How
we study the Bible matters. Many people have never been taught how to study the
Bible and so either neglect the Scriptures, or read it in a way that it was
never intended to be read. Two common errors I have seen are flipping open the
Scriptures to seek God’s guidance in a magic 8 ball type manner, or reading
devotional tidbits from different books, but never methodically working through a book from beginning to end.
Letters,
in a way, are very easy to read. When we receive a letter in the mail, what do
we do? We look at who it is written to. We look at who it was from. We open it
up. Would you ever open it without seeing who it was from? Would you flip it to
the second page and read from a sentence
or two and ask how it changes your life? NO! You would read from beginning to
end and read everything in the context it was written. We should read the NT
letters in the same way. We need to recognize that these letters were written
to someone else before they were written to us. We need to read them in their
proper context.
It is important to
remember that a letter cannot mean something for us that it was never intended
to mean for the original audience. The meaning of the text is always the
same but the application can be vastly different! We must keep this
in mind. Saying that, let’s dive into the 3 questions to ask when reading the
Bible:
1. Observation: What does the text say?
2. Interpretation: What does it mean?
3. Application: How should this change me?
As we go through the
study, my hope is to guide you in this process. It is important to learn this
method of study, because without it we can easily misinterpret a passage if we
feel we can attach any meaning to it that we want. There is an intended meaning
we need to understand before applying it to our lives. Let’s keep in mind the
context of the letter and the original audience as we read.
Lastly, we cannot
understand the spiritual truths without the Holy Spirit’s help (1 Cor 2:14). We
need to read the Bible prayerfully and always look to how the Scriptures point
us to the Word made flesh. This is perhaps the most important advice of all. We
want to talk to the Lord as we read, and constantly look for how the Scriptures
point to Jesus. The Pharisees were scolded by Jesus who said “You search the Scriptures because you think
that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to
me that you may have life.” If the Scriptures don’t
lead us closer to Jesus we have failed.
He is the One to whom they point.
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