For my birthday I’d like to have another “guest post” from my dad. His essays were essentially a cross between a zine and a blog. He’d print them on our old dot matrix and hand them out to anyone who would listen. Sometimes it’d take him years to come up with the right words to convey what he was trying to teach, and teach he did. This was written in the mid 90’s, before the internet, and yet it seems we still haven’t learned these simple truths.

by: Dan Conley

Guidelines For Studying Scripture

In our present cultural environment with its, “do everything you can as fast as you can” mentality, it is becoming quite common for people to become sloppy in their methods of Bible study. Unfortunately, many Christians, Sunday School teachers and even pastors are guilty of this improper type of studying. If we truly value God’s word we should always take the time to study it correctly, and as II Timothy 2:14-15 reminds us:

“Remind them of these things,(see verses 1-13 for context) and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless, and leads to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.”

Here are a few simple guidelines that can help in developing “accurate” Bible study methods and habits.

The Donts

  1. Don’t forget that the Bible is written history and more importantly, it is God’s written
    word to all of mankind. Also, His word is true. All of it!

  2. Never use a fragmented style of Bible study. What this means is that we should not be taking verses from several areas of the Bible and then make a “doctrine” or interpretation from them. This is dangerous! Many cult groups use this method all the
    time.

  3. Never superimpose our western culture or methods of reasoning over Scripture. The Bible is a Jewish book with their form of thinking and culture. Many errors in interpretation are made because of this one oversight.

  4. Never use a “paraphrase” translation of the Bible if you intend to do serious Bible study. A paraphrase is fine for personal reading and devotions, but can come up short when used for more serious study. This is because a paraphrase is from an existing translation, not from the original manuscripts. Make sure you know the difference.

The Do’s

  1. Always read the whole book you are studying, or as much of a passage as you can in order to establish the proper “theme” of the book (or letter) and to keep the “context” in tact.

  2. Know something about the “human” author of the book you are studying. It does make a difference! Remember that God’s Word was written by Hebrew people, not gentiles!

  3. Remind yourself of the historical time in which the book was written. The Bible wasn’t written yesterday! How we look at things today is NOT how they saw them several
    thousand years ago.

  4. Make use of good Bible study helps such as: Clarke’s Commentary, Vines Expository Dictionary, Strongs’ or Youngs’ Concordance, etc.

  5. Most importantly! Be sure to remember that God is the overall author of the Bible and whatever conclusion or interpretation you come up with must be consistent with His overall character. If your conclusions distort, or cause contradictions between different parts of His character in any way, then you need to go back and see what was
    overlooked in your study process. God does not make mistakes,… We do!

It is true that there are things in the Bible that we will not be able to know or understand. I Corinthians 13: 12, tells us; “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” It is also true, however, that we invite, and produce our own problems in interpretation when we fail to use proper Bible study methods or ‘hermeneutics’. A few short excerpts from the book, ‘Biblical Revelation’ by Clark H. Pinnock(1971, Moody Press, Chicago, Ill.; p.208, 209, 211) may help us to better understand this problem:

1) “Because Scripture is capable of being twisted and mishandled (2 Pe.3:15-16; 2 Cor. 2:17), it is imperative to observe rules of a sound hermeneutic. A loose hermeneutic can destroy the meaning of inspiration altogether, and may be a cloak for denial of biblical teachings.” p.208

2) “Hermenneutics is the science of correctly interpreting God’s Word, of observing principles whereby the Scriptures are devoutly and profoundly read. It is a process of meaning-extraction, of bringing out the sense of the Bible by means of principles Scripture itself supplies.” p.209

3) “Nonliteral methods of interpretation have been responsible for countless perversions of biblical truth.” p.211

” The irony of the information age is that it has given respectability to uninformed opinion!” (Quote from veteran reporter John Lawton, age 68, Speaking to the American Association of Broadcast Journalists in 1995)