Reading through the lens of grace vs law:
When reading the bible, you MUST read it through the lens of “grace.” If you read it through the lens of “law“, it will condemn you at every corner.
For example, see the note: The Works, The Will, The Command, The Overcomer, The Righteous, The Obedience
Just in the note title alone, if you were to come across those words reading the bible through the lens of “law”, you’d probably think that “The Works” are to follow the law and do good deeds, “The Will” is to follow the law, “The Command” is to follow the law, “The Overcomer” is one who turns from all their sins, “The Righteous” are those that follow the law and “The Obedience” are those that obey the law.
However, when you come across those words and read them through the lens of “grace”, you can see that they all pertain to simply believing in Jesus. *See note for full definitions.
Reading a verse in context:
You cannot cherry pick verses out of thin air and get their proper meaning. You have to understand the meaning of a verse based on (in order of importance):
- The immediate, surrounding verses.
- The chapter.
- The book.
- The entire bible.
Reading the entire book at once:
It greatly helps to read the entire book in one sitting (not the entire bible at once, but the book, example: John, Romans, Galatians, etc). This is because other parts of the book require the context of previous parts of the book to understand the book as a whole, and if you put it down for a day or so, you will easily forget what you read before. Most books in the New Testament can be read in under 30 minutes, as many are only a few chapters long. The lengthiest one, Matthew or Acts (28 chapters each), can be read in 2-3 hours.
Understanding the words’ original language meaning:
The original biblical texts that were divinely inspired by God were written in Hebrew and Aramaic (for the Old Testament), and Greek for the New Testament. English translations (and rather all other language translations) were translated from these original languages, and are not inspired by God, meaning, they aren’t perfect in translation, which is why there’s so many revisions of the Bible in other languages. Let’s talk about the New Testament: English is a rather poor language to use for reading the Bible, and the original Greek is excellent. Why? Because in the original Greek texts, there will be, say, four different words that have a different meaning, yet in English, the same English word is used for all four different Greek words, making the English version confusing and muddled. So, what do we have to do in our English translations to understand a verse that contains a word that isn’t clear? We have to get to the root of that word in its original Greek meaning. We can do this through what is known as The Strong’s Concordance and the Thayer’s Greek Lexicon. Strong’s is named after the author James Strong, and Thayer’s is named after the author Joseph Thayer. What Strong has done, is given each word in the bible a number, and provided its definition in the Greek. Example, Strongs G726 (Greek 726) is the Greek word of “harpazo”, and is the original greek word behind the phrase “caught up” in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 in the English translation. Harpazo in the Greek means “To seize, snatch, take away by force”. When you’re reading an English Bible and don’t understand the meaning of a word, look it up in Strong’s and Thayer’s Greek Lexicon. To do this, simply Google the book and chapter you want, along with the “Strongs” keyword. For example, if you were reading 1 Thessalonians 4:17 and wanted to know what the word “caught up” means in the original greek, simply Google “Strongs 1 Thessalonians 4:17” and look for Bible Hub’s (biblehub.com) “1 Thessalonians 4 KJV + Strong’s” webpage. Once you click on that, it will show the chapter in the King James Version bible, where you can click the specific word you’re looking for, and it will go to a new page where it will give you the Strong’s definition of the word, and if not more importantly, the Thayer’s Greek Lexicon for the specific meaning of the word in context of that verse. Thayer’s can be lengthy, because it provides the meaning of the greek word in all its various forms throughout the bible, so just do a simple search on the page for the verse you’re looking for (example: 1 Thessalonians 4:17) and it will bring you to the specific meaning for the Greek word in that verse context.