Quoting a verse accurately does not guarantee that I have understood what it means. I can repeat the apostle Paul’s words about doing all things through Christ and still make him promise something he was never discussing. Before I decide how a passage applies to me, I need to read what the writer was explaining and be willing to let that explanation correct what I expected to find.
Why Scripture Has Authority Over the Reader
That willingness begins with what I believe about the Bible itself. Near the end of his life, Paul wrote to Timothy, a younger man serving with him in teaching the gospel, about the difficult work before him. Timothy would face false teaching, and he would have to keep teaching truth when people preferred something else. Paul reminded him of the Scriptures he had known from childhood, because those Scriptures could make him wise for salvation through faith in Christ.
Timothy needed more than the ability to speak well or make people like him. He needed to recognize what was true and help others recognize it too. Paul explained why Scripture could equip him for that responsibility:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
The expression given by inspiration of God translates the Greek word theopneustos, which means God-breathed. When we call a speech inspiring, we may only mean that it encouraged us. Paul is saying something about the source of Scripture. God worked through human writers, using their language and circumstances, so that what they wrote was what He intended His people to receive as His Word.
Paul also explains how that Word helps us. Doctrine concerns what we believe and teach. Reproof exposes what is wrong, whether that is an error in our thinking or a sin we have been excusing. Correction helps put right what has been exposed, and instruction in righteousness teaches us how to live in a way that pleases God. The next verse tells us what that teaching is intended to accomplish:
that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
God gave His Word to equip His people for the work He calls them to do. That means a resource that helps me understand Scripture can be useful, but it must remain answerable to Scripture. A commentary does not gain authority over a passage because its author has written several books or holds a position I respect. The explanation still has to agree with what God has said.
Peter also describes how God gave His Word through human beings:
knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
I understand Peter’s reference to private interpretation by looking at the explanation he gives immediately afterward. He says that prophecy did not come by the will of man. The prophets were not inventing religious ideas and then asking God to approve them. They spoke as the Holy Spirit moved them, so the words they gave had their source in Him.
I therefore do not read Peter as telling ordinary believers that they have no right to read and understand the Bible. His explanation directs us to seek the meaning God gave through the writers. If that meaning conflicts with a tradition, a teacher’s opinion, or an interpretation I have defended for years, Scripture must be allowed to correct it. My investment in an argument does not make the argument true. Admitting that I misunderstood a passage can be part of learning to handle it faithfully.
Come Ready to Learn, Then Read the Surrounding Passage
Being ready to receive correction is part of preparing to study. A child can understand enough of Scripture to turn to Christ for salvation, while a person who has taught for years may still struggle to understand a difficult passage. Neither outgrows the need for God’s help. The psalmist expresses that need directly:
Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law.
I can ask God for understanding and then give attention to the words He has provided. Prayer does not remove the need to follow a sentence, look up an unfamiliar expression, or read the paragraph around it. I am asking the Lord to help me understand His Word, including what I might prefer not to hear.
James invites the person who lacks wisdom to ask God, and he also warns against being double-minded. If I ask for God’s direction while intending to reject whatever disrupts my plans, my request is divided from the beginning. Later in the chapter, James describes the willingness with which we should receive the Word:
Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
Receiving it with meekness means that I am willing to learn rather than defend myself at every point. Someone may understand the vocabulary of a complicated theological argument and still refuse a plain command to repent. His knowledge cannot excuse the refusal, because the instruction addresses the way he lives as well as what he knows.
Once we have opened the passage, the first practical step is to give the writer enough room to finish his thought. A verse belongs within a paragraph, and that paragraph belongs within an account or argument in a larger book. Find out who is speaking, whom he is addressing, and what has happened that explains why he is speaking. Read before the verse that caught your attention and continue afterward until you can follow what he is saying.
Small connecting words can help us do that. A therefore points back to a reason the writer has already given. A because often introduces the explanation for a statement. If I skip those connections, I may remember the instruction while misunderstanding why it was given. Repeated words can also help me see the subject being developed, while a change of speaker or a reference to time can show that the account has moved to a different event.
To show you what I mean, let’s return to Paul’s words in Philippians 4:13. Before saying that he can do all things through Christ who strengthens him, Paul describes learning contentment. He has known hunger and plenty, and he has learned to live when his needs are met and when they are not. The strength he is describing enables him to remain faithful through those circumstances.
If I use that verse to guarantee that I will win a competition or succeed in a business venture, I have changed the subject. Paul was explaining how Christ sustained him through need as well as abundance. Reading the surrounding sentences keeps his words from becoming a promise about whichever ambition I happen to have.
The kind of writing also affects how we read it. The word genre simply refers to that kind of writing. A historical account tells us about events, while a psalm may use vivid imagery to express praise or grief. A proverb ordinarily gives a principle of wisdom, so I should not automatically turn it into an unconditional guarantee about every circumstance. A letter addresses particular readers, and prophecy may communicate real events through symbols. Taking Scripture seriously includes recognizing how the writer is speaking.
Helping people understand those words is part of a teacher’s responsibility. Nehemiah 8 describes Jewish people gathering in Jerusalem to hear the Law God had given through Moses. They had returned after their people had been taken away as captives to another land. The men teaching them did more than pronounce the words aloud:
So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.
The people were helped to understand what they heard. I want that to be true when I teach, because holding an audience’s attention is not the same as explaining Scripture. A listener should be able to see how the explanation follows from the passage, and he should be free to examine whether it actually does.
The people who heard Paul in the synagogue at Berea did that when he brought them the gospel. They listened and then checked his teaching against the Scriptures they already had:
These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
They received the message eagerly and then searched the Scriptures to find out whether it was true. Their willingness to listen did not remove their responsibility to examine it. If an apostle’s teaching was examined that way, a modern preacher’s explanation can certainly be examined too. I do not have to assume that a teacher is dishonest in order to check his conclusion. His confidence is not a substitute for the evidence in the passage.
Follow the Words Through to Their Meaning
A practical way to organize our study is to observe what is written, work to understand its meaning, and then consider our response. Those activities are often called observation, interpretation, and application. I find them useful because they keep a personal lesson from being decided before the passage has been understood.
Observation begins with the actual wording. Is the writer giving an instruction, making a promise, or recording what someone else did? A command from God and the words of someone resisting Him do not carry the same authority simply because both are recorded in the Bible. We need to identify who is speaking and follow the reasons and actions the writer supplies. The details in a notebook are useful when they help us see how the passage fits together.
Interpretation asks what the writer meant under God’s guidance as the divine Author. The term exegesis describes drawing the meaning out of the text. Eisegesis describes reading an idea into it that did not come from the passage. If a verse sounds useful to an argument I want to make, I still have to ask whether the writer was making that argument. Wanting a conclusion does not give me permission to supply it for him.
Application then asks how the meaning should affect us. James explains why our response cannot stop with hearing:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
He compares the person who hears without responding to a man who looks at himself in a mirror, walks away, and forgets what he saw. The man has seen something real, but the observation makes no difference afterward. James warns that we can deceive ourselves by treating exposure to the truth as though it were obedience to the truth.
If a passage exposes a lie I told my employer, underlining the verse has not dealt with the lie. I need to confess what I did, tell the truth, and repair the harm where I can. The application should address the thing God has exposed. A completed worksheet cannot do that for me.
Other passages may correct a mistaken belief or give us confidence in a promise we have struggled to trust. They may also change what we ask God for. We do not have to manufacture a dramatic decision every time we read. We do need to receive what the passage actually teaches and allow our response to grow from that understanding.
Compare Passages Without Losing Their Context
As we study, some questions require us to look at other passages. The God who gave Scripture does not lie or contradict Himself, so His teaching in one place helps us consider what He is saying in another. That does not mean every verse is equally easy to understand. Peter acknowledges that some things in Paul’s letters are difficult, and that acknowledgment should encourage careful work rather than a quick explanation of every problem.
Paul describes the source of the apostolic teaching this way:
These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The apostles’ message depended on the Holy Spirit’s teaching. When we compare the Scriptures He gave, we should expect their teaching to agree. A clearer passage can therefore help us examine an interpretation of a more difficult one. If my explanation requires God to contradict what He plainly says elsewhere, I have a reason to reconsider my explanation.
That comparison still requires attention to each passage’s setting. The same word can be used differently in two books, and the presence of that word alone does not establish a connection. A promise given to Israel under a particular covenant also cannot simply become my private guarantee without considering whom God was addressing and what He promised them. Comparing Scripture requires understanding both passages, not just placing similar phrases beside one another.
Salvation provides an example of why we need to account for the full teaching. Christ died for the whole world, and salvation is received through faith rather than earned through works. God’s offer is genuine and can be rejected, while those who have truly been born again are sealed and kept by Him. I should not discard one of those teachings because it makes another easier to explain. The same care is needed when studying judgment. One image cannot be allowed to overrule clearer descriptions elsewhere simply because it supports the conclusion I began with.
I believe in literal interpretation, and by that I mean reading according to the ordinary grammar, the historical setting, and the kind of language the writer uses. A metaphor should be understood as a metaphor. A historical account should be received as history. Recognizing a symbol in prophecy does not give me permission to erase the real promise or event the symbol communicates.
Genesis presents creation, Adam and Eve, the entrance of sin and death, the Flood, and the genealogies as history. Jesus grounds His teaching about marriage in the creation of man and woman. Paul explains the life we receive through Christ by comparing Him with Adam, through whom sin and death entered. If I turn the earlier events into vague symbols to satisfy an outside objection, I also change the history on which those later teachings depend.
Historical events can also anticipate what God will do later. We call that typology. The earlier person, event, or institution is real, and it also points ahead within God’s plan. At the first Passover, Israelite households killed a lamb and put its blood on their doorposts, and God spared those households when He judged Egypt. When Paul calls Christ our Passover in 1 Corinthians 5:7, he connects that earlier deliverance with the sacrifice of Jesus. Hebrews also explains how Israel’s tabernacle, the portable sanctuary where the priests served, pointed ahead to Christ’s priestly work. Those connections allow us to see more of God’s purpose without making the original events imaginary.
Jesus said that Jonah’s three days in the belly of the great fish pointed ahead to His own three days in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40). Paul also gave an inspired allegorical explanation in Galatians 4, using Abraham’s sons by Hagar, a slave woman, and Sarah, his free wife, to explain bondage and freedom in relation to two covenants. In each case, Scripture itself supplies the connection. I do not have the same authority to assign hidden meanings to every detail that interests me. A connection should be supported by the words and relationships Scripture gives.
That is why a theory about a secret key supposedly missed by Christians for centuries needs careful examination. A new idea can be interesting without being true. Before I accept it, I want to see whether the teacher can explain the wording and context honestly. If the theory depends on ignoring both, its novelty gives me no reason to trust it.
Use Resources to Serve the Reading
A readable Bible translation gives us a place to begin. I use the New King James Version (NKJV) for public English quotations in these studies, with the Hebrew Masoretic Text as the Old Testament textual foundation and the Textus Receptus as the New Testament foundation. The Textus Receptus is a printed Greek text drawn largely from the Byzantine manuscript tradition. It should not be confused with every individual Byzantine manuscript or treated as identical to a modern Majority Text edition.
I believe God has preserved His words for His people. That conviction is why I use the received text, rather than treating Scripture as something finally recovered through modern critical reconstruction. It does not mean that every printed edition or translator is inspired. A translation must still represent the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek faithfully. The study on the Textus Receptus and received text develops that position further.
Other resources can then help answer the questions that arise as we read. If a New Testament writer quotes an earlier passage, a cross-reference can help us locate it and read its setting. Cross-references can also identify parallel accounts or related teaching. A concordance helps locate occurrences of a word, while a Bible dictionary can explain an unfamiliar person, place, or custom. Those tools are most useful when they answer an actual question from the passage.
A commentary gives us another student’s explanation. It may point out a detail we missed or raise a question we had not considered. I can learn from that work while continuing to judge it by Scripture. The commentary is there to help me understand the passage, and its author does not get to determine what the passage is allowed to say.
Original-language tools can be helpful in a similar way. A lexicon is a dictionary that explains how words in a language are used. An interlinear places the original-language words beside a translation. These resources may help me understand why a translator chose a particular English word, but opening one does not make me proficient in Hebrew or Greek.
If a lexicon gives several possible meanings, I have to consider which one fits the sentence I am reading. I cannot import all of them into a single occurrence. A word’s root also cannot establish a doctrine by itself, because words are understood through their actual use. A claim about grammar needs evidence from the language, even if the person making it sounds certain.
I think a little knowledge can be especially dangerous when it makes me less aware of how much I still need to learn. That is a reason to study the languages responsibly. God gave the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament in Greek, so careful work in those languages can help us understand His words more accurately. Overconfidence about a tool should not make us dismiss the value of learning how to use it well.
Reliable historical and cultural information can also explain something the first readers already understood. But an outside theory must not be allowed to overrule what the passage says. I should apply the same scrutiny to a teacher I respect. He may be exceptionally helpful and still be mistaken about a particular point.
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
That instruction applies to my teaching too. I do not want someone to become so dependent on my explanation that he stops examining Scripture for himself. A teacher should help people become more capable of understanding the Word. If listening to me makes someone unwilling to test what I say, I have not served him as I should.
Understand How the Scriptures Point to Christ
Reading a passage in its immediate setting is necessary, and we also need to understand its place within God’s work of redemption. Luke 24 records the risen Jesus speaking with two disciples walking to Emmaus after His crucifixion. They had hoped He would redeem Israel, and His death had left them downcast. They had also heard the report that His tomb was empty, but they did not yet understand how His suffering and resurrection fulfilled Scripture. He explained the Scriptures that spoke of Him:
And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Later in the chapter, Jesus also directs His disciples to what was written concerning Him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. He helps them understand how His suffering and resurrection agree with what God had already revealed. We can follow those connections because Scripture gives us the reason to make them.
The Law shows us God’s holiness and exposes our sin. The sacrifices teach about guilt, sacrificial blood, and the need for a substitute. The prophets announce judgment and also promise restoration, while the failure of Israel’s kings helps us see the need for a righteous King. The Psalms give expression to worship, suffering, and hope. Each part contributes within its own setting to what God has made known.
I do not need to force an imagined reference to Jesus into every object or action to keep Christ central. I need to recognize the connections God actually provides. The study on the Word of the Lord in the Old Testament considers how He progressively revealed Himself through those earlier Scriptures.
That revelation leads us to the eternal Son, who became fully man without ceasing to be fully God. Jesus lived without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men tortured Him on the cross, shed His innocent blood, and killed Him. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father and Son remained united in redemption, and Christ’s saving sacrifice was complete through His shed blood and death. He was then buried and rose bodily from the grave.
Christ died for the whole world, and God’s offer of salvation to every person is genuine. People can resist Him, but everyone who repents and believes in Jesus receives forgiveness and everlasting life. The person who is born again becomes a new creation, and the Holy Spirit indwells and seals him. Genuine salvation is eternally secure. That security does not excuse lawlessness, and merely calling myself a Christian without evidence of new life gives me no basis for assurance.
Keeping God’s work of redemption in view also protects us from reducing Scripture to advice about personal success. When David faced Goliath, he was confronting a Philistine warrior who had challenged Israel’s army and defied Israel’s God. His victory concerns God’s deliverance of His people, so it teaches more than the value of being brave. Joseph was sold by his brothers and taken to Egypt, but God later placed him in authority there and used him to preserve their family through a famine. That account reaches far beyond a lesson about waiting for a promotion. Proverbs likewise gives wisdom for life before God, rather than a collection of promises that every ambition will succeed. I need to understand what God is doing in those passages before choosing a lesson because it appeals to me.
Receive the Correction You Find
The person studying Scripture is also being examined by it. I can become so busy preparing an answer for someone else that I avoid what the passage says about my own heart. Hebrews describes how deeply God’s Word reaches:
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Sometimes that Word comforts a person who is frightened or grieving. Sometimes it exposes an excuse he has carefully maintained. If I have decided that my bitterness is justified, a passage about forgiveness may be unwelcome precisely because it speaks to the thing I am protecting. Learning more theological vocabulary will not remove the need to repent. God cares enough to correct the person He also strengthens in suffering.
Obedience needs to remain in its biblical place. Diligent study and improved conduct cannot purchase salvation. We receive salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and good works grow from the new life He gives. His grace should make me willing to receive His instruction, rather than become an explanation for why I can ignore it.
For someone who teaches, that responsibility includes the care taken with the words themselves. Paul tells Timothy:
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
I understand rightly dividing to call for accurate handling of God’s Word. Later in the same chapter, Paul names men who were teaching that the resurrection had already taken place, and he says they were overturning the faith of some. Their error had consequences for the people who believed them. Timothy was responsible to teach faithfully instead of passing on claims that sounded persuasive but departed from the truth.
That warning makes me consider how I explain a passage to someone else. I want to stand before the Lord without being ashamed of the way I handled His words. A clever arrangement of verses or an impressive set of divisions cannot substitute for understanding what He has said.
Begin With a Passage You Can Follow
If you are new to studying the Bible, choose a manageable passage and read enough around it to understand the subject. Pray for help, identify who is speaking and who is listening, and work through the thought in order. When something is unfamiliar, use a reliable resource or ask a mature believer who can help you examine it. There is no reason to be embarrassed about learning.
Compare relevant passages after you understand why they belong together, and consider what the first readers would have understood. With practice, you will become more familiar with the different kinds of writing and more able to follow a difficult argument. Some questions will take sustained work. You do not need every difficult question settled before you can trust and obey what God has already made clear.
Make room for reading whole books as well as examining shorter passages closely. Broad reading introduces us to parts we might otherwise neglect and helps us recognize how an argument develops. Close study gives us time to work through a particular question. We can also trace a subject through several books, provided we keep each passage in its setting. The study on the name of the Lord follows that approach by examining how Scripture uses His name as He makes Himself known.
My Final Thoughts
Faithful Bible study begins by receiving Scripture as God’s Word and giving its writers room to explain what they mean. Reading the context, comparing related passages, and testing the resources we use help us understand what He has said. Those habits should bring us to a response that follows from the passage, with our confidence resting in Jesus Christ and our own opinions remaining subject to correction.
I want to teach Scripture accurately, but I also need to obey the truth I am explaining. If a passage exposes a mistaken belief or a sin I have defended, the purpose of studying has not been fulfilled by finding a way to avoid it. God has given His Word to equip His people. I want to receive the understanding He gives with enough humility to let it change how I think and how I live.