How to Read the Bible With Understanding

Have you ever picked up a book written in old English or by a scholar who found-and used-the biggest words in the dictionary? If you’re like me, your first reaction is to put the book down and forget all about it. If someone recommended the book to me, I might put forth a little effort and try to wade through it just to please that person, but what I’d be likely to do while reading is:

• Skip over parts that I don’t understand, or at least skim read them.

• Read without trying to understand since I know I can’t anyway, and since I don’t have the dedication to the book to actually use a dictionary while reading.

• Leave the deeper understanding to someone else who can tell me what it means, rather than try to understand for myself.

Now, it’s one thing to make a habit of these practices when reading a book that won’t have any major effect on the rest of my life, but it’s another thing entirely when I read the Bible using the same method. Isn’t that what we often do? There are certain parts of the Bible we brush over, knowing (we think) that they are nearly impossible for us to understand, and we don’t want to strain our brains too much in trying to understand. I’d like to suggest that if there’s any book in the entire world in which we should move beyond just reading and learn how to understand, it’s the Bible. Why try to understand?

• Growth/Relationship- As believers, we have a relationship with our heavenly Father that we didn’t have before, and our desire should be to build that relationship; to learn to know our Father intimately. Because He is God, and our Creator, we can never exhaust what there is to know about Him, and our lives should be spent in growing to know Him better. “My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” (Philippians 3:10) “Let us strive to know the LORD…” (Hosea 6:3)

Growth in our understanding of God will produce growth in our personal lives. The Bible speaks to us specifically about this kind of growth, “But grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (II Peter 3:18) “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head- Christ.” (Ephesians 4:15)

• Evangelism/Discipleship- According to God’s command in His Word, we are to share the Gospel with others, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation.” (Mark 16:15) Don’t you agree that it would be hard to fulfill this command if we don’t understand the Bible ourselves? Along with the command to evangelize, we’re commanded to make disciples, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:19,20) “And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” (II Timothy 2:2)

Since we now see the need to understand, here are some tools to help us:

• Prayer- Without God’s presence, and our recognition of our need for Him, we won’t understand a thing.

• God’s Word- It’s interesting to note that many times when there’s a “problem passage” in the Bible, other passages explain it. Look for those Bible explanations for Bible passages.

• Dictionary- No matter what you’re reading, it’s good to have a dictionary close at hand for when you run across words you don’t understand. In this case, there are Bible dictionaries we can use.

• Concordance- In the back of your Bible is a concordance of words that are frequently looked for. Verses are listed that deal directly with the specific topics listed. This is a great quick reference help. There are also whole concordance books.

• Commentaries- Although we need to be careful when looking at commentaries for help (the authors aren’t inspired), they can be a great help in understanding difficult passages.

• Bible study books- Often it helps to get specific Bible study books to help us study specific topics. That way we can learn how to study the Bible, and have outside help in understanding the study.

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