Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible
This brief piece by Craig Thompson highlights the fact that Bible study will not be easy, and that we must be okay with that.
Studying the Bible is hard work, but that is OK. God never promised that it would be easy. He is, after all, eternal, all-powerful, and always present. God is outside of our complete understanding. Attempting to wrap our brains completely around eternity or the Trinity will leave us with a headache.
This is a guest post by Clint Watkins. Clint is a missionary with DiscipleMakers in Lancaster, PA. His passion is to help sufferers find hope through honest wrestling. He blogs at frailfather.com, and you can find him on Instagram @clintdwatkins.
Perhaps you’re familiar with these hopeful and defiant questions: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” You may have sung them on Easter Sunday to revel in Jesus’ triumph and deliver death a lyrical one-two punch. Or maybe you have stood silent as others around you sang victoriously—you believe that Jesus overcame death’s power, but you have felt defeated by death’s pain.
Whatever your experience is with these questions, they reverberate with hope. Jesus conquered the grave. The tomb is empty. We’ve been set free.
But could our taunting of death be premature?
Context matters. When we learn to read the Bible as it is—not merely as an archive of lyrics for happy songs—we may find our most cherished verses to provide even deeper hope than we imagined.
These rhetorical questions come from 1 Corinthians 15, one of the most important chapters in your Bible. Some believers were saying Christ did not rise. So Paul realigns their history and theology.
If there is no resurrection then we have some serious issues: preaching is pointless (1 Cor 15:14), faith is worthless (1 Cor 15:14), we’re still in our sin (1 Cor 15:17), and the dead have perished forever (1 Cor 15:18). If Jesus did not rise then we have no hope beyond the grave and Christians are “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). So we should just party hard until we die (1 Cor 15:32).
Christian faith rests entirely on Jesus’ resurrection. If it did not happen, we are magnificent fools. But Paul establishes the historical fact of the resurrection, verified by hundreds of eyewitness accounts (1 Cor 15:1-11). The empty tomb changes everything.
Jesus’ resurrection reverses the curse of sin. Death is mere sleep for those who are in Christ—just as he rose, so will we (1 Cor 15:20-22). We will exchange our broken frames for glorious bodies (1 Cor 15:35-49). Jesus’ resurrection means life has purpose—what we do matters. Instead of indulging every craving, we ought to live holy lives (1 Cor 15:34) driven by the grace of Jesus’ victory (1 Cor 15:57). Preaching the gospel is not pointless, but is “of first importance” (1 Cor 15:3). So we should “always [be] abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).
This brings us to our refrain of questions, which occur in Paul’s crescendo at the chapter’s end. Take note of the verb tenses in this passage:
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
1 Cor 15:51-55
Do you notice how much of this is future tense? We shall not all sleep. We shall be changed. The trumpet will sound. The dead will be raised.
Paul gazes down time’s corridor and describes an unimaginable scene: We are alive, and death is dead.
The resurrection accomplishes the unbelievable. But not all of these promises have been fulfilled yet. This includes the defiant questions we sing so often. Quoting Isaiah 25 and Hosea 13, Paul says, “then shall come to pass the saying that is written.” You might expect him to say these promises have been fulfilled because of Jesus’ resurrection. And that’s how we often use these verses—as a present reality. But Paul’s eyes remain on the future.
We will, one day, mock death at its defeat. We will taunt, “Where is your sting? Where is your victory?” But that day has not yet come.
Why is this distinction important?
In a passage like this, we should hesitate to claim future promises as present reality. We don’t, afterall, profess that our bodies have already been transformed or that Jesus has already returned. These things, including death’s final defeat, are our inheritance in Christ—guaranteed, but not yet dispensed.
Specifically, to declare that death’s sting has already vanished can lead to a casual posture toward death. Excessive triumph can promote Christian dismissiveness. This leads some believers to avoid sorrow while others feel guilty for their grief.
But this passage is not about how to grieve. Elsewhere, we see that Paul does not treat death casually. Losing people hurts. He himself spoke of “sorrow upon sorrow” when he considered his friend’s potential death (Phil 2:27). And he encouraged the Thessalonians to grieve—with hope—for those who died (1 Thess 5:13).
This lines up with how Christ encounters the grave in John 11. How does Jesus respond to death, even when he knows resurrection is imminent? He weeps (Jn 11:35).
As Tim Keller says,
Death is not the way it ought to be. It is abnormal, it is not a friend, it isn’t right. This isn’t truly part of the circle of life. Death is the end of it. So grieve. Cry. The Bible tells us not only to weep, but to weep with those who are weeping. We have a lot of crying to do.
You do not have to dismiss the pain of losing someone you love. Wisdom weeps. Godliness grieves.
We need not ponder where death’s sting has gone. It’s still here. For a little while longer.
Recognizing this does not dampen resurrection hope—it deepens it. Because the gospel holds our pain in tension with God’s promises. It permits honesty in the face of grief yet assurance that God will resolve our sorrow one day. We still wait for death’s final defeat. Until then, its sting runs deep. Yet the empty tomb of our risen king declares that the sting won’t last forever.
Context matters.
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We’ve still got a Bible reading challenge underway, and it’s not too late to hop on board! I’ve written before about reading plans and tools I use, such as Logos and the Dwell audio app. But here are some more recommendations of tools from Amy Hall. I’ve not heard of the Bible Box app she mentions, nor have I seen the Discipleship Journal reading plan before that she links to. I will add that one to my list options in the future.
The OIA Bible study method ought not be incompatible with rigorous usage of commentaries. But there is an everpresent danger of relying on commentaries more than the text, or of allowing commentaries to prevent you from wrestling with the text as you ought. Therefore the main question for commentary usage is not whether but when.
In the interest of helping you make best use of commentaries in your Bible study, here are ten commandments for your consideration.
Did you know that your English Bible puts the Old Testament books in a different order than was used by Jewish traditions? Noah Diekemper makes a brief yet strong case for rearranging the books in our Bibles to be more like Jews have ordered them for millennia. Among his reasons are the effect of the order on our understanding of various books, and the manner in which Jesus himself referred to the Old Testament. Diekemper’s conclusion:
The order that our Bibles printed the Old Testament in is a silent conversation. Bibles are printed in the conventional order either for the sake of mere convention (the lowest form of conservatism), or else because the question is never raised to arrange them otherwise. But when the evidence of historical orderings and intertextual links is considered, the order of the Biblia Hebraica presents a more intelligible whole, a work that more visibly testifies to the singular intelligence responsible for its authorship.
For my annual Bible speed read, I no longer follow the English order of the OT books. I find it makes it more difficult to read in large chunks, especially since it puts so many difficult books together for the last third of the OT, without much contextualizing of them to assist the reader. The Hebrew order seems to have readers more in mind, since the Prophets include some of what we consider histories, and the corpus ends not with persistent prophetic denunciation, but with generally hopeful reflections on life lived in service to Yahweh God (the Writings).
Diekemper’s piece will help you to understand more of the benefits of rearranging the books, and how this in no way violates belief in biblical inerrancy or authority.
One common objection to the OIA method of Bible study is that it trains people to think they can interpret the Bible on their own, in a vacuum, apart from history, tradition, or scholarship. Just me and my Bible; that’s all I need. And the more exciting and novel my interpretation, the better.
I can understand when folks feel they must register this objection. On this blog, we’ve certainly gone out of our way to advise against becoming a commentary junkie. We’ve labeled them “false authorities.” We’ve likened them to gasoline, which is poisonous if you drink it straight instead of sloshing it into a working engine.
And sadly, some folks have heard us advising them to avoid commentaries altogether. Despite recommending them, listing them among our main tools, and labeling avoidance of them as the #1 mistake with respect to them.
So let me affirm with frank directness: I’m not sure I could study the Bible well without commentaries. I commend, with utmost fervency, the practice of utilizing them. And I believe that the person who has access to quality commentaries but refuses to make use of them is playing the fool.
So I agree that rejection of commentaries is an error to avoid. However, my experience has bellowed at me that a far more frequent commentary error is not their disuse but their misuse. In the name of staying connected with Christian tradition and avoiding me-and-Jesus-ism, masses of otherwise thoughtful followers of Jesus engage repeatedly in the unexamined and unreflective commentary binge. All rise! The expert has entered the room and is about to divulge The Truth.
Therefore, the flag we’ve chosen to wave on this blog—more than its sibling flag which likewise deserves to waltz with the wind—is the flag of suspicious caution toward commentary usage. The flag of “but what does the text say?” The flag of “observe and interpret the text and don’t merely observe and interpret the commentary.”
In short, my recommendation regarding commentaries boils down to the maxim: not whether but when.
I do not dispute whether we ought to make use of commentaries. By all means, yes, yes, yes! In fact, find a few commentators you have especially benefitted from, and buy everything they’ve written. John Stott is one of those for me. As is Douglas Sean O’Donnell, David Helm, and James B. Jordan. I’ve been recently persuaded that Dale Ralph Davis could potentially join this little club of mine, so I’ve begun snapping up his wares whenever I find them on sale, though I have yet to actually read him. Just take note: Whether you would agree 100% with any commentator’s conclusions is utterly beside the point. But more on that in a moment.
The main issue, as I see it, is not whether but when. When do you read your commentaries? When do you shift your gaze away from the text to attend to what others have said about the text? When do you go rooting for help with thorny issues, or looking for answers to your sincere questions?
And that “when” question is intimately connected to its why. Why do you read your commentaries? If it is to figure out what the proper interpretation of the passage is, we need to do some more work. If it’s because you feel stuck and you still need some good material to lead your next small group, you’ll be better off going back to basics. If it’s because you’re just not sure you can be trusted to understand or teach the text, and you need more expert affirmation to instill confidence, then we need to talk further about whose approval matters most to the student or teacher of the Bible (2 Tim 2:15).
Here is a simple suggestion: We ought to read commentaries for the same reason we ought to have small groups: Interaction. We need community to study the Bible. And that community can come through the written works of scholars just as much as through the spoken conversation of a small group of people.
And if commentaries are most helpful in getting us to interact with others over the text, commentaries are therefore most beneficial when they are treated as conversation partners and not as the definitive word on a passage. For this reason, I’m not terribly concerned with identifying “good” or “bad” commentaries, in the sense of “which ones line up with my denomination or interpretive tradition?” And I don’t have to buy into everything a commentator says or stands by. If the role of a successful commentary is to further the conversation by driving me into closer examination of the text, I can benefit just as much from a commentator I agree with as from a commentator I disagree with. Sometimes, I’ve even learned more from liberal commentators (who can be shockingly honest about what they observe in a text and about what questions they have about it) than from conservative ones (who sometimes don’t observe as closely when a dearly held theological tradition may be at stake).
As a result, my personal definition of what makes a commentary good or bad is: How much that commentary stimulates me to examine the text more closely and understand the author’s argument more clearly. Whenever I find commentaries that do this to a high degree, I add them to my list of recommendations.
So when is the best time to read a commentary? Not first thing, and not in the first nanosecond a question or roadblock occurs to you, but after you have studied the passage for yourself. How far should you have gone in your study before you read a commentary? I speak for myself and not as a command from the Lord, but I have attempted to discipline myself to refrain from employing commentaries until I have a concrete guess as to the author’s main point in the passage.
Crafting a main point is a major milestone in the OIA process, as it represents the climax of the interpretation phase. From there, we want to connect that main point to the person and work of Jesus Christ before we move into application to head, heart, and hands, inward and outward. But before I start landing strong gospel connections or getting into application, I want to invite skilled conversation partners into the discussion to help me shape and hone what I’ve come up with.
And I devour commentaries that will improve my own observation and interpretation of the text, by showing me how to observe and interpret that text more effectively than I have done myself.
Please understand that the OIA method of Bible study is not about getting away from 2,000 years of history and coming up with novel interpretations all by oneself. Commentaries are crucial, as long as we use them the right way and at the right time.
“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Some have read 2 Cor 3:6 in a way that opposes “Spirit-filled” ministry to “Bible-focused” ministry. I have not come across this particular perspective very often, but Graham Heslop has, and does a wonderful job explaining how the verse’s context reveals a different argument in the mind of the Apostle Paul.
Oft quoted, and always from the King James Version for effect, is 2 Corinthians 3:6. There Paul writes: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” This verse is usually cited in support of Spirit led ministries, over against those that prioritise theology and study. Because the letter kills, so the logic goes, we should not overemphasise detailed teaching or a focus on the Bible. For many, Paul’s statement liberates Christian believers from lifeless, dull, and bookish expressions of faith into the exciting and novel. Lively and Spirit led ministries have put the “letter” away, embracing the life-giving work of the Spirit. But is this really the distinction Paul is making?
Last year, my collaborator Ryan wrote a wonderful piece on why context matters in Lamentations 3. We sing Chisolm’s comforting poetry (“Summer and winter, springtime and harvest … Great is Thy faithfulness!”) but can easily miss how hard-fought and hard-won such hope really is.
The hope of Lamentations 3 is not the hope of a college acceptance letter or a career promotion. It is more like the cautious and suspicious hope of a positive pregnancy test for a chronically infertile couple. Or the slippery and fragile hope of a brand new widow learning how to manage the finances that had been handled all those years by her dearly departed. Yes, there is hope of good things to come. But such hope has come at great cost.
I encourage you to read Ryan’s piece before continuing, because I would like to build on what he wrote there.
Study Bibles are typically quick to point out that chapters 1 through 4 of Lamentations are all acrostics in the original Hebrew, where each verse begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet in order. In other words, if it were English, verse 1 would start with the letter A, verse two with the letter B, and so on. However, chapter 3 triples the pattern, which is why that chapter has 3 times as many verses. In that chapter, verses 1, 2, and 3 all start with the first letter of the alphabet, verses 4, 5, and 6 with the second letter, and so on.
Now while studying Lamentations 3, I recently read Christopher Wright’s commentary (Bible Speaks Today series), and he observed that there are two places in the chapter where all three verses in a group start with not only the same letter but with the same word. That more emphatic repetition draws closer attention to those stanzas.
The first such stanza is Lam 3:25-27, which all begin with the Hebrew word that gets translated as “good.” Good is Yahweh to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him (Lam 3:25). Good it is that one should wait quietly for Yahweh’s salvation (Lam 3:26). Good it is for a man to bear the yoke in his youth (Lam 3:27).
These three reminders of what is good, good, good, take on a crucial role in the poem. In the first 18 verses, the poet took a number of metaphors from the Psalms, such as “Yahweh is my shepherd” and “Yahweh is a mighty warrior,” and he gave them a sinister spin, such that this shepherd has apparently turned the weapons of his warfare against his own sheep. In the midst of such raw feelings and wrestlings, it is critical to recall what is good, good, good.
And note that he does not say that “my suffering is good.” No, he says Yahweh is good. And it is good that my suffering makes me wait for him to show up and rescue. And it is good to learn such patient waiting while we’re young. All of this deepens our trust that our greatest hope is not even the fact that Yahweh’s love and mercy never cease (Lam 3:22-23); our greatest hope is that, at the end of all this suffering and waiting, we get more of him as our share of inheritance (Lam 3:24). Yahweh is my portion; therefore I will hope in him.
So when we go through hard times, let’s make sure to get our definitions right of what is good, good, good.
Wright observes that the second stanza with a repeated word at the start of all three lines is Lam 3:31-33. And that word is typically translated as “for.” But this stanza is the second one we should look to for special emphasis.
In these three verses, the poet takes the glorious truths of Lam 3:19-30 and applies them to the dark feelings of Lam 3:1-18. This stanza shows the poet in action, fighting vigorously for that fragile hope in the midst of his agony. This is what it looks like to take truth and apply it to circumstances or feelings.
According to Lam 3:31, the Lord is, without question, the one who has cast him off. His circumstances are not the product of blind fate, angry enemies, or a callous universe. His situation has been decreed from God (“Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” Lam 3:38). The Lord has cast him off. But he will not do so forever. His mercies never come to an end.
According to Lam 3:32, the Lord is the one who has caused the poet grief. But that is not the end of the story. His steadfast, covenant love never ceases. This love is so abundant that it is bound to spill over and pour out in compassion.
According to Lam 3:33, the Lord afflicts and grieves the children of men. Again, they are not victims to competing forces of good and evil striving for supremacy. No, the Lord has done it. But he does not do it from his heart. His heart toward his people is not one of disappointment and condemnation. His heart of hearts is one of compassionate love.
So often in life, hope comes only after a hard fight. Fight to admit how hard life really is. Fight to believe what you know to be true. Fight to confess God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one behind all you are going through. If he is responsible for having gotten you into this mess, then only he can truly be responsible to get you out of it. Jesus died and rose to make it happen. The process of learning this and waiting for him to show up and make it right is so good for you and me. That is what inspires us to hope and to trust that what we most need is more of the Lord himself. However fragile that hope may be amid deep affliction.
Joe Carter highlights “5 Ways to Read the Bible for Personal Application.” He explores the idea that the Bible wasn’t written to us but for us. So it ought to shape our lives, but not always by means of direct commands. Those 5 ways are:
These are helpful categories for us to consider the manifold means by which we may connect the truth of the Bible to our lives today. The main caveat I would want to add is that, before we attempt to apply a Bible passage, we should first grasp the author’s main point for his audience. Many of the errors Carter enumerates would be solved if we were to apply the authors’ main points instead of isolated sentences that simply strike our fancy.
Earlier this week, I completed my 2022 Bible readthrough, which was nothing short of a delightful romp through the Scriptures. I always appreciate seeing what new connections the Lord may bring to my attention as I read rapidly.
And one thing that especially struck me this year was the potter metaphor used of the Lord throughout the prophets. This may have been on my mind because my church small group recently studied Romans 9 and discussed the potter metaphor in Rom 9:20-21. I had not fully considered before how Paul draws this imagery from the Old Testament.
When Paul says “Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?'” (Rom 9:20), he appears to be drawing directly on Isaiah 29:16: “You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” The context of Isaiah 29 is that of God’s people drawing near to him in their rituals while their hearts remain far from him, attempting to hide from their maker their dark deeds. Paul uses it to support his larger point that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Just because God made some people ethnically Jewish, but still exerts his wrath on their unbelief, does not make him unjust.
The connection I found even more interesting is that with Jeremiah 18:1-12, which I will quote in full:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.
Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the LORD, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’
“But they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’
Jeremiah 18:1-12, ESV
Jeremiah uses the authority-of-the-potter-over-the-clay metaphor to explain that God himself may change course and treat his people differently than he had predicted if they either repent from, or turn toward, evil. This point is especially striking in the background of Romans 9, where, even after calling unbelieving Israelites “not my people” and “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,” Paul goes on to express his heart’s desire and his prayer to God that they might still be saved (Rom 10:1). In other words, though the Lord has promised to uproot Israel and remove its branch from his tree (Rom 11:11-24), as soon as they repent and set their hope in Jesus the Messiah, he stands more than ready to smush their clay and begin again with them as a clean and holy vessel.
So I’m glad that Romans was on my brain when my rapid reading took me through the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah. With such broad Bible reading, such connections and allusions are more likely to stand out and stick.
For those of you willing to try such rapid reading for yourself, don’t forget we’ve currently got a reading challenge underway with a pretty terrific grand prize.
