By Jeffrey E. Carroll and Randal E. Pelton
While we are confident that whatever God has said is relevant, the pastor's ever-present danger is rendering null and void the gift of God's relevant revelation through misguided application. When we speak of application, we are referring to any time in the sermon when we call for a response of faith-rooted obedience to the theological meaning of the text.
In Haddon Robinson's article "The Heresy of Application" (2005. pp. 306-311), he suggests that errors are most likely to creep into sermons at the level of application. Decrying his own early experience in applying Scripture, Haddon laments, "The awful thing was I said in the name of God what God was not saying" (2005, p. 309). Haddon's concerns are realized in the presence of two dangers that await every preacher at the door of application.
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The first danger involves the preacher moving people away from dependency on the power of God in their attempt to implement Scripture. This occurs anytime we ask people to respond to God apart from faith in Christ. Application is insidious when obedience is called for that is not based first in an affirmation of what God-in-Christ has accomplished for the believer.
Take, for instance, an attempt to apply Ephesians 5:25-33 to the married men in our congregations. If we say, "Husbands, go out and love your wives" without first connecting their obedience to faith in what Christ has done for them, we run the risk of moving those men away from dependency on the power of God in their attempt to implement Scripture. In doing so, we may be unknowingly moving those men toward short-lived moral instruction.
Whereas the first danger involves the preacher moving people away from dependency on the power of God in their attempt to implement Scripture, the second danger involves the preacher moving away from biblical authority. That occurs whenever a pastor instructs people to do what God's Word has not said to do.
This error can take two forms. One form of error is when we tell our people to respond to God's Word in a way that the text of Scripture did not intend. For instance, this often occurs when preaching in Old or New Testament narratives. Often application will stem from following the actions of characters in the story. Take for instance a popular application from Mark 2:1-12, the story of Jesus healing the paralytic who was lowered to Him through the roof by four men: "Bring your unsaved friend in need to Jesus." Although this is good advice and might even be taught in some other Scripture, that's not the point in Mark 2:1-12.
The second form of the error of moving away from biblical authority is when we tell our people to respond in absolute terms to God's Word in a way that is only a possible implication of the biblical truth. Haddon writes, "Too often preachers give to a possible implication all the authority of a necessary implication, which is at the level of obedience. Only with necessary implications can you preach, ‘Thus saith the Lord'" (2005, p. 309).
