Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible
Davis Wetherell reflects on two truths about the Bible from the book of Isaiah. God’s word bear witness to its own authority and usefulness, and these truths ought to give us great hope.
As Wetherell wishes:
I hope my reflections on these truths will bolster your faith in God’s Word as the sole source of stability for your life.
His meditations on Isaiah 40 and 55 will strengthen and encourage you. Check it out!
My sixth commandment for commentary usage is:
You shall hold your conclusions (and your theological tradition) loosely enough to allow commentaries to compel you back into the text to discover the biblical author’s intentions for his original audience.
Please understand that I am not opposed to theological traditions. I do not believe it is possible to escape all tradition and construct a perfectly objective theology from scratch. Nor do I think it would be desirable to do so if we could. Theological tradition holds great value as a safeguard and alignment across localities and generations, in defiance of the shifting winds of the world. Theological tradition rooted in faithful handling of the scripture is to be celebrated and encouraged.
As long as we are careful not to replace the scripture in the tug of war with those traditions.
The problem is that almost nobody believes they are doing this. Most people with a dearly-held set of theological convictions believe they have derived those convictions from the scripture. Consequently, they believe their theological opponents are the ones who have replaced the scripture with their traditions. And I am not pointing my finger at you, dear reader, but at myself, as I am just as guilty of such presumption toward my detractors as anybody.
I’m sure there are some people in the world who do this—replace the scripture with their tradition—intentionally. It is not to them that I write, for they are outside the pale of biblical Christianity. Anyone who claims to follow the Jesus of the Bible must love and revere the Bible the way he did and not willingly set it aside in favor of manmade religion, however enlightened or modernized that religion may claim to be.
But the chief problem I address is with those inside the pale of biblical Christianity. Those who want to follow Jesus and not their own hearts. Those who honor the Bible as containing the very words of God, to be believed and put into practice. Because too often, in the name of Jesus and the Bible, they willingly impair their vision of Jesus and the Bible with the sunglasses of their theological tradition. And so the tradition becomes primary, and the scripture itself becomes secondary.
To give only one example, consider the following scriptures:
We can tie ourselves in knots trying to reconcile these two verses. But when doing so, many first presume that one of the verses is a universal truth about the character of God, and the other is a particularized truth for a given context. But which one is universal and which one is particular depends on your tradition. Is he an irresistable-drawing God with particular salvation-desires, or is he a salvation-desiring God with particular-drawing behaviors?
But what if we could rest ourselves content in uncovering, in all its fullness, what Paul meant by the second statement in its context, and what Jesus (or more precisely, John recording Jesus) meant by the first statement in its context? Would you be willing to stand on both truths, unfiltered by tradition and unadjusted by preconception? And if your tradition didn’t have a clear place for both truths to coexist, such that one had to be given primacy over the other, would you be willing to allow the scripture to replace that tradition in this matter? Can you hold your tradition loosely enough to allow each text to speak for itself, such that the meaning it would have had for the original audience drives the meaning you assign to it today?
I imagine you wish your theological opponents would hold their tradition more loosely, so they could truly observe and receive what the scripture teaches. And I am sure they wish the same for you. This is where commentaries can be a great benefit to us.
Commentaries give you an opportunity to poke and prod your tradition with the insights and observations of others who are not as beholden to that tradition. Insofar as a commentator’s commitment is to proclaim a particular tradition, the value of his commentary may be reduced for those outside his tradition. But insofar as a commentator’s commitment is to proclaim and parade the text in all its glory, the value of his commentary is increased for those of any theological tradition.
Find those commentaries, and let them inflame your delight in the word of God. Then you can set the commentaries back down and gaze anew on the living and abiding word of God with sharper sight.
What genre are the four Gospels of the Bible? Did the authors intend readers to take them as historical fact? Scholars of religion often answer in the negative, but Timothy Paul Jones explains one reason why the answer is yes.
One reason why I’m convinced that the Gospel authors didn’t intend to write fiction is because the most crucial claims that the authors of the Gospels made about Jesus also appear in another literary genre, the genre of epistle. Much of the New Testament is made up of epistles—letters sent to particular communities to be read publicly and then circulated widely. Many of these epistles were penned prior to the New Testament Gospels. Most important for our purposes, virtually every essential claim about Jesus that appears in the Gospels also shows up in these letters, despite the fact that these epistles were composed for people who already knew about Jesus.
Jones then elaborates on five specific claims from the Gospels that are backed up in New Testament epistles. It is well worth your time.
My fifth commandment for commentary usage is:
You shall not spend more time reading commentaries than reading and listening to the Bible.
If you’ve been tracking my advice thus far, you know I’m not opposed to commentaries; I find them an essential part of one’s study routine. And last week I encouraged you to read more commentaries. So with this commandment, I’m not suggesting you spend less time with commentaries but only that you spend more time with the Scripture itself. Unmediated. Unfiltered, except perhaps through translation to your native tongue.
In short, this commandment urges you to give priority to the voice of your Chief Shepherd over that of his under-shepherds. If you fail to cultivate that discipline, here are four risks you run.
If the majority of your time in “Bible study” is spent reading commentaries, you are unwittingly trusting, and not-so-subtly communicating, that the authority over the church and the Christian life is not the word of God, or the Son of God who spoke it, but its interpreters. Theological tradition is a very good thing … unless it becomes the primary thing. In which case, it obfuscates the best thing.
When you spend most of your time reading commentaries, you may end up treating theological traditions as a marketplace with you the consumer. You consider and evaluate the options until you find one that suits you best. You may end up persuaded, not by the option most faithful to the text, but by the option most persuasive in rhetoric. Or you pit one option against another, as though there must be an either/or instead of some sort of both/and dynamic.
When most of your time is spent in commentaries, instead of in the Scriptures themselves, you risk finding your joy in the commentaries rather than in the Scriptures. If you are bored or confused by the Bible, to the point where you must read one or more commentaries to find joy in the process of study, you are in danger of wandering from the lover of your soul. His sheep hear his voice; they do not know the voice of strangers.
Following from the previous risk, this risk is the consequence of finding greater joy in the voice of someone other than the bridegroom himself. Bible study is not merely an academic or educational enterprise. It is a relational transaction. It is the means by which God’s people hear his voice so they may respond to him in faith and worship. For this reason, it is not a bad thing when Bible study is hard. It forces us to wrestle with our creator, to delve the depths of his wisdom, to know him through his promises, warnings, and encouragements. Do you believe that, in the Scripture, you hear the very voice of God? Don’t deny yourself this opportunity to develop your relationship with him.
A few years ago, I shared a post about a man who had learned to study commentaries but not the Bible. If you spend more time in commentaries than in the Bible, you run the risk of learning how to be told what to think. You may not understand where your conclusions came from, or how they are driven by the text. In a counseling session, or a firefight with false teaching, you’ll have nothing to shoot but nerf darts, while unlimited rounds of sniper ammunition remain boxed up in a storage closet. This brings us full circle back to the first risk, for you may be able to quote many commentators at whatever problem you face. But you will have missed the true authority to bring about truth or change.
I don’t mean to be pedantic. I’m not saying you should time yourself to ensure that the precise number of minutes and seconds spent reading commentaries must be exceeded by time with the plain Scripture. I am aiming at your motivations and intentions. Your joy and delight. Your relationship with the Lord. If setting a timer will help you to diagnose the distance or dryness you’ve felt in your Bible study, so be it. But in the end, I simply want you to be able to say with the psalmist: “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me” (Ps 119:97-98).
If such raw delight has been hard for you to come by, perhaps you could try to lose yourself for an entire afternoon simply enjoying the glorious drama of God’s word. Here is a place you could start.
I appreciate Ryan Griffith’s reflections on how Bible study must be “Not Just Me and My Bible.” Though the Reformation gave us the slogan sola scriptura (Scripture alone), we must avoid twisting it into solo scriptura (only the Bible).
There is profound danger in being disconnected from Christian tradition. Prosperity preaching, bizarre personality cults, rigorous legalism, and freewheeling libertinism are all poisons passed along to unsuspecting Christians in part because of biblical preparation that has abandoned the wisdom of the ancients.
What is more, such false teaching is sometimes justified by teachers who claim to be “Bible-only” people. They assert the validity of their interpretation by wrongly arguing that the Bible is the Christian’s only theological resource and that anyone who counters with an argument from church history has forgotten what the Reformation stood for. Whether from malice or ignorance, they can twist the Scriptures to a wrong end — a pattern of brokenness that has its root in the first garden. Unfortunately, sometimes we eat what they serve because we, too, have lost sight of the biblical value of knowing Scripture together.
While well intentioned, this rejection of tradition or help from the outside ends up causing shipwreck. Remember, we need community to apply the Bible.
My fourth commandment for commentary usage is:
You shall not read only one commentary, but shall invite a plurality of voices into the conversation.
Is this because I think you have no limits on your time, or that you must become a professional researcher in order to study the Bible? No, it is simply because our Bible study is part of a conversation that has been going on for thousands of years. We were created to live and learn in community, and therefore, having a single influence on your study is counterproductive to your study.
Let me give two reasons.
Consider Proverbs 18:17:
The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.
Unless you are among the most naturally skeptical of learners, if you read only one commentary on a passage, you will be inclined to presume the commentator you read is right. Especially if that commentator engages with other commentators and points out all the places where they are wrong. It is simply part of being a creature with limited knowledge that “the one who states his case first seems right.”
Nobody chooses to write a commentary—or gets a contract to write a commentary—because they believe they have all the wrong ideas about their subject matter. No, they write it because they believe they are right, and that they have something to add to the historic conversation that ought to be considered by others! So they are going to write with as much clarity and confidence as they can muster regarding their interpretive conclusions.
But if you read at least two commentaries, it will help you to recognize that there could be a variety of perspectives out there. And each of them could be argued cogently. And each of them is worth considering and discussing. In the process, it will help you to demystify the priesthood of experts that is so easy to presume.
I am deeply grateful for those God has raised up in the church, who are experts in various topics. I’ve been in churches that had medical and legal experts, who counseled church members or leaders on particular medical or legal matters. I’ve been in churches with construction experts, who can take care of building and property maintenance and improvement with tremendous skill. My church sent an agricultural expert overseas to assist the preaching of the gospel with strong agricultural education in a third world country.
So I have no philosophical concern with the existence or use of experts. However, sometimes we can get ourselves stuck in a presumption that the experts are always right. In our Bible study, that means we confer upon Bible experts a mystical status of priestly knowledge unavailable to the masses. If the expert says something, it must be true. And reading only one commentary may reinforce that presumption, since what you read will most likely sound credible and persuasive (see Prov 18:17 again).
But there is a reason medical patients are often encouraged to get a second opinion. There is a reason businesses often have not a single lawyer but a legal team. There is a reason a corporation or government launching a major project invites multiple bids from a plurality of contractors. And there is a reason why nearly any group of experts in the same field will find many matters within their field about which to violently disagree (just peruse a scholastic journal from any field to witness a wealth of in-house debate). That reason is the self-evident fact that a variety of experts will have a variety of perspectives which lead them to a variety of conclusions and suggest a variety of methods or applications.
We ought to take this thinking with us into our personal Bible study and commentary reading. A second opinion is usually more valuable than the first opinion, regardless of which opinion you end up agreeing with. Either you will be rescued from hastily jumping on the first commentator’s train, or you will find even greater confidence and grounds for sticking with that first one. And the variety of strengths and weaknesses of the various commentators will result in your final conclusions being wiser, more nuanced, and more robust.
In conclusion, this sort of sifting, evaluating, and refusing to believe the first opinion (automatically), is what the Apostle Paul wants the Thessalonian churches to do.
Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thess 5:20-22)
There is a sense in which commentaries are one form of New Testament prophecy, in that they proclaim the word of God. We ought to test them, every one. Hang on to whatever is good, helpful, and true in them. Reject whatever is false, misleading, or evil in them.
But you’ll limit your ability to do that unless you consult a second, third, or fourth opinion on a matter. And, as commentator Tremper Longman III says: “Sometimes the reader will be right and the commentaries will be wrong.”
As a reader of this blog, you are most likely somewhat committed to personal Bible reading. That is a wonderful commitment, but are you aware of some of the most common mistakes we can make, so that you’re prepared to avoid them?
Wyatt Graham has a helpful post explaining some pitfalls he regularly sees:
He makes some terrific points along the way, such as:
Biblical books communicate ideas. Each of the four Gospels presents Christ from four different angles. Paul’s letters have a purpose. And so on. Like any book that we read today, if we do not understand its beginning, middle, and end, we miss the point.
Last week, I spoke with a Vice President of major Bible publisher, who informed me that some reader’s Bibles have not yet provided an adequate return on the investment required to publish them. I do not know if this situation is widespread across many publishers, or many versions of reader’s Bibles. But I was deeply saddened to hear that even one of my favorite reader’s Bibles has not yet proven “worth it” to its publisher.
So please indulge me with a brief commercial, advertising my favorite reader’s Bibles. Though I list them here in the order of how much I like them, every one of these reader’s Bibles would be worth your investment.
I have little doubt the CSB five-volume would also be worth your investment; I just have not yet acquired it for myself. There is even a way to introduce your children to the concept of a reader’s Bible. Publishers have taken great risks to present God’s word to us in these non-traditional ways, and they ought to win medals for having done so. I believe a reader’s Bible is the best prescription I can give for increasing your delight in God’s word.
I don’t think I can overstate the value of clearing out the clutter that has accumulated over centuries in presenting God’s word in printed form. Though a reader’s Bible may appear novel and jarring—on the page, it really does not look like the sort of Bible you are accustomed to reading—we must remember that even our “traditional” Bible presentations are nothing like the original manuscripts would have appeared to the original readers. The New Testament was written with all capital letters, no punctuation or spaces, and certainly no headings, verse numbers, or cross-references. Modern versions of the Bible have drifted far from the original look and feel. So why not continue finding new ways to present the Scripture in ways that increase the reader’s joy in this glorious literature?
With that purpose in mind, I am thrilled to introduce you to a passion project I’ve been working on for some time. With the help of a professional book layout designer, I have developed a version of the book of Exodus designed to look in every way like a modern novella. Exodus is one of the greatest narratives in the history of the world, but the drama of it can be lost amid the standard double-column format, distracting verse and chapter numbers, and myriad footnotes or study notes.
But what if we could read this glorious narrative the same way we read our favorite novels? What if the book was presented in a way that visually presents the gripping plot arcs, follows the highs and lows of the action, and encourages you to keep turning the pages to read? And read. And read. What if the visual design encouraged you to spend an entire afternoon in this divinely inspired, deeply engaging story of redemption? And yes, I’m including all the laws and tabernacle details when I use such adjectives as “greatest,” “glorious,” “gripping,” and “engaging.”
I present to you Exodus: A Novella. Exodus is one of the best, true stories you could ever read, and here it is presented in a format that underscores why the world has been so captivated by it. You won’t find any verse numbers or footnotes, though a few names are translated in brackets to reveal wordplays. There are chapter numbers, but not the traditional ones. Instead of 40 “chapters,” somewhat arbitrarily determined, the Novella has 7 chapters, following the narrative’s natural literary divisions. It has page numbers, part titles, and page headers, just like the average novel you might pick up today. But unlike the average novel today, this spirit-inspired text is guaranteed to change your life again and again.
My biggest regret is that I was unable to secure permission from a Bible publisher to use a popular translation. So you’ll have to live with my own translation of Exodus, which has been a work in progress for nearly 20 years. In no way do I insinuate that my translation is any “better” than the ones you are used to; it is simply a fact that copyright laws prevent me from using most of the translations you might be familiar with. I didn’t want to delay the project any further by pursuing permission from every Bible publisher out there, so I moved forward with my own text. But if you are a Bible publisher and would be interested in permitting me to use your translation for this purpose, please feel free to contact me to work out the details.
While I’m on the topic of copyright, I’ll mention that I’m licensing Exodus: A Novella under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. This means that you are free to print, copy, adapt, and distribute this work in any way you like, as long as you credit the work to the original creator and distribute it under an identical license. So, no need to request permission if you’d like to print it out, give it away, or do something else with it.
Here is a preview of the Table of Contents and prologue (what you might know as Exodus chapter 1).
If you’d like to download and read the complete novella, click the button and enjoy!
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What do you with a book of the Bible you don’t particularly like? Or one you find terribly confusing, boring, or out of reach?
Rebekah Matt has some very helpful advice: Study it. Sounds simple enough, and she gives some very useful suggestions for how to go about the task.
Several months ago, I deliberately chose my least favorite book in the Bible for the women’s Bible study group at my church… I had a theory that a deep study using reputable resources would give me a new appreciation for why God had included this particular book in his Word. At the same time I was deciding to tackle this unliked (by me) book, I discovered that my friend Sara had been doing a Bible study at her own church on a different book, the one that’s the butt of many Bible reading plan jokes: Leviticus.
It was perfect timing for my as yet untested “study-it-to-love-it” theory. Sure enough, Sara and the other women in her Bible study had been having a very positive experience with Leviticus.
She then tells the story of recently diving into her own least-favorite book she had previously and intentionally avoided.
Eight years ago, I attended the Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference for the first time. Afterward, I shared my reflections on the best and worst parts of it, which mostly had to do with how imitable the various speakers were in their presentations. This past week, I attended the final T4G and wanted to share with you my favorite moment of the event.
This pastor’s conference has had many highlights over the years of its existence. One of the most talked-about benefits of attending is all the free books attendees receive (this year I got more than 20). But free books are not enough to justify the cost of traveling to Louisville, Kentucky, renting a hotel room, and being apart from family for a few days. No, the primary draw for me, as for many others, is the extravagant time spent in God’s Word under the the instruction of world-class teachers and preachers.
And my favorite moment of the event came during John Piper’s talk on the connection between Christ’s grace to forgive our sin and Christ’s grace to help us kill our sin. Piper’s talk was masterful, and I commend to you the entire thing. He set out to explain why it is a failure to understand and preach grace if we understand or preach only the forgiveness of sins and not also the holiness that results in the Christian’s life. This is like reminding people constantly of what they have been saved from without giving them something else to live for. It neglects the fact that Christ’s precious blood paid not only for our sins but also for our holiness. Piper demonstrates the idea from the text of 1 Peter 1 and 2.
At the end of the talk, Piper gave five reasons why preachers often fail to preach this message today. Why so many tend to stop at the grace of forgiveness without the accompanying grace of transformation. And his first reason is simply that we might not even be aware of the connection between these two aspects of grace. We may have failed to see it in the scripture because we haven’t yet paid close enough attention to it.
Then my favorite line comes around 38:30 in the video: “Nobody ever showed you how to read the Bible by looking for in-order-thats and becauses and therefores and participles, and you missed GLORIES because you missed grammar!”
And Piper is spot on. There is unbelievable glory here, if we would only have someone to teach us how to look for it.
I am deeply grateful to Dr. Piper for helping me to see this particular point, which was my highlight of the conference. May it encourage you to continue seeking Christ’s glory through observing even the fundamentals of grammar.
