If Only I had an…
We often think that the best way to understand the Bible is to get the help of an aid. We say to ourselves, “I need to get a commentary. I need to get a study Bible. I need to find a good preacher or teacher.” These are wonderful and wise actions to take, but they are not the most fundamental piece of understanding the Bible. They are important and indispensable parts of a robust understanding of the Bible, but they are supplemental. It can be easy to become a commentary junkie. If aids are supplemental, what is foundational to understanding the Bible? My simple argument is that the best way to understand the Bible is to read (and re-read) it for yourself. Here are three statements that encapsulate my encouragement to you as you seek to know God through His Word.
Three Statements
Statement #1: Start reading the Bible regularly and prayerfully.
Start: This is the hardest part. Understanding the Bible takes intention and discipline. It doesn’t happen by accident. It requires commitment. It requires believing that knowing God and His truth are worth trying to understand, worth toiling to understand, and worth making the sacrifice to understand.
Reading: This is the grounding activity of all understanding. We might quibble and say that you can listen to it as well, and I would encourage you to do that too! What we are talking about is engagement. You can’t understand what you never encounter. I say engagement because this is not simply a cursory reading where you’re just skimming the contents. I’m talking about the sort of reading where you notice how the passage is put together, how the author is developing the flow of thought, and what the main idea of the passage, book, or section is. We intuitively do these things as we read and re-read texts.
The Bible: This should be obvious, but you actually have to read the Bible not just books about the Bible however wonderful they may be. To understand the Bible, you must read the Bible.
Regularly and Prayerfully: Pray for God to give you understanding by His Spirit. Pray and read. Pray and re-read, and then pray and re-read again. The key piece of understanding is prayer and practice. Regularly doesn’t always mean every day (although every day is a great discipline), but there should be a sense of consistency and purpose to your prayer and practice of reading the Word. You can’t understand what you never encounter. Similarly, you rarely understand what you only occasionally encounter.
statement #2: Keep reading the Bible—especially when you don’t understand it.
Keep reading: Persistence is required. Working at understanding is non-negotiable.
“The best time to read the Bible is when you don’t want to and when you don’t understand. ”
Especially when you don’t understand: The best time to read the Bible is when you don’t want to and when you don’t understand. Confusion and lack of understanding are often treated as deterrents to reading the Bible. We meet a hurdle and just decide to walk off the track. Nothing is gained by taking the path of least resistance. If the Bible is worth understanding because God is worth knowing, then there is no better time to push forward than when it’s hard. This is where those helps can come in to get you going or help overcome an obstacle in your understanding. Helps can also keep us on the rails when we might be misinterpreting Scripture. I would never advocate for us to read the Bible in isolation. We should be reading the Bible with our churches, with the help of our pastors, and the help of the saints who have gone before us.
Statement #3: Mediate on what you’ve read day and night (Ps. 1).
Mediate: Chew the cud. We too often think we should immediately get what the Bible has to say without work, time, or reflection. We fail to see that understanding the words of our Lord takes effort, time, patience, and reformation of our hearts. Meditation is what facilitates reflection and reformation which generates deeper understanding and application.
Day and night: Once again this speaks of commitment, what occupies our mind and hearts, and the time that is required for reading and understanding. People spend their whole lives and careers become proficient at a task, but we unreasonably expect to know what God means with a casual glance at His Word. Or worse yet, we believe that reading an isolated passages here and there as it suits us will grant meaningful understanding of the Bible.
It’s All for Love
The critical impediments to understanding the Bible are not lack of ability, lack of time, or lack of helps. Instead, the critical impediment to understanding the Bible is lazy impatience. We don’t want to work to understand, and we don’t want to work for a long time to understand. Resolve to pursue God in His Word that you might learn to love, trust, and obey Him in all things. Resolve to read, to keep reading, and to mediate on what you’ve read.
Ryan Higginbothm says it well when he writes, “The aim of Bible study is love—love for God through his son Jesus, and love for others made in God’s image. Jesus said that all the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments (Matt. 22:35-40) If you’re not growing in love as a result of studying the Bible, you’re doing it wrong.”
This post was inspired by the closing statement from an article that Jim Hamilton wrote which you can access HERE.
