How Can I Read the Easy & Hard Parts of the Bible?

By Bruce & Ann Scallorn, Resonate Moscow

 While I was attending seminary, I met a friend through my church who was in his 60’s. He had a second-grade education, was illiterate, and bound to a wheelchair. He suffered from diabetes and had lost the use of his hands and feet. He couldn’t open his hands, just his thumb. Yet, he had enough dexterity to use the power chair joystick to drive almost anywhere he needed to go. In his younger years, he had grown up as far from God as possible. He had a tough life filled with many, many difficulties. Somewhere along the way, he found Jesus. 

Thursday nights during seminary were movie nights, usually at my house, which was located near the hospital where he lived. One evening, while walking my friend home, we met a preacher on the street who led a church near our neighborhood.  It was after 10 p.m. and dark when he stopped us along the road. He looked my friend in the eye and asked, “Do you believe in Jesus?” My friend had been following Jesus for many years and replied, “Yes.” The preacher then asked my friend, “Do you believe that Jesus can heal you?” Again, my friend had incredible faith in Jesus and said that he did. The preacher put his hands over my friend’s hands and prayed for Jesus to set my friend free from his infirmities and heal him. After his prayer, the preacher asked my friend to open his hands, which he could not. The preacher was startled for a second and then continued on his way down the road.

As my friend and I resumed our walk back to his apartment, a thousand thoughts were running through my head. How do I minister to my friend? How do I answer the inevitable question forming in his mind: why didn’t Jesus heal me? What kind of answer do I give to him that would strengthen his faith and encourage him? I was preparing myself to answer what I assumed were his questions. I felt pressure to prove myself. I was in seminary. I was supposed to have all the spiritual answers. I felt I needed to explain to my friend what had just happened. 

From there, my head began to fill with explanations, reasons, scriptures, passages, etc. I was just about to say something when my friend said, “Bruce, I don’t know if Jesus wants to heal my body or not. But he’s already healed me on the inside, and that is enough for me.” At that moment, I was both dumbstruck at the profound words that came from my friend and astounded at the wisdom that God had put into him.

Years later, as I think about the three of us standing on that sidewalk in the dark, each of us pursuing God in the best way that we knew how I don’t doubt that the three of us loved and followed Jesus. Yet in pursuing the same Jesus, the three of us landed in such different ways of practicing that faith. 

Bruce’s story highlights only a few differences of belief. Still, if you asked 100 Christians from around the world about their views regarding the role of women in the church, issues of social justice and racial inequalities, the environment, politics, how the end times will play out, baptism, determinism vs. free agency, or sex and sexuality. In that case, you might have 100 differences of belief between them all. Many of these differences boil down to how we interpret the Bible. To complicate matters more, this often happens while citing the exact same passages from opposing viewpoints on any given issue. We’d like to use this blog to teach you a Bible study method we learned in seminary that we hope will help you read scripture with more confidence.

The Bible is for everyone. We want to grasp and embody the text's fundamental truth in a way that is accessible and relevant to everyone. Hermeneutics is basically the science of interpreting the Bible. The interpretation tools presented in this blog come from our hermeneutics course taught by Dr. Michael Kuykendall at Gateway Seminary in Vancouver, Washington. Any direct quotes in the remainder of this blog are directly from Dr. Kuykendall’s 2008 course notes. We will now look at four basic principles for studying a Bible passage. These principles form an acronym: ODPA. 

1. Original Audience 

   1. What does the text say? 

   2. Observation!

2. Differences Between the Original Audience and a Modern Audience 

   1. What are the differences between them and us? 

   2. What are the similarities? 

   3. Observation!

3. Principle(s) of the Passage 

   1. What are the timeless theological principles in the text? 

   2. What does the text mean to the original audience? 

   3. What was the writer’s original intent?

4. Application 

   1. How now should I live?

Original Audience

Researching and understanding the original audience usually demands the most time. The purpose of this step is to realize who first received God’s word and the context in which they lived. Why is this important? The text has an original intent in its meaning and use, and it will not mean to us what it did not mean to them. In other words, we should not take a text and use it in such a way that the original intent is cast aside, violated, or misrepresented. Now that being said, our applications of the meaning may vary. For example, the command “do not worship idols” dealt with idol worship. The original audience’s application? They burned their literal idols. Our modern application? Here are a few: set better boundaries on cell phone usage, perhaps delete a social media account, confront our culture’s destructive narrative about body image, reject racial superiority. These are issues of our day, and they can all be idolatrous, some obviously so and some much more subtle. We can have many applications, but they must all honor and orient themselves around the original intent of the Bible text, which at times can be challenging to discern. We do not want to simply read a text and then orient it around our experience or make it conform to our agenda, or impose our misguided applications upon others. This is where a study of the original audience is vital.

Here are a few aids as you study the original audience of any given text. These are taken directly from my hermeneutics course:

• “Read the passage carefully several times. Observe. Observe. Observe.” Try as best you can to transport yourself into the text. Don’t worry about what it means at this stage. What is it saying? Spend time with the obvious and the subtle. Just as you would stare at a work of art in a museum, give yourself time to just take it in. 

• Read the entire book that the passage is written in so that you can hopefully see how the smaller sections connect to the book as a whole. What does the whole book tell you about your original audience? Their culture? Their history and traditions? Their worldview?

• “What type of genre are you studying here? What are the basic guidelines for that genre?” You would not read a cookbook the same way you’d read science fiction. Different genres in the Bible engage us in different ways and utilize different techniques of communication and processing. 

• “Observe the text and the context”—What is written directly before this passage? What is written after it? How do they connect? Try to summarize the sections before and after the text you are studying. 

• Learn as much as possible about the Bible book you are studying. Who is the audience? Why was it written? Who wrote it? A good commentary will help with these questions. 

• “Scrutinize the language, grammar, and significant, ambiguous, and/or theological words.” What words are repeated or emphasized? Lookup any significant words in a dictionary or thesaurus. What impact would those word choices have on the original audience?

•  Read your passage in other English translations and note any differences. When we compare and contrast translations, they can work together to bring out subtleties in the text. 

• “Consult dictionaries/encyclopedias, commentaries, and journal articles. In other words, use all the available tools God has given to us!” Just remember that at this stage, we are just gathering information about the original audience. Commentaries will give you much, much more than you are looking for at this stage in your study. 

• Finally, take all your data and try to summarize your findings on what the passage said to the original audience. “Be specific. Do not generalize or develop theological principles yet. Let the plain language of the Bible speak. What is it saying?” (Not, what does it mean? That comes later!) Your summary statements should read like simple observations. For example, in John 2, Jesus attended a Jewish wedding and turned water into wine… In Jeremiah 20, the prophet Jeremiah was being persecuted and mocked, and he felt deceived by God… In Exodus 3, Moses encountered God through a burning bush…. 

Differences Between the Original and Modern Audiences

“We are separated from the original audience by culture, customs, language, situation, time, and even covenant. These differences often hinder a straight reading of the Bible. They often prevent us from moving straight from the meaning in their context to the meaning in our context. The depth of the differences vary from passage to passage, and especially from covenant to covenant. For example, ‘Do not kill’ (Exodus 20:13) is much easier to bridge in understanding than ‘do not wear two fabrics of clothing.’” (Leviticus 19:19).

• List all the differences you can find between then and now. Include theological differences. What did they believe about God? Include cultural differences. This could include rituals, traditions, gender roles, etc.

• Are there any aspects of the text that are unique? Note them. 

If we ignore this step, we run the risk of taking a passage written to a specific situation in time and making it universal teaching or rule in a manner it was not intended. As we examine differences we can gain perspective over situational and cultural elements and universal principles in the text. 

Principle of the Passage

“This is the most challenging step. Remember that you are looking for the theological principle(s) that are reflected in the meaning of the text. This is the basic meaning of the text. Your task is not to create or invent the meaning –even if it is godly and true! Your task is to discover the original meaning intended by the Bible author. As God gave specific expressions to specific biblical audiences, he is also giving universal, timeless, theological teachings that transcend time, place, and peoples.”

• Compare the passage you are studying with the teachings found elsewhere in the Bible. This will help you draw out the theological principles in the text. 

• Look back at the list of differences you identified earlier. Try to identify any similarities or common denominators between the original audience and us today. Reflect back and forth paying attention to differences and similarities. As you do, try to identify any broader universal theological principles that may emerge. 

• As we identify principles in the text, here are some criteria to aid this process:

  • “The principle should be clearly reflected in the passage.”

  • “The principle should be timeless, universal; not tied to the specific situation.”

  • “The principle should not be culturally bound.” It should apply to all cultures.

  • “The principle should correspond to the teaching of the rest of Scripture.”

  • “The principle should be relevant to both the original audience and contemporary audience.”

• Write out the principle you’ve identified in a couple of sentences. Examples:

  • 1 Corinthians  8 – Exercising our freedom in Christ is subject to the greater priority of discipling others, especially those who may struggle in ways we may not. We do not want to cause a weaker Christian to struggle. We want to build each other up. 

  • 1 Corinthians 11 – Worship is central. We do not want to enable things that disrupt our worship of God or diminish its significance. 

Application

This is where we draw out applications from the principle(s) identified above. Application is vital. This is where knowing intersects doing. “We must not leave the meaning of the passage stranded in abstract theological principle land. Until we apply it personally to our lives we have merely performed a theological exercise.” We must face the question of how the text intersects with the reality of our lives today. 

• Go back and examine the principles you identified. 

• Try to identify similar situations in our present-day context. 

• Be specific in your applications. 

• “If you are studying an Old Testament passage, does the New Testament qualify this principle? If so, how? Try to determine whether the New Testament addresses the issues raised in the Old Testament text. Does the New Testament modify these principles? Or maybe the New Testament makes them even more specific and strict?” 

Something to keep in mind while developing applications is that there can be multiple and varied applications from the meaning in a single text. “Because we are different or we find ourselves in different specific situations, each one of us will grasp and apply the same principle in slightly different ways, depending on our current life situation.” While we may apply a single principle in varied ways, every application must orient around the timeless, universal principle in harmony with the rest of the Bible. One meaning can develop into many application possibilities! The application is subject to the principle, not the other way around.  Allegiance to an application at the expense of the principle of truth is the path of the Pharisee and the Zealot. This study tool is meant to guide us and guard us against rigid, oppressive legalism or blind assimilation into zealotry. 

Conclusion:

This tool is designed to aid in-depth Bible study.  Daily devotional reading may not go this in-depth and that is ok.  Using this study tool will not eliminate all differences of belief over a passage. The purpose of the tool is to help you gain confidence in your understanding of scripture. It also helps you know what you do not know and engage the boundaries of your understanding. Confidence is not just about having all the answers. Confidence grows in the journey of pursuing the answers. It is a lack of anxiety in the mysteries of God. Confidence also frees me to minister to people who believe differently than I do and to do so in a way that exemplifies Jesus. 

This study method takes time. Do the work, and be patient with the process. The process builds the discipline and capacity to own the findings, not just talk about them in clever ways. Don’t be afraid of all your “I don’t know” moments. The moments of mystery and ambiguity will teach you volumes about yourself, about God and those around you. This is a valuable asset in your spiritual formation. While you are learning to master the text, the text is also mastering you. That is how you learn to own it. That is the journey of being transformed into the image of Jesus by the renewing of your mind. Our prayer is that these study tools will help you journey into the heart of the biblical text so that God can drive the text deeper and deeper into your life. His word is alive and active, and it lays everything bare before the God who saves and transforms. And the gospel of Jesus is unparalleled in its power to transform. “Jesus said, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). If God has our hearts and our minds, he has us. And we have Him. That is essentially the intent of God’s wonderful word.