As Christians, Scripture should be our ultimate authority. Because of that we need to know what it says. Here are my tips on how to study the Bible for yourself and my favorite resources!
If you read my last post, you’ll know how important exegeting Scripture is to me. As it should be for all Christians. If you missed it, you can read it here. But long story short, exegeting Scripture simply means interpreting verses critically. And by that I mean taking into account various points of context to find out what it actually means, not just what you think it means or what it seems like it means with minimal study.
Exegesis is in direct comparison to eisegesis. Eisegesis is an interpretation of Scripture that is based more on the interpreter’s own ideas and biases, rather than what the verses actually mean on their own. Go read my last post for more on why exegesis is important.
Now that you know why it’s important, let’s get into how to do it.
how to study the Bible for yourself
I have several tips for how to study the Bible for yourself. So let’s get into them!
let the Scriptures speak for themselves
One of the biggest things to come out of the Protestant Reformation is Sola Scriptura. What is that? It’s the idea that Scripture alone is sufficient and should be our sole authority. Tradition should not be used as authority like the Catholic church believed. (Although that doesn’t mean we can’t look to tradition to help us interpret the Bible or should completely disregard tradition all together. More on that in a minute).
Everything we need to know about God, the Gospel, His will, and His plan for salvation can be found in Scripture. We need not look anywhere else to find truth. And most importantly, Scripture should always be held above all other sources, especially when they contradict each other.
So naturally, my first tip for studying the Bible is letting it speak for itself. Contrary to what the Roman Catholics believed in the 14th century, we are able to interpret Scripture on our own and determine what it means without Church authority explaining it to us.
be careful to recognize your own bias
However, I think we need to be very careful when we do this. It’s nearly impossible to read Scripture without assigning your own bias to it. We read it with our modern world in mind. But the truth is, the Bible wasn’t written with our modern world in mind. It was written for us, but not about us. It wasn’t even written to us (at least in the contextual sense). Therefore, we need to read it in the correct context.
We can definitely find some of that context within Scripture itself. But there are other sources out there that give us even more information that can be very helpful to our studies and cultural understanding of the Bible. For instance, other historical writings. They help us get a better idea of the significance of certain things the Bible talks about. Things like how women and children were treated and thought about during the time of the early church. Or how the Jews viewed Jesus because of their cultural beliefs about how their Messiah would come.
Some of those things aren’t necessary for a basic understanding of Scripture. But they do help us to dig deeper and understand the significance of things even more.
be careful that your feelings don’t get in the way
A lot of people who are against using outside sources to understand the Bible believe that we should just read it and ask the Lord to guide us and our understanding. While I do think we can do this, we need to be very careful. It can be very hard to distinguish between our own feelings and the convictions/ revelations of the Holy Spirit. Let me give an example.
The Bible can be very offensive to our human nature and emotions. It says things that we don’t like and it commands we do things that we don’t like as well. For example, the Bible is very clear that homosexuality is a sin and that Christians should repent and flee from it. However, a growing number of Christians are coming to the conclusion that this is not what the Bible is actually saying and they even claim that the Holy Spirit revealed this truth to them.
In this instance, in my opinion, this is a mix up between the revelations of the Holy Spirit and the feelings of man. They are letting their feelings get in the way of their interpretation of Scripture. And even worse, they’ve let themselves be convinced that these feelings are coming from the Holy Spirit.
I think this is the biggest danger of interpreting Scripture on our own without any help from outside sources. Yes, we’re able to figure a lot of things out on our own when it comes to the Bible. But it’s very easy to be led astray by our feelings and biases.
sola scriptura vs solo scriptura
We also have to be careful as Protestants to not get into the “solo Scriptura” mindset. By this I mean that we think that we can’t look to anything else (or anyone else) other than Scripture to determine what’s true. This is not what the Reformers intended when they created Sola Scriptura.
It doesn’t mean we can’t use other works and documents to help us understand Scripture. It simply means those things are only as good and reliable as they are Biblical. If there’s anything in them that doesn’t align with what the Bible says on a specific topic, then the Bible must be held as the truth, not the secondary source (no matter how Biblically-sound it is when it comes to other topics).
use a study bible
One of my favorite ways to study Scripture deeper is by using a study Bible. I’ve been using the ESV Study Bible for probably almost five years now. This is a great way to get commentary on specific verses and words as you’re reading.
I love the ESV Study Bible because it not only provides commentary for almost every verse, but it also has tons of maps and diagrams. Plus it has a lot of information on specific topics (like salvation, eschatology, Christology, etc.) and also in-depth info on each book.
I don’t always read the provided commentary for every verse. I usually only read it if I’m confused about something, want a little more insight for one reason or another, or if it touches a topic that I’m currently studying more in-depth outside of my daily Bible reading.
My husband has The MacArthur Study Bible which is also a really good one. And I’ve also heard that the Reformation Study Bible is another really good one. It also has some of the Reformed creeds and confessions which is a great way to study the Bible as well which I’ll talk about now.
study creeds, confessions, & catechisms
Creeds are essentially statements of faith that the Church has written throughout history. This website has the three main Creeds: the Apostles’ Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Nicene Creed. These are great works to memorize because they’re short, but packed with a ton of theological truths that are great to remember. They answer so many of the core questions of the Christian faith which are things we should all know and be confident in.
Same goes for confessions. They are very similar to creeds in a way because they are also essentially official statements of faith. They are a little different, though, because they are more specific to particular denominations, and they’re a little more detailed and extensive. These are some of the most common ones:
- Westminster Confession of Faith (Presbyterian Church)
- Augsburg Confession (Reformed & Lutheran Churches)
- First Helvetic Confession (Calvinist Churches)
- French Confession of Faith (Reformed & Calvinist Churches)
- Belgic Confession (Reformed Christian Church)
- 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (Baptist Church)
Catechisms are very helpful, especially if you want to memorize things. These are essentially questions and answers of some of the most crucial truths of the faith. Here are some of the most common ones:
- Westminster Shorter Catechism (I love Brian Sauve’s albums that go through all the questions in a musical format which makes it so easy to memorize! We all know how it’s so much easier to memorize songs than just plain written word. )
- Westminster Larger Catechism (in comparison to the shorter catechism, this one has more detailed answers which aren’t as easy to memorize, so this one is probably better for just digging deep and learning more).
- Heidelberg Catechism
- Luther’s Small Catechism
- Geneva Catechism
If you’re interested in having a copy of each of these in your home, I highly recommend this book. It’s a compilation made by Ligonier Ministries that includes all of the creeds, confessions, and catechisms that I mentioned and more. I love it and I think it’ll be super helpful for homeschooling our kids in the future!
It’s also important to note that these were written based on Scripture and many of them list the proof texts that the authors used for each point or question.
read commentaries
Similarly to using a study Bible for your Bible reading, you can also get separate stand-alone commentaries. This is something I don’t do very often myself so I don’t have a ton of specific recommendations. But most of the pastors that I’ll mention in the following section have written solid commentaries from what I’ve heard from others.
Because these are separate from the study Bible itself, they are usually a lot more in-depth and longer explanations than what they can put in the study Bible. So they are a great addition to your studies even if you already have a study Bible. I’ve picked up quite a few Biblical commentaries from thrift stores and I’m excited to start using them!
A lot of pastors have also written articles online that are essentially commentaries. So that’s an option too if you don’t want to buy a bunch of physical commentary books.
listen to expository preaching
Lastly, you can listen to pastors exposit specific verses. Expository preaching is essentially taking a verse and explaining what it means. Instead of basing their sermon off of a specific topic (like joy, hope, faithfulness, etc.) and finding various verses that support their position, the pastor will take a verse and form their message off of it and its true meaning.
This is how all churches should be. So I’d say the first way to do this is to find a church to go to that exposits the Scriptures. Anyone can take verses and apply them to a position. But is that really teaching the Scriptures? Maybe if they’re using the verses correctly. But many times they aren’t when they’re applying it to a topic of their choice.
Of course you still have to hold your pastor’s teaching up to the Scripture. It’s possible to exposit verses incorrectly. But more often than not, at least from what I’ve learned from listening to people, is that pastors that exposit the Scriptures are typically more Biblically and theologically-sound than those who preach topically.
Some pastors go really really deep into verses and take a long time to get through just one chapter of the Bible. John MacArthur said once that it took him like two years just to get through Romans. (Maybe even just a couple chapters of Romans, actually. I can’t remember exactly what he said, oops. haha). But either way, he really took his time to get through it and teach all the context and languages.
Here are some of my favorite expository pastors to listen to. I’ll admit I don’t do this a ton either, but I want to start doing it more. I’m more of a reader so I enjoy studying the Bible through commentary and books. But I definitely want to start listening to more sermons as well. You can search for specific verses and passages on these websites as well. So if you want to hear their sermon on a particular verse, search it and you’ll find several.
- John MacArthur
- John Piper
- R.C. Sproul
- Steven Lawson
- Voddie Baucham
- James White & Jeff Durbin (Apologia)
books & podcasts
I also love reading books and listening to podcasts to learn more about Scripture. I’m going to make a whole post on my favorite books and podcasts because there’s a lot so it’ll make this post way too long haha. So keep your eye out for that post soon!
Thank you for reading and let me know if you use any of these tips! Let me know your favorite way to dig deep into God’s word. I’ll be praying for you all. Until next time!
