Someone can quote every word of a Bible verse correctly and still use it to teach something the passage never said. We have probably all heard that done, and we need to be careful that we aren’t doing it ourselves. Before I ask how a verse applies to my life, I need to understand what the writer was saying. That takes some patience, especially if the passage challenges a belief I have held for years. But if I believe this is God’s Word, I ought to be willing to hear Him out.
God Breathed Out His Word
Near the end of his life, Paul reminded Timothy of the Scriptures he had known from childhood. Timothy would have to confront false teaching and minister to people who didn’t want to hear sound doctrine. A likable personality wouldn’t equip him to recognize error, and telling people what they preferred to hear would only make the problem worse. Paul directed him back to the Word God had given.
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” means more than we usually mean when we describe an inspiring speech. The Greek word theopneustos means God-breathed. Paul is identifying the source of Scripture. God used human writers, with their own vocabulary and circumstances, to write what He intended His people to receive as His Word.
Paul also explains why God gave it. Scripture teaches doctrine, which is what we believe and teach. It reproves us by exposing error and sin, corrects us so we can put things right, and instructs us in righteous living. The next verse completes his thought:
that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
God intends His Word to equip His people for the work He calls them to do. A commentary can help explain a difficult verse, but its author has no authority to overrule what God said. His teaching must be judged by Scripture, just as Timothy’s teaching had to be.
Peter describes how the Holy Spirit worked through the men who gave us Scripture:
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 in light of the explanation he gives immediately afterward: prophecy did not originate in man’s will. He isn’t telling ordinary believers that they have no right to read and understand Scripture. The prophets weren’t inventing religious ideas and asking God to endorse them. They spoke as the Holy Spirit moved them, so we need to seek the meaning God intended through their words.
If Scripture has that authority, I cannot make an exception for my own opinions. Tradition, academic credentials, and a favorite preacher’s reputation cannot settle a question against Scripture. Neither can the fact that I have defended a particular interpretation for a long time. If the passage corrects me, admitting I was mistaken is a more faithful response than devising another argument to protect my pride.
Bring a Humble Heart and Read the Context
Being willing to receive that correction is part of preparing to study. Scripture can teach a child the way of salvation, yet an experienced teacher can still struggle with a difficult passage. Both need God’s help. The psalmist asked for it plainly:
Open my eyes, that I may see Wondrous things from Your law.
We can pray that same prayer and then give careful attention to what we read. Asking God for understanding doesn’t relieve me of the responsibility to follow a sentence or look up an unfamiliar word. I am asking Him to help me understand His Word, including the parts I might be inclined to explain away.
James tells those who lack wisdom to ask God, but he also warns against being double-minded. If I ask for God’s direction while intending to disregard whatever interferes with my plans, I am hardly approaching Him honestly. Later in the chapter, James describes how we should receive His Word:
Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
To receive the Word with meekness, I have to be willing to learn even when I would rather defend myself. Someone may explain a complicated theological argument and still refuse a straightforward command to repent. His knowledge doesn’t excuse the refusal, because God gave that instruction to correct how he lives as well as what he believes.
When we read, we need to give the writer enough room to explain himself. A sentence belongs to a paragraph, and the paragraph develops an argument or describes events within a larger book. Ask who is speaking, who is being addressed, and what prompted the statement. Read what comes before your verse and continue far enough afterward to follow the thought. Sometimes the answer to a difficult question is sitting a few lines above it.
Notice the small connecting words too. A writer’s therefore tells us that his conclusion rests on something he has already explained. If we skip that explanation, we can misunderstand why he is giving the instruction. Repeated words, changes of speaker, and details about time and place can also keep us from misreading what happened.
Philippians 4:13 is a familiar example of what happens when we neglect the surrounding passage. Paul says he can do all things through Christ, but the preceding sentences explain what he means. He has learned contentment while hungry as well as well-fed, in need as well as abundance. Christ strengthens him to remain faithful through those circumstances. If I use that verse to guarantee that I will win a competition or achieve a business ambition, I have made Paul promise something he wasn’t discussing.
We also need to recognize the kind of writing, often called its genre. A historical account reports events, while a psalm may express truth through vivid imagery. A proverb gives a general principle of wisdom rather than an unconditional promise about every individual circumstance. Letters address particular people or churches, and prophecy may describe real events through symbols. We already recognize differences like these in ordinary reading; we should give Scripture the same care.
Helping people understand the passage this way is part of a teacher’s responsibility. When the returned exiles gathered to hear the Law, the men teaching them explained what was being read.
So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.
A gifted speaker can hold an audience’s attention without explaining the Bible very well. The people hearing him still need to understand the words on the page. They also have a responsibility to examine what they are being taught, as the Bereans did when Paul brought them the gospel.
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 were eager to listen, yet they searched the Scriptures to find out whether Paul’s message was true. If they could examine an apostle’s teaching, we certainly aren’t being disrespectful when we check a modern preacher’s explanation. Discernment doesn’t require assuming that everyone is dishonest. It requires being willing to test an appealing claim instead of accepting it merely because the person saying it sounds confident.
Observe, Understand, and Respond
A useful way to organize our study is to observe what a passage says, work out what it means, and then consider how we should respond. Those steps are commonly called observation, interpretation, and application. They keep us from deciding on a personal lesson before we understand the passage we are trying to apply.
Observation means attending to what is actually there. Who is acting or speaking? Is the writer giving a command, making a promise, answering an objection, or recording someone else’s conduct? Follow his reasons through to his conclusion. We aren’t collecting details just to fill a notebook; we are trying to understand how the words fit together.
Interpretation seeks the meaning the human writer intended under God, the divine Author. You may hear this called exegesis, drawing the meaning out of the text. Its opposite is eisegesis, reading an idea into the text that didn’t come from it. A verse may sound useful to an argument I want to make, but I still have to ask whether the writer was making that argument.
Application follows from the meaning we have established. Consider James’s instruction:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
He compares an unresponsive hearer to a man who looks in a mirror, walks away, and forgets what he saw. Hearing the truth can leave us deceived if we mistake that hearing for obedience. If Scripture exposes a lie I told my employer, I haven’t dealt with it by underlining a verse about honesty. I need to confess the lie, tell the truth, and repair the harm where I can. My response has to address what God has exposed.
Other passages may correct a mistaken belief, restore confidence in God’s promises, or change what we ask Him for. We don’t have to manufacture a dramatic decision after every reading. We do need to take seriously whatever the passage actually teaches. A completed worksheet is useful only if it has helped us understand and respond to that teaching.
Let Scripture Help Explain Scripture
As questions arise, we can compare related passages because the God who gave Scripture does not lie or contradict Himself. That doesn’t mean every passage is equally easy. Peter acknowledged that some things in Paul’s letters were hard to understand. Clearer passages help us examine difficult ones without reaching conclusions that contradict what God has plainly said elsewhere.
Paul described the message he and the other apostles taught as coming from the Holy Spirit:
These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
His confidence rested on the Spirit’s teaching rather than human wisdom. When we compare Scripture, we are reading words given by the same Spirit, so we should expect their teaching to agree. We still have to understand each passage in its own setting. Finding the same word in two books doesn’t prove it has precisely the same meaning in both, and a promise made to Israel under a particular covenant doesn’t automatically become my private guarantee.
Salvation requires that same care. Christ died for the whole world, and we receive salvation through faith rather than earn it by works. God’s offer is genuine and can be rejected, yet those who have truly been born again are sealed and kept by Him. An explanation that dismisses one of those teachings to defend another hasn’t accounted for the full testimony of Scripture. We should be just as careful when studying judgment instead of building a doctrine on one image and disregarding clearer descriptions elsewhere.
When a passage uses an image, we need to understand what it communicates in its setting. I believe in literal interpretation, by which I mean reading according to normal grammar, historical setting, and the kind of language being used. That allows a metaphor to function as a metaphor and receives a historical account as history. Recognizing symbols in prophecy doesn’t give us permission to erase the promises those symbols communicate.
Genesis presents creation, the first man and woman, the entrance of sin and death, the Flood, and the genealogies as history. Jesus grounded His teaching on marriage in creation, and Paul connected Adam’s sin with death while explaining the life we receive through Christ. If we turn those events into vague symbols to accommodate outside objections, we have also changed the history on which those later teachings rest.
Historical events can also point ahead to Christ. We call this typology: an earlier person, event, or institution anticipates something later in God’s plan. The Passover lamb points to Christ, and the tabernacle teaches through patterns and shadows. Jesus used Jonah’s three days as a sign, and Paul gave an inspired allegorical explanation involving Hagar and Sarah in Galatians. Scripture authorizes those connections. It doesn’t authorize us to assign a hidden spiritual meaning to every detail that catches our interest.
A theory that depends on a secret key Christians supposedly missed for centuries deserves careful examination. Novelty can attract attention without providing evidence. Before accepting it, look at how its teacher handles the actual wording and context. If he has to ignore both to make his explanation work, we have good reason to reject his conclusion, however intriguing it first sounded.
Keep Every Study Tool Under the Text
Begin with a readable translation. Public English quotations in these studies use the NKJV. The textual foundation is the Hebrew Masoretic Text for the Old Testament and the Textus Receptus for the New Testament. The Textus Receptus is a printed Greek text drawn largely from the Byzantine manuscript tradition; it is not identical to every Byzantine manuscript or to a modern Majority Text edition.
I believe God preserved His words for His people. These studies therefore use the received text rather than treating Scripture as something finally recovered through modern critical reconstruction. That doesn’t make each printed edition or translator inspired. An English translation still needs to represent the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek faithfully. The study on the Textus Receptus and received text explains this further.
From there, use resources to answer the questions you encounter. Cross-references can direct you to a quotation’s source, a parallel account, or a related teaching. A concordance helps locate other occurrences of a word, while a Bible dictionary explains unfamiliar people, places, customs, and objects. A commentary offers another student’s explanation and may raise a question you hadn’t considered. None of these resources needs to dictate what the passage is allowed to say.
Greek and Hebrew tools can be helpful too. A lexicon is a dictionary of the original language that explains how words are used. An interlinear places those words beside a translation. They can help clarify a translator’s choice, but access to them doesn’t make someone proficient in the language. If a dictionary lists six possible meanings, we can’t assume the writer intended all six at once. We have to determine which meaning fits his sentence.
A word’s root also cannot establish a doctrine on its own, and a confident claim about grammar needs support from the language. Knowing a little can make us overconfident about what we actually understand. That is a reason to study carefully, not to dismiss language study. God gave the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament in Greek; responsible work in those languages helps us understand His words more accurately.
Reliable historical and cultural background can explain something the original readers already knew. It becomes a problem when an outside theory overrules the wording of the passage. We should apply the same scrutiny to a respected teacher. He may be exceptionally helpful, but he is still capable of being wrong.
Test all things; hold fast what is good.
I don’t want someone to become so dependent on my explanation that he stops examining Scripture for himself. A teacher should help people become stronger readers. If consulting him leaves them less willing to question his conclusions, something has gone wrong with that relationship.
Read Toward Christ and Become a Doer
As we learn to read individual passages, we also need to understand how they fit within God’s work of redemption. After His resurrection, Jesus explained what Moses and the Prophets had written concerning Him. Later in the chapter He also directed His disciples to what the Psalms revealed.
And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
The Law reveals God’s holiness and exposes our sin. The sacrifices teach us about guilt, shed blood, and the need for a substitute. The prophets announce judgment and promise restoration, while Israel’s failing kings show the need for a righteous King. The Psalms teach worship and express suffering and hope. We can follow those connections without forcing an imagined reference to Jesus into every detail. The study on the Word of the Lord in the Old Testament examines how God progressively made Himself known.
That revelation leads us to the eternal Son, who became fully man without ceasing to be fully God and lived without sin. Wicked men physically tortured and punished Jesus on the cross. He willingly bore that bodily punishment for our sins and shed His innocent blood until He died. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Christ completed His saving work through His blood and death, was buried, and rose bodily from the grave.
He died for the whole world. Everyone who repents and believes receives forgiveness and everlasting life, though God’s genuine offer can be resisted. The person who is born again becomes a new creation and is indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Genuine salvation is eternally secure. Calling myself a Christian without evidence of that new life is no basis for assurance, and God’s keeping of His people gives us no excuse for lawlessness.
Keeping redemption in view prevents us from reducing the Bible to advice for getting ahead. David’s encounter with Goliath teaches more than finding courage, and Joseph’s life involves far more than waiting patiently for a promotion. Proverbs teaches wisdom, but it isn’t a collection of guarantees for personal success. Those passages belong within the work of the God who created us, judges sin, keeps His promises, and provides salvation. We need to understand their place there before drawing whatever lesson happens to appeal to us.
That includes letting Scripture examine our own motives. We can become so occupied with answering someone else’s questions that we evade what God is exposing in us.
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 Scripture comforts us when we are frightened or grieving. At other times it confronts an excuse we have carefully maintained. If I have convinced myself that my anger is justified, a passage about bitterness and forgiveness may be unwelcome, but dismissing it won’t make my conduct right. Learning more theological terms or winning a debate won’t put that anger right either. The God who strengthens us in suffering also loves us enough to correct us.
We must also keep obedience in its biblical place. Studying diligently and improving our conduct cannot earn salvation, which we receive by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Good works grow from the new life He gives us. We aren’t working to purchase His forgiveness, but we shouldn’t use His grace to rationalize ignoring the instruction He gave for our good.
Paul made Timothy’s responsibility as a teacher particularly clear:
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
The expression “rightly dividing” calls for accurate handling of God’s Word. Later in that chapter, Paul names teachers who were saying the resurrection had already taken place and were overturning the faith of some. His warning gives us reason to be careful about what we teach. I want to stand before the Lord without being ashamed of how I handled His words, and that requires more than devising clever divisions that impress an audience.
If you are new to studying the Bible, begin with a manageable passage. Pray for understanding, read the surrounding paragraphs, and consider what the original readers would have understood. Compare relevant passages and consult a reliable resource when you need help. You will learn to recognize different kinds of writing and follow difficult arguments with practice. There is no reason to be embarrassed about asking a mature believer for help. Some questions will require sustained work, but we don’t need every difficult question answered before trusting and obeying what God has made clear.
Make room for broad reading as well as close study. Reading through whole books introduces us to passages we might otherwise neglect and helps us see how the parts fit together. Slower study lets us examine a particular argument in detail. You can also follow a subject through several books, as the study on the name of the Lord does in tracing what God reveals about Himself through His name.
My Final Thoughts
I want to understand the Bible well enough to teach it faithfully, but that has to include receiving its correction myself. If a passage exposes a belief I need to reconsider or a sin I need to confess, I shouldn’t evade it just because changing would be uncomfortable. God has given us His Word so we can know Him through Jesus Christ and learn to live as His people. Let’s give it the care and obedience it deserves.