestling with the reality of who God was and is. John 1:1 serves us today by giving us something solid to grab hold of, something true about who God was and is, and it’s okay that the text is directly calling us to do anything.
Of course, though, there are plenty of places in Scripture where our response will be made evident by the way we apply the text to our lives. Think of Galatians 5 and Paul’s description of what life in the Spirit is like: “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” (Galatians 5:13-15, NIV) We would be fooling ourselves if we thought there was no direct application for us today from this passage. This is not like what we saw in John 1 or Leviticus 4. This text applies directly to us if we respond to it appropriately. Our response ought to be one of first reflection of our own lives, which includes a comparison to what Paul described, then adjustments in our lives where they’re appropriate. Paul is giving us instruction for life and if all we ever saw it for was simply something to consider as true without any direct application then we would missing out on his intention.
This way of reading the Bible takes effort on our part—serious effort. The Bible is not some cryptic force that can make you do what it wants you to do. In fact, it has no influence over you if you choose not to give it any. This is the surprising thing about God choosing to communicate his intention and will with his people through the writing of the Bible. He knew that words on a page are easy to ignore (the experience with the Mosaic law made that clear), and yet he chose to go this way with it—and for good reason.
Because God gave us a book that requires us to read, understand, and respond to it, it is up to us to decide if we are going to be shaped by God’s words to us. It is up to us if we’re going to take him seriously or not. And this is good. This reveals to us something true about ourselves. So it’s up to you and it’s up to me to decide—on a regular basis—if we are going to take the necessary steps to not only read, then work to understand what we’ve read, but also to respond to what we’ve read and understood. This is the life of a Bible-reader.