Some interpretive mistakes feel harmless. They slip in because the words are warm, the sentiment is beautiful, and we’re craving something comforting from Scripture. But one of the quietest, most widespread errors followers of Jesus make is subtle: we reach for a promise, an encouragement, or a warning that wasn’t written to us, and we use it as if it was.
This isn’t usually done with ill motives. Most of us aren’t plotting to misread a prophet or to smuggle ourselves into a passage addressed to someone else. It’s an unconscious shortcut—one that quietly reshapes our understanding of God in ways that become damaging. Because when we misunderstand who God was speaking to, we eventually misunderstand the God who spoke.
In short, primary application is the applied meaning to the original audience, secondary application is the derived lessons we glean as outside observers—take heed not to switch them!
A Lesson From the Heimer-Schmidts
Here’s a picture that captures the whole thing. Imagine two brothers—John and Jacob—and their father, Jingle. Together, they are the Heimer-Schmidts. After Jingle’s passing, John discovers a box in the attic labeled “LETTERS TO MY SON,” finds a faded page, and reads:
“My son, destined for greatness from the dusk of your homecoming. Notre Dame here we come…”
It hits him deeply. He never knew his father had aspirations for him to attend Notre Dame, nonetheless from his birth. He shares it proudly, comforted and encouraged.
Later he notices a folded corner. Beneath it: “Dear Jacob, …” John feels the ground shift a bit. He approaches Jacob, who smiles gently and says, “That was after my senior homecoming game. Dad said the same thing to me in the car after I caught the winning touchdown.”
And now John is in a moment every Bible reader eventually faces. The letter doesn’t mean his father didn’t love him—nothing in it disproves that. But it does mean this specific letter cannot serve as direct evidence of Jingle’s intentions for him. What John can do is observe something true about his father’s character. A father who cares for Jacob with that kind of pride almost certainly cares for John too. But the letter itself wasn’t addressed to him, and it cannot function as if it were.
A More Helpful Kind of Personal Application
This is the backbone of primary and secondary application. Remember the four parties of Scripture (Author, Recipient, Speaker, and Audience)! Primary application belongs to the original recipients—the ones named in the address line. Secondary application belongs to the observer—you and me—who can learn about God’s heart, God’s ways, God’s commitments, God’s character, but not transplant ourselves into someone else’s moment and claim their promises wholesale.
This is where modern Bible reading goes sideways. We read words spoken to Israel, or to the disciples before the cross, or to specific churches facing specific issues, and we immediately replace the “you” with “me.” The error isn’t in wanting to personalize God’s word for our lives, it’s in the premature personalization of God’s word. The Spirit preserved these texts so we would learn from them, not hijack them.
The three step-process to avoid this conflation:
- Identify who’s named/addressed;
- Identify the historical/contextual moment;
- Then, and only then, identify what carries forward for us as principle.
Commonly Misapplied Scriptures
The clearest example is Jeremiah 29:11. The modern church treats “For I know the plans I have for you…” as if it were God’s individualized blueprint for each believer’s personal journey. It shows up at graduations, on mugs, on pillows, and across Instagram as a guarantee that God has already scripted our individual earthly futures in a tapestry of predestined moments.
But open the envelope properly and the address is unmistakable. Just read the surrounding verses:
“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope […] I will gather you from all the nations […] and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” —Jeremiah 29:10–14 (ESV) [emphasis mine]
This is a national promise given to Israel in Babylonian exile. It is about a specific historical moment, tied to a specific prophecy, fulfilled in a specific chapter of redemptive history. It’s about return from exile—not college majors, job changes, or personal destiny.
And yet it still matters. It reveals God’s patience, His redemptive posture, His refusal to abandon His people. It shows that God’s judgments are never the end of the story. But it cannot function as direct evidence that God is scripting each twist of our personal lives with the same specificity. A beautiful truth about God? Yes. A personalized earthly promise? Not from this text.
Once again, the Heimer-Schmidt analogy rings true. God wrote that promise to Jacob. We are John. We overhear it, we learn from it, but we do not pretend our name stands at the top of the letter.
Less Obvious, But Equally Damaging Examples
This isn’t just an Old Testament problem. One of the most commonly misunderstood examples comes right from Jesus’ own teaching. In Matthew 5:19, He says:
“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
This gets quoted as if Jesus is permanently binding Christians to the Mosaic Law. But before importing this into the church post-Pentecost, we have to place it on the timeline. Look at the envelope:
Jesus spoke these words to Jewish believers living under the Law of Moses. The cross had not happened yet. The resurrection had not happened yet. Pentecost had not happened yet. They were, experientially, still living inside a previous dispensation (if you don’t use ‘dispensation’ language, think: ‘covenant era’). Their covenant obligations were still active. So Jesus spoke to them accordingly.
Recognizing this changes everything. He wasn’t instructing Christians to reinstate kosher laws, festival observances, or purity rituals. He wasn’t binding Gentiles to the Mosaic commandments. He was speaking to people who were still legitimately under the law at that time.
And just a few verses earlier, He says He came to fulfill the law (Matthew 5:17). Not extend its jurisdiction forever, but bring it to completion.
The rest of the New Testament makes that fulfillment impossible to miss.
- Paul says believers “died to the law through the body of Christ” (Romans 7:4).
- We are “not under law but under favor” (Romans 6:14).
- The Spirit leads believers “not under the law” (Galatians 5:18).
- Hebrews describes the old covenant as obsolete, fading, replaced by something better (Hebrews 8:13).
- And we stand before Mount Zion—not Mount Sinai (Hebrews 12:18–24).
Christians are simply not under the Mosaic code.
So if we pluck Matthew 5:19 out of context and apply it straight to ourselves, we end up living a reality meant for Jewish believers before the cross. We accidentally drag ourselves under a burden that Christ lifted completely. We confuse the timeline of redemption, and we live in the wrong chapter.
And Matthew’s intended audience is consistent with this reading. His Gospel is shaped for Jewish believers wrestling with how Jesus fulfills Israel’s story. His repeated “this happened so that it might be fulfilled” phrases are written to readers who needed to see how the Messiah completes the law instead of extending it indefinitely. Matthew isn’t calling Christians into Moses; he’s guiding Jews out of Moses by showing them Christ.
Living in the Right Chapter
This is the whole point of distinguishing primary and secondary application.
- Primary application: Jesus’ words about keeping the commandments were aimed at Jews living under the law before the cross.
- Secondary application: Christians today can learn from His reverence for Scripture, His seriousness about sin, and His devotion to righteousness—but we cannot pretend He was giving us covenantal instructions from a dispensation we never lived in.
If we place ourselves in the wrong spot in the story, we misread everything. We start imagining that Jesus is telling Christians to reinstate Moses when the New Testament insists the opposite. We let a pre-cross instruction override a post-cross reality. We confuse eras, collapse distinctions, and burden ourselves with obligations God never placed upon His church.
And that is precisely why this interpretive principle matters. When we misread the address line on a text, we inevitably misread the God behind it. We start expecting Him to do things He never promised, or to demand things He never commanded. And tragically, we end up missing the clarity and beauty of the promises He has addressed directly to us—the ones written to the church, to the Spirit-indwelt, to the people living after the resurrection.
All of this sharpens Scripture. It keeps every passage in its proper frame so it can do the work God intended. Prevents us from misusing that which was never aimed at us; frees us to savor those things that were. Teaches us not to hijack another’s letter, but to build our faith on what was mailed straight to our own doorstep.
Finding Your Name on the Page
A few days later, John goes back to the attic.
This time, he doesn’t stop at the first stack of letters; he skims through page after page, smiling as he learns more about the memories and milestones his dad shared with Jacob. Halfway down, he finds a cardboard divider with a single word scrawled across it in bold marker: JOHN. Below it lies a second stack, thicker than the first, all beginning the same way: “Dear John…”
He picks up the first page and feels his throat tighten as he reads:
“Never in a million years did I expect to be the father of two sons. I suppose now that the label on this box is misleading. John, you came as a blessed surprise to me late in my life… here’s hoping you read these someday…”
For the first time, he stops trying to live off letters written to his brother and starts reading the ones written to him.
When God wrote to Jacob, we are John. And when we learn to listen that way—honestly, humbly, contextually—Scripture becomes richer, God becomes clearer, and faith becomes steadier. Not because we grabbed promises that weren’t ours, but because we finally began to cherish the ones that were meant for us all along.
(All scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.)
