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Bible Studies Understanding Scripture
How to Read the Bible
Where to start, how to read a book rather than a verse, and what to do when a passage will not open up.
The Bible is a library, not a book, and most difficulty reading it comes from treating it as one flat thing. This study is about how to open it well.
What you’ll explore
- 01 Where to start if you have never read it through
- 02 Reading a whole book instead of a single verse
- 03 Context: who wrote this, to whom, and why
- 04 Knowing what kind of writing you are in
- 05 Reading the Old Testament as a Christian
- 06 What to do with a passage you do not understand
- 07 Reading with other people
Where to start if you have never read it through
Read Luke 1:1-4; Genesis 1:1-2:3
Luke opens by telling Theophilus he has investigated carefully so that he may have certainty — a gospel is a good place to begin because it is a narrative with a person at the centre. Mark is the shortest; Luke the most orderly. Genesis and Exodus give you the story everything else assumes.
Reading a whole book instead of a single verse
Read Philippians 4:10-13
Verse 13 — "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" — sits in a paragraph about contentment in plenty and in hunger. Read alone it becomes a slogan about achievement; read in place it is about endurance. Chapter and verse numbers were added centuries later and are addresses, not units of meaning.
Context: who wrote this, to whom, and why
Read 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; 1 Corinthians 7:1
Paul’s letters are addressed to named congregations with specific problems, and he sometimes says so — "now concerning the matters about which you wrote". Knowing that 1 Corinthians answers a series of questions changes how you read its answers. Most study Bibles put this information in a short introduction; it is worth the two minutes.
Knowing what kind of writing you are in
Read Psalm 18:7-15; 2 Samuel 22
Psalm 18 describes God’s rescue with smoke, coals, darkness and lightning; 2 Samuel 22 is the same poem. Poetry is not making historical claims in the way a chronicle is, and reading either as the other produces confusion. Law, genealogy, proverb, prophecy, gospel, letter and apocalypse all work differently.
Reading the Old Testament as a Christian
Read Luke 24:25-27, 44-47
The risen Jesus interprets Moses and the Prophets as being about himself. Christians have read the Old Testament this way from the beginning, and it is a theological reading — the church’s conviction — held alongside, not instead of, understanding what those books meant to Israel. Both readings matter and they are not the same act.
What to do with a passage you do not understand
Read Acts 8:30-31; 2 Peter 3:15-16
Philip asks the Ethiopian if he understands, and the man says how can I unless someone guides me. Peter concedes that some things in Paul are hard to understand. Mark it, read around it, ask somebody — the honest response to a difficult passage is not a manufactured answer.
Reading with other people
Read Nehemiah 8:7-8; Acts 17:11
In Nehemiah the Levites read and gave the sense, so the people understood. The Bereans examined the Scriptures daily to check what Paul was telling them, and Luke calls that noble. Reading in company is both older and safer than reading only alone.
Questions to sit with
- Which whole book will you read next, start to finish?
- What verse do you quote often and have never read in context?
- Who could you read with?
Every passage in this study
Go deeper
Where this connects
This study sits inside a larger story. Read the passages above in their own books, and follow the thread back through Scripture as a whole.