Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21).
This is what the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian believers about prophecy. That same principle, to test everything and only keep what is good, applies in other areas of life as well, including Bible study. I don’t mean by this that we should doubt what God has said, but rather that we should test our understanding of God’s word to make sure that what we think the Scripture means is really what the Holy Spirit intended to say.
Now, someone might well theorize that God would communicate his message in a form that can’t be confused or misunderstood. But since it’s obviously not the case that everybody agrees on how to understand every passage in Scripture, and what’s more, not everybody can even read the languages in which the Bible was originally written – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek – that theory is clearly not correct. For whatever reason, God chose to communicate by inspiring human writers to write using human languages. And human languages can be misunderstood. The Bible is, of course, not the only way in which God communicates with us, but it is the most important way, and it’s the standard against which all other messages must be tested. But our own fallible human understanding of what we think the Bible is saying must also be tested.
This article, however, is far too short to provide a comprehensive guide to understanding the Scriptures. Even if I were qualified to write something like that, it would be hundreds of pages long. Many scholars devote their entire adult lives to properly understanding God’s word, and I am both happy and grateful to benefit from their work. But although I acknowledge that expertise, I don’t want to give the false impression that only experts should try to read and understand the Bible. God’s word is for everyone, even if some people will understand it at a deeper level than others. We each have our own gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7). And, like nearly everything else, reading the Bible is something that improves with practice. My hope is that what I’m writing here will help you do that.
There are many good ways to read and study the Bible. Unfortunately, one of the most popular ways seems to be the verse-of-the-day approach, which treats the Bible as a collection of sound bites, each of which is understood entirely on its own. This is probably the worst way to approach God’s word, because it basically ignores any kind of context, and context really matters.
To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at Paul’s statement of the gospel in 1 Corinthians:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
Look closely at the first part of this passage. Twice, Paul uses the phrase, “according to the Scriptures.” To those of us who grew up speaking English, this sounds as if he means that the Scriptures are the source of his information. In fact, Paul might even appear to be distancing himself from the resurrection a bit, as if he’s saying, “I don’t have any direct knowledge, but according to the Scriptures, Christ rose from the dead.” It’s similar to what I would mean if I said, “according to the local news, the mayor gave a speech to the VFW last night.” I wasn’t there, but I know it happened because it was reported in the news.
But if we look at the rest of the paragraph, which we might call the immediate literary context, questions arise. In the last sentence Paul writes that “last of all he appeared to me also.” So he did have direct, personal knowledge of the resurrection. Why, then, would be say that it happened, “according to the Scriptures”?
The same question arises if you look up 1 Corinthians in a Bible dictionary, or read the notes in a study Bible because if you do that, you’ll discover that this was one of Paul’s early letters. It was written before the gospels, and indeed, before most of the New Testament was written. At the time 1 Corinthians was written, the term “the Scriptures” meant only the part of the Bible we now call the Old Testament. This is the historical context of this passage.
So when we look at this passage in its proper literary and historical context, Paul is clearly not saying that he knows about Jesus’ death and resurrection because he read it in the Bible. Rather, he’s saying that Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfilled – that is, they were in accordance with – what had been written in the Scriptures. They were the fulfillment of what had been foretold centuries earlier by Moses (Deuteronomy 18:18-19), by David (Psalm 16:8-11), by Isaiah (Isaiah 61:1-2), and throughout the Old Testament.
This brings us to a third type of context, which we can call the canonical context. By this I mean the connection between this passage and the message of the Bible as a whole. So in this example, do other places in Scripture support the interpretation I’ve just given?
The answer, as even a casual reading will easily show, is a resounding yes. To start with, Jesus himself told a group of religious leaders:
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (John 5:39-40).
In Luke’s gospel we’re told that after Jesus rose from the dead, he explained to his disciples how he had fulfilled what the Scriptures had foretold Luke 24:27, 44-47. Further, a number of times in Acts we see the apostles preaching that Jesus’ death and resurrection were the fulfillment of what had been foretold in the Old Testament scriptures (Acts 2:24-36, 3:18, 8:26-35, 13:27-37, 24:14-15, 26:22-23).
In other words, to say that Jesus died and rose again “according to the Scriptures” is to affirm that this was God’s plan from the beginning, as foretold in the Old Testament. He didn’t come to offer us a new way for people to reach God, but to be the fulfillment of the original way. The only way. It is also to affirm that the New Testament in no way replaces the Old, but rather completes it. The God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament, and everything the Old Testament teaches about God is still true. And, in fact, the New Testament authors quote or allude to Old Testament scriptures in hundreds of places, sometimes interpreting them in surprising ways. This important truth controls how we understand both Old and New Testaments. We don’t want to miss this.
Having made this point, Paul then goes on to give the list of witnesses testifying that this really did happen, including himself. This section, rather than the first part of the paragraph, tells us how he knows that Jesus was the one who rose from the dead “according to the Scriptures.” And if he was the one who rose, he had to have also been the one who died for our sins, “according to the Scriptures.” God has secured our salvation through Christ, if we hold on to faith in him, and his resurrection is the proof.
So we’ve looked at three types of context; the literary context, the historical context and the canonical context. It is context that controls how we understand what any particular passage of Scripture is saying. And as my example shows, if we’re not careful, our own experience, our own culture, and even our own familiarity with English, can mislead us into thinking that the Scripture says something rather different from what it actually teaches.
A big part of testing everything, then, is to make the effort to look at all three types of context. For this reason, I want to talk about each of them a bit more generally.
Literary context, the first kind, is the easiest. It’s not unique to studying the Bible, but simply what we learned in school (most of us, anyway) to do when we read anything. It just means paying attention to the role each sentence plays within its paragraph, how the paragraph fits together with other paragraphs, and how they all work together to make the author’s point. A good rule of thumb is not to try and reach any conclusions about what any sentence means until you reach the end of the paragraph; then look back and see what the entire paragraph is saying.
Historical context is tougher. Understanding the time and culture in which a particular passage of Scripture was written usually requires consulting a commentary, or a Bible dictionary, or the notes in a study Bible. Thankfully, there is no shortage of good references available; no book in human history has been as thoroughly studied or analyzed as the Bible. I should note also that much of the Bible’s message doesn’t require very much historical or cultural knowledge to understand. I don’t need any extensive historical background to understand what “you shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14) means. Or, “for it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). But, as our example shows, sometimes knowing the historical context will show that what appears to be the obvious plain-sense meaning of a passage is not what that passage is actually saying.
Canonical context, the third type, can also make use of commentaries and other reference works, but it’s also the area where ordinary believers, those of us without advanced education in Biblical languages, can see the most improvement with practice. It’s very simple; the more familiar you are with the whole Bible, the better you will be at seeing how each piece connects to that whole. You already know this if you take a second to think about it: if you want to get better at painting, you have to paint. If you want to get better at woodworking, you go into your shop and make something. If you want to get better at Bible study, study the Bible. Through practice, you’ll get better at using every type of context.
This obviously takes effort, and it takes time. And here’s where I’m going to step on some toes: if you don’t have time for Bible study, it’s because studying the Bible is a lower priority to you than anything that you’re doing. Something I learned a long time ago is that you will always have time to do anything you want to do, but you’ll never have enough time to do everything you want to do. What you actually do with your time always reveals your priorities. Yeah, I know. You have responsibilities, and no one can spend every waking hour reading the Bible. But you also can’t get better at something you don’t ever practice. Time management is a topic for a different article, however.
One final observation I’d like to offer goes back to my statement a few paragraphs ago about the Bible being the most studied book in human history. The commentaries, study Bibles and other reference works that are available allow you and me to benefit from centuries of study. They don’t just give you background context, they are also an important way to check that you have understood the passage properly. None of us is perfect. Until Christ returns, none of us will understand completely (1 Corinthians 13:9-10). That includes me, and it includes you. It also includes the people who write commentaries; they’re not infallible either. We all make mistakes but, and this is important, we won’t all make the same mistakes. That’s why being willing to consult other believers, including those who write commentaries, is so important. Being willing to test everything means that when I reach a different understanding of a passage then others, I need to have the humility to look at their arguments to see whether they might be right instead of me. Especially if those others are recognized experts in Biblical studies. (Which is not necessarily the same as being a well-known speaker or writer. Fame and expertise are not the same thing.) This is important enough that I wrote an entire article on how to read the Bible with humility.
So look for the way that each passage fits within its contexts; literary, historical and canonical, and ask questions about those contexts. Do it with humility, recognizing that your understanding might be wrong. That’s how you test everything with regard to Scripture. And the more you practice, the better at it you’ll get. Finally, when you’re sure that you’ve correctly understood what the Holy Spirit has said, you’ll reach the actual reason we need to study the Bible:
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do (James 1:22-25).