Reading the Bible for a Change, Second Edition: Understanding and Responding to God's Word

By Ray Lubeck

Which Bible passages are for Christians today and which relate only to ancient readers? Can I simply pick and choose for myself the verses I think best fit my situation? Who gets to decide? Is there a different meaning for each individual reader? What am I supposed to know to read the Bible well?
Ray Lubeck has devoted his life to helping others discern for themselves God's truth in the Scriptures and to showing them how it relates to their everyday lives. Reading the Bible for a Change will guide you in how to:
-Read each biblical passage in light of its literary style and larger context
-Ask and explore the most fruitful questions for understanding the meaning of a passage
-Avoid common interpretive mistakes
-Hear God, the divine Author, speak through the Bible's human authors
-Identify the life-changing truths of Scripture that apply to life today
-Move beyond merely reading the Bible to being shaped by and following it

Having taught for over three decades at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as in many ministry contexts, Ray values the importance of holding the interest of students of the Bible. This book is written in an accessible and engaging style, using illustrations, charts, stories, and relevant examples to help the reader grasp key concepts. The second edition has been extensively revised in light of recent scholarly developments and years of use within the classroom, incorporating substantial amounts of updates and new material.
Reading the Bible for a Change will equip you with the tools to discover for yourself the life-changing truths revealed in God's word. If you begin practicing these steps, you will embark on a lifetime journey of Scripture reading that will enable you to see for yourself how captivating and transforming it is when we read the Bible on its own terms rather than on ours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Feb 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666765564

Ray Lubeck

Ray Lubeck is a Professor of Bible and Theology at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon. With a B.S. from Multnomah, an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a D. Th. from the University of South Africa, and graduate studies at Regent College and Jerusalem University College, he is considered by many to be an expert in Bible interpretation and its relation to contemporary culture. He is the author of Swallowing Jonah (2011), Read the Bible for a Change, 1st ed. (2005) and has contributed chapters to Text and Canon: Essays in Honor of John H. Sailhamer (2017), Is My Bible the Inspired Word of God (2007), Preaching to a Shifting Culture (2004), and to the Starting Point Study Bible (2002).

Book preview

Reading the Bible for a Change

Understanding and Responding to God’s Word

Second Edition

Ray Lubeck

Reading the Bible for a Change

Understanding and Responding to God’s Word, Second Edition

Copyright ©

2023

Ray Lubeck. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-6554-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-6555-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-6556-4

01/06/23

Cover art and internal illustrations by Andrew Imamura

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©

1973

,

1978

,

1984

,

2011

by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV®. Copyright ©

2001

by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked CSB are taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, CSB®. Copyright ©

2017

by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

In biblical quotations from these versions, "the

Lord

has been replaced with Yahweh." All emphasis has been added.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgments (First Edition)

Acknowledgments (Second Edition)

Prologue: Splitting Hairs over Biblical Interpretation

Part I: Getting Started

Chapter 1: Come, Follow Me

Chapter 2: Booking It through the Bible

Part II: Stepping Up

Chapter 3: Three Things, Even Four

Chapter 4: Come and See

Chapter 5: It’s All a Matter of Interpretation

Chapter 6: Making Connections

Chapter 7: Taking It Personally

Part III: Knowing Your Type

Chapter 8: The Plot Thickens

Chapter 9: A Well-Turned Phrase

Chapter 10: Here’s the Point

Chapter 11: Genre-ally Speaking

Part IV: Putting It All into Practice

Chapter 12: Narrative: Gleaning Truth

Chapter 13: Poetry: A Prayer, a Prophet, and a Promise

Chapter 14: Discourse: Multiple Thoughts on Single-Mindedness

Continuing the Journey

Epilogue: Through the Forest

Postscript: Further Up and Further In

Appendix 1: Form-ally Speaking

Appendix 2: Bible as Literature Summary

Bibliography

Ray Lubeck is a wonderful guide for anyone who wants not simply to read the Bible but to understand and follow it: its words, its arguments, its overarching story line, and the one it is about: Jesus Christ. The whole book is preparation for the journey of Bible reading as discipleship, the life project of following Christ, of grafting the story of our life onto his. Take and read. Take and follow!

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Reading this book took me back twenty-five years to the transformative experience I had sitting under Ray Lubeck’s teaching. He opened a whole new world to me, equipping me to read the Bible well and igniting my desire to do so. Ray has continued to develop and hone his approach to Bible study since then. What you hold in your hands, if put into practice, has the potential to revolutionize your understanding of Scripture.

—Carmen Joy Imes, associate professor of Old Testament, Talbot School of Theology

Allow Ray Lubeck to take you on a wise yet accessible journey into how to interpret the Bible. You will have your eyes trained for clues to the meaning of the biblical text carefully placed within its historical, literary, and theological contexts before seeing how the text relates to your contemporary situation. If you have ever wanted to gain the skills for reading Scripture, this helpful primer in biblical interpretation honed over years with students of the Bible, will not disappoint.

—Mark J. Boda, professor of Old Testament, McMaster Divinity College

"Ray Lubeck’s Reading the Bible for a Change is an outstanding textbook for teaching Christians how to engage in serious Bible study and interpretation. This work is very reader-friendly, guiding the student through important, often complex issues of analysis and interpretation, while presenting this material in a very understandable manner, supported by helpful examples. I highly recommend it!"

—J. Daniel Hays, professor of Old Testament, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

The second edition of this volume is an excellent entryway into the heart of the interpretive task. Like a seasoned sherpa, Ray Lubeck guides readers along the literary landscape of the biblical canon with careful attention to textual detail and instructive awareness of the Bible’s full scope. Warmly recommended!

—Ched Spellman, associate professor of biblical and theological studies, Cedarville University

"Reading the Bible for a Change is accessible, instructive, and inviting. In it, Ray Lubeck shows himself to be a storyteller and a master-teacher. If you are wanting a trustworthy guide to help you engage or re-engage the Bible, look no further."

—Jeannine K. Brown, professor of New Testament, Bethel Seminary

To my wife, Tamara,

whose buoyant enthusiasm for this work, unflagging encouragement, selfless support, daily sacrifices, long-term patience, probing questions, persistent challenges, creative suggestions, clear-sighted critique, prayers, and faithful love have made this book possible and my life far richer.

Preface to the Second Edition

One of the great joys and challenges of teaching people how to think, evaluate, and learn independently is that they begin thinking, evaluating, and learning in such an independent way. Those of us who teach find that students begin weighing what we say, not assuming we’re always correct, but sometimes pushing back. While it seems obvious that teachers would delight in seeing their students’ thinking evolve in this way, many instead become defensive, protective of their own professional titles, role, degrees, experience, etc. They might not admit it, they might not even be aware of it, but it is nonetheless an occupational hazard. On the flip side, it is possible to take their take seriously, listening to them and modeling for them that effective teaching requires ongoing learning, and students can be a priceless asset to this process.

Most of the changes from the first to the second edition of this book arose from such dialogue with students (both present and past). Throughout this interaction, it became increasingly clear to me that improvements were necessary. This second edition is thus not merely cosmetic or wordsmithing, but rather it is a complete, line-by-line revision.

These are the most significant modifications. First, the former title, Read the Bible for a Change, never sat well with me. In fact, it was not my initial title idea, but was given by the original publisher of the book. While I appreciate wordplay (as you will see throughout), the imperative voice, in my judgment, smacked of being accusatory, implying that people weren’t reading their Bibles and should begin doing so for a change. I still like the play on words but have altered the title to Reading the Bible for a Change. Hopefully it will be apparent that the emphasis is on life-changing ways of reading the Bible.

Some important changes are related to the terminology employed throughout the book. Due to developments in the field of Old Testament studies, the helpfulness of Wisdom Literature as a literary category is rightly being challenged. In light of this, I’ve altered my terminology to proverbial literature for describing one of the literary genres presented in the book. Additionally, I’ve adopted new vocabulary for identifying poetic parallelism. In the first edition, I used the outdated but more common terms synonymous and "synthetic" parallelism. I have now replaced these with the more accurate designations echoing and progressing. I also have preferred talking about symmetry in biblical poetry as opposed to the oft-abused term chiasm.

More significantly, the third step of my proposed four-step approach has been completely re-envisioned. Formerly, it was designated Sharing, but I also had to define that term specially and technically. Furthermore, my four steps didn’t actually deal with what I am convinced are some of the most exciting aspects of Bible study: theological interpretation, intertextuality, and biblical theology. So I’ve relabeled the third step as Connecting, rewriting the entire chapter (chapter 6) and integrating the new terminology throughout the whole book for coherence and integrity. It is my hope that this newly improved third step, which represents my own evolution of thought, may be particularly stimulating for you, the reader.

For each of the three literary types (i.e., narrative, poetry, discourse) I have an entire chapter-long model that illustrates how I walk through the four steps of Bible study. In the previous edition, I used 3 John as my test case for studying discourse. It was the shortest of the example chapters and unfortunately offered the least by way of demonstrating the method. So in this edition, I have instead used the book of Philippians (chapter 14). In so doing, I believe that it is now one of the stronger chapters. My hope is that it will present a more comprehensive and nuanced illustration of how to follow biblical discourse, as well as offer some new insights into the message of Philippians itself.

In addition to the full rewriting of the chapters mentioned above, the second edition incorporates two brand new chapters. Chapter 11, on the genres of biblical literature, revises and expands material that was previously relegated to the appendix. The new postscript offers some practical advice for those interested in digging even deeper in their personal study of Scripture.

Furthermore, I recruited a graphic artist and a second advisor to redo all of the visual illustrations throughout the book. I think that you will find both greater consistency of style as well as well as aesthetic creativity.

My target audience for this book is now even broader. I want this work to be understandable for beginning learners, home Bible studies, classes in local churches, introductory courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and one-on-one discipleship and personal study by believers generally. Having received testimonies of the first edition being used in these contexts, I’ve tried to bear in mind these various audiences while preparing the second edition. Hopefully, the main text will now better connect with each of these readerships.

Another new element in the second edition is the very substantial expansion of the footnotes and bibliography. These help to identify where the cutting edge is for more advanced learners, tailored to those who wish to dive into specific topics in more detail. The sources cited are nearly always the most current editions (as of the publication of this book) and the most groundbreaking works. I’ve occasionally included Hebrew and Greek words and phrases (always accompanied by a translation) for those who have at least some acquaintance with the original languages of the Bible. If you’re not interested in the advanced stuff, then you may simply ignore these. But if you do desire to explore the material in the notes, you (thankfully!) no longer have to turn to endnotes at the back of the book, as was the case with the first edition.

Among other changes, the new edition has been structured into four parts (Getting Started, Stepping Up, Knowing Your Type, and Putting It All into Practice), which should streamline navigating the book, particularly for independent readers. Also, three indexes have been supplied at the end of the work, which will enable the reader to quickly find references to a specific subject, author, and/or biblical text.

Beyond the major alterations described above, the careful reader will also notice smaller updates to sources, examples, explanations, and more throughout. Overall, the second edition represents a comprehensive, much-improved reworking of the entire book. For those who would ask if the second edition is notably different from the first, and therefore worth buying, I would simply say, Yes!

Acknowledgments (First Edition)

This book is the product of many years of reflection, development, and refinement. Though my name is credited as the author, the ideas expressed in it have been generated through collaborative conversations and interactions involving many voices who rightly deserve credit for that which is both insightful and beneficial to the reader.

Thank you to Mickey Day, a former professor of mine at Multnomah University where I currently teach. It was under his teaching, more than any other person’s, that it first dawned upon me that reading the Bible and thinking can and should be attempted simultaneously. I consider his insights to have provided the ignition spark to my lifelong desire to see and study God’s Word in all its power. And it continues to be a source of joy that this relationship continues to this day.

David Sanford recognized the potential in my ideas to equip those who wish to study the Bible. He spearheaded the development of the Starting Point Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), and convincingly impressed upon me the need to share my discoveries with a larger audience of readers. It is in this study Bible that some of my own thoughts were first made available in print. He also pressed me firmly but kindly to develop my thoughts into a book-length text and coached me through all the steps of becoming a first-time author. His confidence and enthusiasm have been a driving force behind all my efforts, culminating in the book in your hands.

Vern Steiner, a kindred spirit, brought penetrating questions and outside-the-box suggestions at the perfect time to catalyze a much-needed paradigm shift in my terminology.

I am also indebted to the thousands of students and over a hundred lab instructors who have field-tested the steps and strategies I present in this book throughout the Bible Study Methods, Advanced Bible Study, Hermeneutics, and Biblical Interpretation courses that I’ve taught at Multnomah. Their questions, suggestions, challenges, and insights have precipitated my thinking in countless ways and occasions.

Acknowledgments (Second Edition)

In this second edition of the book, the entire process was even more of a collaborative, team effort. Giving advice, recommendations, and support was Chereé Hayes, who urged me to tell more of my stories and bring more of my classroom communication style to the written text. I am thus thankful to Chereé, for helping me to stay grounded in the world of real people. Carissa Quinn also prompted me to consider additional aspects to share in this book. Because of her alacrity and (always graciously given) keen insights, I addressed and incorporated here my ideas on every one of the topics she raised. The day job for both of them is with BibleProject. And speaking of BibleProject (https://bibleproject.com/), thank you to Tim Mackie and the entire team for modeling many of these methods to a far wider, global audience through their videos than I could have ever hoped to have reached. The impact of their ministry has extended to countless people.

The illustrations throughout the entire book are the original artwork of Andrew Imamura, in collaboration with Curtis Bell. I am grateful to both of them for the many hours they invested to make the reading experience more inviting and the ideas clearer through their God-given gifts and willing hearts. Curtis also offered many large-scale ideas on topics to be engaged as well as formatting everything. He and his wife Annie have adapted and refined these materials extensively in their ministry in Kauai. Mahalo to both of them! Thanks too to Patrick Vestal, for being committed to teaching these methods for so many years both in numerous classes at Multnomah as well as in church ministry, and for mentoring so many others in how to teach yet others.

Sheri Richter and Matt Quintana are partners and co-workers in the kingdom. I offer again my thanks for giving the entire afternoon each week throughout the summer of 2022 to meetings with my wife Tamara and me, and for their enthusiastic investment of time and energy since the conception of a second edition. Their insights, and their boldness to push back and influence me in strategic decisions, have helped to shape my ideas on nearly every page, and catalyzed major changes. Their stimulating discussion, creative thinking, whole-hearted support, and genuine love that they have so willingly given have been invaluable. Matt in particular pored over every detail of copy-editing, formatting, indexing, bibliographic suggestions, wording, and catching and cleaning up many mistakes at all dimensions of the content. If any flaws in thinking have weathered his scrutiny, be assured that they rest entirely on the author.

I extend my deepest gratitude and respect to each of those mentioned above, though these words are mere echoes of my affection for each of them. And you, dear reader, will also be blessed by them and their faithful service as you take up this book. And when you meet them in heaven (or before), give them a hug and a well-earned Thank you!

Prologue

Splitting Hairs over Biblical Interpretation

Forty pairs of widened eyes, together with one pair of narrowed ones, turned to fix upon me, or rather upon my head, which I quickly ducked down. I could feel the collective weight of everyone’s gaze upon me. I sat in stunned silence. My own eyes shifted down to my lap, where my Bible lay opened to the passage from which my high school Sunday school teacher, an energetic and forceful matriarch within our conservative church, had just read. I could feel my ears get hot and redden and was grateful that they were covered under my long, dark brown hair that curled down to my shoulder line. I liked that my hair covered those embarrassed and embarrassing ears, which, as a sophomore, I still had not grown into. However, it was that very hair that was precisely the cause of my teacher’s penetrating, accusatory glare. The words from 1 Cor 11:14 seemed to hang dangling in the air over my head:

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him . . . ?¹

As the man in the room with clearly the longest hair, her battering-ram attack was clearly targeted at my head, my hair, and my, well . . . shame. I was vaguely aware that she was now pointing out vigorously what this passage was saying, about the unnaturalness of men with long hair, and how important it was for this passage to be applied today by anyone claiming to follow God. But I wasn’t really paying close attention anymore. Instead, after the initial numbing, my brain shifted into overdrive; thoughts of shame, defensiveness, guilt, blame, unfairness, and excuse were careening around my consciousness. Forcing myself into distraction—a favorite coping mechanism of mine—I focused on the Bible in front of me. My eyes fell upon the part of the text immediately after the damning passage, the rest of the sentence that she curiously had not read:

. . . and isn’t long hair a woman’s pride and joy? (

1

Cor

11:15

a)²

Not daring to look up, I couldn’t help picturing her own hair, certainly not more than two inches in length anywhere on her head. Well, she’s certainly not too joyous herself, I thought. My eyes skipped back to verse directly before:

Judge for yourselves. Is it right for a woman to pray to God in public without covering her head? (

11

:

13

)

At this, it was my own eyes that widened: Hey! She already opened the class in prayer, and she’s not wearing any kind of hat at all! I went back to the beginning of the chapter with genuine interest, reading my way down to verse 6:

Yes, if she refuses to wear a head covering, she should cut off all of her hair! But since it is shameful for a woman to have her hair cut or head shaved, she should wear a covering. (

11

:

6

)

My perverse sense of humor kicked in at this point. I ducked my head further to ensure that my smirk was hidden as I imagined what this four-feet-ten­-inch tall dynamo would look like bald.

Then one of those moments occurred that seems to stand as a defining moment in life, a crossroads event that has continuing consequences for life. I know, I thought, she put me on the spot in front of all my friends with her attack, but I can regain a measure of respect from my friends. I’ll simply raise my hand and ask her why she doesn’t obey the Bible either. My hand started up, got to about shoulder height, and then, for some reason that I cannot pinpoint to this day, I let it drop. I let my hand drop; I let the issue drop. I didn’t chicken out, I just decided, for some urgent but completely unidentifiable reason, not to push it right then.

Ever since, I’ve been thankful that the Holy Spirit vetoed my intent that morning. You see, about ten years later, I ended up marrying her grand­daughter. By then my hair was shorter, though it had nothing to do with her lesson that morning. To her dying day, I never brought it up again. But I’ve always been glad that I chose not to battle her or publicly challenge her inconsistency—it would have made for a very awkward way to begin a relationship with future in-laws!

But in another sense, I never did let it drop. The unfairness and the selectivity she showed when using her Bible bothered me. I’m pretty sure that if I had spoken up to challenge her, she would have claimed that the requirement for women to wear head coverings was something that only related to the first century and was no longer binding upon people today. Whether or not a woman wears a hat or long hair nowadays simply does not mean what it did during the first century in that ancient culture. But that argument seems unsatisfactory to me. Would not the same point apply equally to the long hair issue for men in the same passage? And more importantly, what is stopping any person from using that same line on any passage that they simply don’t want to obey?

I came away from that Sunday school class filled with questions, ones that have stayed with me for many years:

•Who gets to decide which verses from the Bible are to be followed and which can be safely ignored?

•Are some of God’s commands just relevant to ancient, far away people and therefore not really God’s Word to us today?

•Are there any reliable guidelines for deciding? How can anyone be sure?

•Is it just me, or does this sound like some kind of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t interpretive game played by people in authority?

•Is following God’s Word something as simple as picking and choosing for ourselves which verses we prefer to obey, or that we really want others to obey?

•If it is just a matter of our own preferences (my interpretation), then how can God hold any of us accountable for whether or not we have followed it?

•Why is it that people seem to know better how to apply the Bible to others than to themselves?

At the time, I knew nothing about terms like hermeneutics, exegesis, epistemology, or illocution. Though I lacked the more precise vocabulary that I have since gained, the questions bouncing around in my sixteen-year-old brain continued to tumble through my thinking like shoes in a clothes dryer during the rest of my educational pilgrimage—through high school, into my studies in Bible college, through my graduate and seminary work, and ultimately through my doctoral program.

Five Key Realizations

Several key realizations have revolutionized my Bible reading journey. The first realization is the importance of looking at the big picture—seeing the much larger contexts of any particular passage that I’m reading. Toward the end of the twentieth century two developments in interpretive theory (referred to as hermeneutics) contributed to a renewed interest in this: literary approaches to reading the Bible and canonical approaches to Scripture. Since then, three related movements have all emerged:

•First, theological interpretation rediscovered what was recognized for centuries but had been eclipsed by historical background studies of the post-Enlightenment era: the value of the Bible lies in its theological truths, rather than the ancient world that produced it.

•Second, there was a renewed interest in the study of storyline of the entire Bible, the overarching metanarrative that connects its many parts into a whole.

•And third, with this came an interest in tracing how the Bible seemingly everywhere refers to other parts of the Bible (referred to as intertextuality).

Without getting bogged down in the history or details of these, there is a fundamental insight they all share: we must read biblical books as a unified whole, not merely as isolated passages. While all of us would agree in principle that it’s best to read things in context, most Bible readers have a very poor track record in practicing it. Looking for spiritual gems in short passages or single verses seems to be the norm for us, whether in preaching, Bible study groups, or in personal devotional reading. I believe, along with a growing number of others, that we must take seriously the importance of grasping the big idea(s) of entire biblical books.

A second realization is the importance of recognizing the literary style of the passage we’re reading. This includes both identifying the literary categories to which it belongs (its type and genre) as well as other techniques and patterns the author may be using (its forms and elements of style). Since reading is best done in context, determining how an author has packaged his thoughts is crucial to understanding the message and purpose of a text. Isaiah’s prophecies, David’s psalms, and Paul’s epistles communicate truth very differently from one another. The literary categories I discuss throughout this book are not something arbitrary that I’ve made up or forced upon the text; instead, they are an earnest attempt at describing the patterns, techniques, features, and literary cues given to us. By paying attention to the way these books are written, we can learn how these books are teaching us from the books themselves. The goal here is to track carefully the patterns, methods, and other literary cues that the biblical authors themselves have employed.

A third realization that has changed my approach to the Bible is the conviction that my goal in interpreting Scripture is not to see what I can get out of the text, but to identify and understand what God has put into the text. I am to recognize, to re-think, and to follow God’s own thoughts, which through inspiration he has communicated via a human author. I can only submit to God’s voice if I am listening for his intent. I must avoid hijacking the text to serve my own selfish desires, interests, or preferences—whether by accident or purposefully.

A fourth realization is that there are universal and eternal qualities about God’s Word that make it different from any other ancient piece of literature. We don’t read Bible stories just because they tell historically reliable facts about events of the past. Nor do we read biblical poetry just because it is aesthetically pleasant. Neither do we read the epistles to see what long-dead people used to say to one another in ancient letters. The Bible has an enduring quality, certain timeless truths and insights, that can be shared by all people, of all time periods, living everywhere. These theological Truth claims are derived not only from propositions of doctrine, but also at the levels of the overall metanarrative storyline and our own worldview story. Learning how to identify these life-changing realities (i.e., Truth-with-a-capital-T revelation) is a crucial element in successfully following the Bible.

A fifth and final realization is that responding to the Bible correctly involves more than understanding it, more even than obeying it. It also involves what I call following it. Not every passage is intended to tell us what to do. Many biblical passages do other things—teach, encourage, challenge, comfort, convict, bless, warn, and so on. The biggest mistake of the Pharisees was assuming that the chief purpose of Scripture was to lay down the rules for proper behavior. Well-intentioned Bible readers today can easily make the same mistake when they view the entire Bible as this is what you’re supposed to do.

Goals of This Book

In retrospect, I realize that my main reason for challenging my Sunday school teacher in class that day wasn’t merely pettiness or self-defense. Nor was I moved by defiance or typical adolescent arrogance. Instead, I was searching for honest and satisfactory answers to questions such as those above—which, frankly, do not require academic degrees to answer satisfactorily.

In this book, I will try to share with you in simple terms the exciting insights that I’ve discovered in my own quest for finding God’s truth in his Word. After reading this book, you can expect the following:

•You will be able to identify the author’s style of writing in any biblical passage.

•By knowing the style, you will learn to ask and explore the most fruitful questions to grasp the meaning of the passage.

•You will see the importance of locating each passage within the entirety of the book and beyond.

•You will value not just reading the Bible, but what it really means to follow it, involving your heart, mind, imagination, and emotions in the process.

•If you begin practicing these steps, you will embark on a lifetime quest of Bible reading that will enable you to see for yourself how exciting and transforming it is when we read God’s Word on its own terms rather than on ours.

1

. Yes, of course she was reading from the King James Version, the only God-honoring English translation in her estimation.

2

. Compounding my guilt (in her eyes), I was reading in The Living Bible!

Part I

Getting Started

1

Come, Follow Me

Reading as Following

By definition, Christians are people who follow Christ. What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? At the simplest level, it means that we accept what he has taught as accurate and truthful. Beyond that, we also embrace these teachings as the guidelines for our lives. We use his life as the pattern for our own and learn from all the instruction he left to us. We do this by putting into practice what he taught.

But how do we know what he stood for? Virtually everything we need to know about Jesus is communicated to us in God’s Word, the Bible. It is in the Bible that we discover who Jesus is, why he came, what he did, what he taught, what he was willing to sacrifice his life for, and the plans that he has for those who know and love him.

Once when he was confronted by a Pharisee, a self-appointed expert on the commands given to Moses, Jesus got to the heart of the matter. In response to the question, Which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus answered,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets [i.e., the whole Bible] hang on these two commandments. (Matt

22

:

37

–

40

)

There are two interesting points in Jesus’s response here. The first is that the chief purpose of the Bible is to foster loving relationships with God and other people. The Bible’s primary purpose is not about governing our behaviors or restricting our desires. It is certainly not for enforcing our own preferences upon others. Rather, its focus is upon love, and on how we can grow in our understanding and expression of love. Bible reading truly accomplishes its intention only when we become more aware of how much we are loved, and so become more loving. The significance of our Bible study and teaching should center on the building of relationships with God and others: The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5).

The second point is the centrality of God’s Word itself. In this passage, as well as in many others, Jesus connects his own teaching to what has already been taught in previous Scriptures. Jesus’s teaching and his exemplary pattern of living are clearly grounded in a much larger story, the one that begins with the words In the beginning (Gen 1:1). Jesus lived in an intentional and strategic way in which he made continual reference to this larger plan laid out throughout the Bible. His origin, his values, his relationship with humanity, his relationship with the Father and the Spirit, his purpose, his authority, and his destiny were all related to living out (fulfilling) the Scriptures. He clearly did not come to set aside the Bible or to establish himself above it or independent from it.

Instead, we find him drawing on God’s Word by assuming its truthfulness, its authority, and its power to convince, refute, and change people’s lives. He resisted temptation by quoting Scripture (Matt 4:1–11), he taught in the synagogue from the Scriptures (Luke 4:16–22), he countered his opponents’ arguments by appealing to Scripture (Mark 12:24–27), he explained his mission on earth in terms of Scripture’s teaching (Matt 21:42–44), and he defended the Bible’s ongoing relevance and validity. All four gospel accounts both directly quote and draw innumerable parallels from previous Scripture, demonstrating how the entirety of God’s Word points to Christ.³

For believers to follow Jesus implies, among other things, adopting the same attitude toward God’s Word as he had. Becoming like Christ involves accepting his example as one who reads the Bible. It means defining ourselves and our purpose in life in light of the Bible. Following Christ also means practicing what the Bible says. Simply put, we cannot truthfully say that we are followers of Jesus if we neglect or refuse to obey what the Bible tells us, or if we use it in self-serving ways that are not what God originally intended.⁴

Simply put, we cannot truthfully say that we are followers of Jesus if we neglect or refuse to obey what the Bible tells us, or if we use it in self-serving ways that are not what God originally intended.

God speaks to us in the Bible. At the very least it is rude not to listen to someone else when they speak. When that someone else is the all-powerful God over all space and time in the entire cosmos, it is utterly foolish not to listen. When that someone is the most perfect lover ever, indeed the one who created love itself, and who further both proclaims and demonstrates his love for us in his Word—including me personally—it is absurd to not listen. But to claim to follow him while refusing to listen to what he is saying is delusional. If we do not submit to him, either through stubbornness, ignorance, or neglect, then we have no right to identify ourselves with him; in practice, we are actually opposing him. Loving God necessarily means obeying his Word: This is love for God: to obey his commands (1 John 5:3).⁵

It is crucial for our faith and growth that we become increasingly skilled at learning to read the Bible well. But in one very important sense, we should not strive for gaining mastery over the text of the Bible at all. This is because we are not its master, but rather the reverse; the Bible is to have mastery over our own lives, even to the point of calling upon us to sacrifice our petty interests to its higher and nobler demands.⁶ This book seeks to offer you help in how to receive the Bible on the right wavelength,⁷ in the way that God intended it, and consistent with his purposes.

What happens when we read or use Scripture in ways that are different from what God had in mind? Others have wisely pointed out that when people quit believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything.⁸ That is also precisely the case with his Word. When we no longer turn to God’s Word in order to listen for God’s own intentions, what happens is that even if we continue to use the Bible, we replace God’s purposes with our own. We may use the Bible to underwrite and give authority to our own opinions or to the topics that interest us, or to criticize others with whom we disagree.⁹ Or perhaps we believe that the Bible is too hard to understand or that it isn’t really relevant to our contemporary world, and so we replace it with other authorities¹⁰: new fads in church ministry, insights drawn from the fields of social science and psychotherapy, devotional writers and speakers who may not be very biblical but who can effectively pull at the heartstrings of our emotions, or recognized stars (from the worlds of sports, entertainment, politics, or Christian ministry).¹¹ The net result is that many people who claim to be Christian neither know the Bible nor sense any particular need to learn it. They are no longer convinced that it is essential for living a Christian life.

A starting point in this book is that reading, understanding, receiving, responding appropriately, and practicing the Bible—or more simply, following the Bible—is essential to the experience that God intends for us as Christians. I recognize that for many, reading is a means to an end. In a busy world, we move from one place to another, and reading, like driving a car or taking a bus, is simply what is needed to get from point A to point B. We often read because we need to know how to assemble something, prepare a particular meal, pass an exam in school, learn about last night’s game, find out what is happening in the Middle East, and acquire other information necessary for doing things or satisfying our curiosity.

Following the Bible is essential to the experience that God intends for us as Christians.

But another way to approach reading, and especially reading the Bible, is to view it as a departure on a journey. We recognize that we are leaving the familiar but vaguely unsatisfying world in which we live our daily lives, on a quest to find a better country.

For those who voluntarily undertake this journey, not seeking to impose themselves upon its world but explorers seeking to discover its wonders, we are not disappointed. In willingly choosing to read the Bible, we are transported to another world, filled with strange phenomena like miracles, angelic announcements, prophets who speak the very words of God, and earth-shaking appearances by God, yet also with people who are surprisingly similar to ourselves. When we put the Book down, we return home to our normal world, but we have been changed through the experience of our cross-cultural encounter. We have entertained new ways of thinking and different perspectives on what is real, and now we return with these treasured souvenirs of our travels. Our minds have been opened to new possibilities and enticing alternatives to our ways of living. We begin to question the status quo thinking and habits that, due to their very familiarity, we have never before challenged. We learn that the near horizons of our natural world are not the outer boundaries of reality but only the borders into the vaster, mind-stretching, and soul-liberating world of the supernatural and transcendent. When we read the Bible in this way, with eyes of faith, we not only see this more fantastic country,¹² we also see this too familiar normal world in fresh and new ways.¹³

This kind of mind transformation is supposed to be the norm for growing Christians: Do not conform any longer to this age but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2; cf. 2 Cor 5:16). Indeed, if the metaphor can be stretched a little further, the more time we spend in this other world, seen through not merely reading but inhabiting this world of the Word, and the deeper we invest ourselves in it, the more we identify with its values, priorities, and customs as opposed to those of the world we see only with our eyes. Taking up the Bible in our hands in this way, and with these expectations, we now stand on the threshold of an epic adventure.

Calvin Miller, in his masterfully poetic rendition of the life of Christ, says that the world is poor because her fortune is buried in the sky, and all her treasure maps are of the earth.¹⁴ The only treasure map that could help is one from above, the Bible, which plots for us a course to a heavenly realm, a place where we can gain sufficient altitude to see and understand the world from a better, clearer perspective. It is deeply rewarding for those who are willing to venture out in their thinking and take up the risks associated with treasure seeking. And that treasure is nothing less than a living encounter with the overwhelming, awe-inspiring, and fascinating mystery¹⁵ of the person of God.

I should warn the reader that learning to study the Bible with these goals in mind is not a simple task—at times the effort may seem difficult, complicated, or exhausting. But having observed literally hundreds of students and readers who have come to embrace, more or less firmly, the practice of careful attention to Scripture’s structures, patterns, and metanarrative connections, and having witnessed their growing excitement in Bible study and the life change that has taken place during their engagement with God’s Word as they do so, I am convinced that it is very possible for anyone. It would be unfair and unrealistic to promise that if you are seriously committed to following these scriptural patterns that I’ve adopted in this book, then your own Bible reading will become effortless or consistently exhilarating. But I believe that it is realistic to promise that if these methods become part of your regular pattern for following the Bible, then you will begin to see for yourself things in the Scriptures that you have never seen before while also gaining confidence that your interpretations are more accurately reflecting what God himself has communicated to us through his Word.

Hermeneutical Virtues

I am aware that any book dealing with how to study the Bible can easily deteriorate into a checklist of to-do’s, leading to life-sapping, outward performance and all the problems associated with legalism. I do not have a single, silver-bullet answer for all these issues, but I do believe that many of them derive from the reader’s moral character rather than pure intellect. Some ingredients for effective Bible study cannot be reduced to steps or methods. They deeply affect our ability to follow the Bible. They are foundational (logically and spiritually) to all the rest of the reading strategies that I explain in the rest of the book. But they are so important that they cannot go without mentioning, and so I set them out here. Our capacity to respond rightly to God’s Word is influenced by all the following factors, which I call hermeneutical virtues.

Natural Abilities

God has gifted some people with special abilities in thinking processes. One of these is good memory. While all of us are urged to remember the things of God,¹⁶ some people possess better skills in memorizing Scripture, remembering contexts, and associating chapter and verse references. Some have an eye for details and simply notice more, and more quickly, when they read. Another of these aptitudes is the ability to see relationships. Most intelligence tests have one or several sections that assess a person’s ability to recognize patterns and draw analogies. Nearly everyone profits from coaching in this, yet some are more naturally adept at this.¹⁷ Yet another skill that some naturally possess in greater measure is good judgment in evaluating options. Critical thinking involves the ability to identify both the strengths and weaknesses of various interpretations. Again, some people intuitively sense which interpretive