When it comes to the task of applying the Bible to everyday life, the first question from most Christians is: "where do I begin?" Many want to know how they can possibly relate the truth of God's Word to areas such as education, art, science, medicine, law and politics.
This question reveals a problem with the brand of Christianity taught in the West for the last several decades. Even believers that have strong spiritual discipline, personal piety, and regular time of family worship have been discipled to only consider Scriptural principles for their private lives, their families, and corporate worship on Sundays.
As one cultural apologist has said, they have been taught to think about Christian things instead of thinking Christianly about everything.
Believers have made the Bible a “church book” instead of seeing it as revelation from God that is binding upon every man, whether or not he professes faith. The failure has been to treat all of life as holy unto the Lord (Psalm 24:1).
Believers have made the Bible a “church book” instead of seeing it as revelation from God that is binding upon every man, whether or not he professes faith.
The public square has come to be dominated by man’s reason as opposed to God’s revelation. Man is held up as the measure of all things. Each person thinks and acts in terms of what seems right in his own eyes without reference to what the Lord has spoken (Judges 21:25).
It should come as no surprise that the fruit of this thinking has led to an increasingly secularized culture that is hostile to the Christian faith. Public institutions once governed by “common sense” are rapidly dissipating because apart from the fear of the Lord all sanity is being lost.
The only remedy for rebuilding the foundations of a crumbling civilization is the recovery of a holistic Christian worldview, informed by the renewed mind.
It is to this condition the inspired Apostle speaks:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. — Romans 12:2
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 2:15-16
The mind of Christ considers all things in relation to Christ and His total Kingship over all created reality. This is a far cry from the modern evangelical understanding that imposes artificial separations between the sacred and the secular, as well as public life and private life.
The only remedy for rebuilding the foundations of a crumbling civilization is the recovery of a holistic Christian worldview, informed by the renewed mind.
If the Church is to impact the world today, she must come to understand that God’s Word has something to say about every subject, whether directly or by necessary inference from its principles.
The inability to grasp this truth accounts for the struggles of ordinary people to live out their faith and apply His Word in the various arenas and tasks He has set before them.
There is no such thing as neutral territory in this world. As Creator, it is the Lord who owns everything and is in the process of redeeming all things purchased by the blood of His Son.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. – Colossians 1:19-20
This historical process of God’s Kingdom brings salvation and restores all that it touches, including man's thinking and reasoning.
Thinking God’s thoughts after him was central to man’s original purpose in the Garden as an image-bearer. He was instructed by His Maker to build, cultivate, tend, and rule over all that the Lord had given him charge (Genesis 1:26-28).
When men come to salvation in Christ they are reconstituted as new creatures and installed in their office as his ambassadors in their respective stations (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
Minds once hostile to God’s Law (Romans 8:7-8) and steeped in worthless thinking (Romans 1:21) have been made, and are in the process of being made new by the ongoing work of sanctification (Ephesians 4:22-24).
In short, those with new affections are trained by divine power to love God with all their minds (Matthew 22:37) and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
The inevitable result of this is that the claims of Christ and His Kingship are pressed upon all men in every sphere of life. This is how the blessing of Gospel transformation spreads over the whole earth.
Rightly ordered minds produce rightly ordered actions that lead to rightly ordered societies.
The call of Scripture to set one’s mind on things above (Colossians 3:5) is not a call to eject from responsibility to earthly affairs, but an exhortation to pattern our thinking in such a way that it shows our obedience to Christ and the totality of His Word in our lives. The warning is against the kind of carnal, lawless thinking that marks the lives of the unregenerate.
Rightly ordered minds produce rightly ordered actions that lead to rightly ordered societies.
The Good News of God is not merely about souls being saved for eternity, but justice being established and wrongs being made right by the work of God's people, whom He has graciously chosen to partner with in the reconciliation of all things to Himself.
A world languishing under the weight of its own futility is in desperate need of those who can think Christianly and apply the only truth that brings liberty to a fallen cosmos.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. – Romans 8:19-21
