Biblical Authority and the Demonic Rebellion of Contrary Applications

The Lord Jesus once gave a parable about a father who asked each of his two sons to go out and work in the field. The one said that he would but did not go. The other said that he would not but then felt bad and went. He then asked which one did the will of his father and the answer of course was the latter. Merely giving the right answer on a bibical principle wasn't good enough. The son surely knew his father wanted to hear him say "Yes" and so he did so, but God is not appeased with mere affirmations of the right answer. Empty words and promises are for the devil's children. God condemns the first son (which are the Jewish religious leaders in the context). This is because God is not pleased by our confessions alone. We act as though He is appeased if we merely believe biblical principles and repeat them to one another and so we have no need of actually being concerned about showing our submission to Him in our applications of these principles.

The Bible is against racism. The Bible commands us to be sexually pure. The Bible tells us to worship God alone. The Bible tells us to follow Jesus. The Bible tells us to be just. The Bible tells us to be loving. Sin is wrong. 

These are all generic biblical principles upon which most professed Christians would agree. In fact, most would find comfort in calling themselves Christians because they view their belief in biblical principles is the fruit of their conversion. But it isn't. 

You see, we are quite tricksy little hobbitses. We like to have our cake and eat it too when it comes to living worldly but also seeing ourselves as righteous and obedient at the same time. We do this in many ways but the main way we do it is by seeing our righteousness and obedience in terms of the principles we believe as the fruit of our salvation. In other words, if we believe biblical principles it is because we are now God's good and holy people.

Of course, we have been brainwashed by ourselves and others to believe that the application of those principles is subjective and we are not therefore bound to apply them in any particular direction and in any specific way. There is only one interpretation, we say, but a thousand different applications. This is a true statement but it is meant to say that applications of the principle should reach into every part of life and are therefore multiplied in various ways. It is not meant to say that application is subjective or somehow governed by the individual's own experience and not governed by biblical authority.

We can all agree that the Christian should not be a racist and that racism is evil but if the application of that biblical principle is governed by external philosophies of the wicked world and its false understanding of love and justice then it does not matter that I have affirmed the principle if, in practice, I have rejected the biblical authority that should govern its applications by ignoring what the Bible means by justice and love. In other words, the Bible does not just have authority over the principles we believe. It has authority over the applications of those principles.

If I end up, therefore, being unjust by applying a biblical principle like "racism is evil" by utilizing a worldly philosophy like Critical Race Theory, then I have actually undertaken a demonic task and have lived out an evil that undermines a biblical principle and sometimes even the very principle I often seek to apply.

Likewise, if I strive to apply the principle of sexual purity but apply the principle in a way that is governed by the teleology of the sexual revolution, although I see myself as a righteous man for doing so, I will end up practicing a satanic form of sexuality that denies the authority of the Bible that is no better, and often times worse, than those who deny Christ explicitly and reject the principle. 

We can all agree that Christians should be loving but if love means acceptance of what the Bible says is sin then we have misapplied the principle because we have not subjected our applications to biblical authority. 

It is of no use to say we accept biblical authority in the principle only to deny it by treating our applications as free-for-alls governed by our traditions, experience, current cultural practices and trends, etc. This is what it means to praise God with our lips but to have our actual thinking far from Him. Our Christianity merely becomes theoretical in nature and in practice ends up functioning as a license to do what is right in our own eyes. 

This the antinomianism that Jude warns us against. The antinomians were not denying that Christ was Lord with their confessions. They were denying His lordship over their lives in their applications. It was through what they ended up doing, not what they ended up believing that caused Jude to say that they were not saved and instead reserved for eternal darkness (Jude 4). As Paul said, these antinomians profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him (Titus 1:16).

This is the greatest danger for all of us who have come to know the truth and profess it. We tend to think that we are done at this point. We tend to fall back on this as though it is all the fruit we need to show that we follow the Lord. It becomes a sort of ID card that we flash to ourselves and others to verify our faithfulness. Yet, the judgment scenes given to us in Scripture seem to focus on our applications of what is commanded rather than what we believe about what is commanded. 

Surely, submission to the principle is needed first. One must submit himself to the authority of the Scripture in all of its principles before he is able to apply anything. But the concern is that our relativistic tendencies within evangelicalism cause us to default to an unbiblical freedom of application that allows us to reject logical applications of the principles of Scripture that are governed, not by our personal desires, but by the whole counsel of God. 

It is our submission to biblical authority in our applications of biblical principles that displays the lordship of God in our lives and guards us from the false righteousness of the Pharisees. All else is made up of empty words and promises.