God desires us to understand Him through the Bible, but we should expect to have some confusion about the specific details of God’s intent at all stages of our life. This is not wrong. Being confused, or even disagreeing with what you read, is the first step towards learning more about it. Use that initial emotion to dig deeper into your relationship with God rather than to pull away. The Holy Spirit guides us through the maturing process and leads us into a continually deepening relationship with Jesus.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
In that context there are several circumstances, where we can make sure we are on a path to grow in the Spirit.
If you are not a Christian:
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18. The Bible was written by the Holy Spirit to be understood and applied by that same Holy Spirit living in you.
If He is not in you, the Bible will not make sense.
If you are not a Christian and seek to understand what God is saying to say, you can! God earnestly desires to be in a relationship with you and He will open up what you need so you can better understand.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8
As a Christian, God has not revealed that part of the Bible to you yet.
This can be frustrating, but it is an exciting position to be in. We just need to be both patient and diligent for God to reveal it.
Patience
God gives us what we can handle and not more. So He will not reveal everything about Himself the day we become Christians. God’s heart on growth is shown in Exodus 23:29-30. “I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.”
Diligence
To gain clarity on issues, God expects us to actively search after Him.
“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Hebrews 11:6
First, read the Bible regularly to stay close to what God wants to say to you. Through my daily Bible reading, God has pointed out key pieces to my questions unexpectedly.
Second, be receptive to other people who may have already worked through the same question you have. Pastors, podcasts, books and others are great resources. Staying close to God directly through your own Bible reading will allow you to discern if answers you get from others are correct or not.
Be intentional with your growth and patient as God opens up your understanding of the Bible when you are ready for it. No matter where we are in our Christianity, Jesus wants to take us further.
You Don’t Believe the Bible is Accurate.
You don’t need to believe the Bible is fully accurate to be a Christian. It is God that we believe in and put our trust in, not the Bible. The early church didn’t even have a New Testament to look at. You need to believe and trust that Jesus, who the Bible describes, is your only Lord today.
Believing that the Bible is accurate is critical for you to grow spiritually.
Without it, you will not be able to anchor yourself in Truth. When Christians come together, they have a common baseline of Truth in the Bible that they can build upon. They will disagree on how to apply God’s words, but not about the words themselves.
If you are wondering about particular parts of the Bible’s accuracy, I encourage you to research further on that topic. For those seeking the truth, God will give enough evidence that they can have Faith the Bible is God’s true words.
Everyone will take a different path, but here is how I have confidence that the Bible is true.
First, I have faith that God is true. God wants people to know the truth, so it make sense He would give us a way to consistently access that truth both personally and collectively. The Bible says that God inspired the writing through people to actually write the words (2 Timothy 3:16). This is in line with God’s desire for us, and we see it through the Bible. In addition, the linking of many different writers in seemingly impossible ways indicates a single underlying author rather than many different ones. David’s writing of Psalm 22 for example that describes the crucifixion of Jesus written about 1,000 years prior. David wrote from his own perspective, but the Holy Spirit guided him to write about things he had no idea about. For a closer look at Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament prophesies, take a look at my Psalm 22 post. In addition, while not conclusive proof, the study of numbers in the Bible shows me that the Bible has one author in God with many writers. You can see the section on the meaning of numbers in the Bible here.
People later assembled those writings together to make the current Bible and add chapters and verses. Primarily trusting that God led the assemblers to pick the right writings to make the Bible, I do look with discernment if someone claims there are additional books or one should be removed.
Finally, people translated the Bible from the original language to modern day languages and versions. We know for sure that the modern translations are different from each other and sometimes conflict. Since I have not studied Greek and Hebrew nor understand the context of the original language phrasing, I instead focus on finding English where people just translated the words (as opposed to adding their own interpretation) so that I can most clearly see the true words written at the Holy Spirit’s direction.
You are reading a heavily interpreted version of the Bible.
The Bible is God’s words to us written by the direction of the Holy Spirit. To best understand those words, we need minimize the translator’s opinions when converting it from the original writing. I use word for word translations of the Bible (generally the ESV and a few others). Be careful when you get into phrase by phrase or thought by thought versions. The Bible has many different layers of understanding and links to itself. Even if I don’t understand the explanation right away, I am confident God will reveal it in His time.
John 10:10b shows one example of the distraction an overly interpreted version of the Bible can cause.
Word for Word (ESV) – “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Phrase by Phrase -“My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”
Word for word – Jesus is saying that He is giving us life that we didn’t have(spiritual-like fruits of the spirit).
Phrase by Phrase – The translator interpreted that Jesus was talking about giving us a better physical life.
In this example, we see that translations can change the meaning of some verses. This frustrating situation can be managed rather easily today. When you find a verse that seems odd, first compare other versions to make sure the version you are reading matches other translations. I use the “compare” feature of the free Bible app YouVersion to shows as many versions of the verse as you want to see. Quick internet searches can do the same thing. If you see a difference, then you will need to understand which version most closely aligns to God’s actual words.
You are hearing something that sounds Biblical, but isn’t.
“God helps those who help themselves,” sounds like a Bible verse, but it isn’t. While God does expect us to participate in His work and our own lives, God helps those who trust in Him.
“God wants you to be rich.” Pastors of some churches say things like this and others that are not Biblical. God does want you to be “rich” in the things that matter, “spiritual health” for example, but money is a tool that God may provide or withdraw from you for His purposes.
Be sure to test what you hear from others against Biblical truths if something doesn’t sound right.
You look to the Bible for your own agenda.
I once looked into the Bible to find out if God has a recommended eating plan. I was confused seeing Daniel eating only vegetables, God feeding people through animal sacrifice and Peter being told that all animals are clean to eat. The Bible did not give me a clear answer until a few months later when I stumbled upon Matthew 15:16-19, “And he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
I used the the Bible trying to prove “my question” about food. Instead, Jesus told me to focus on my soul rather than a specific food because that all just gets “expelled”.
This is why it is easy to find Billboards and “one verse” Christians that try to use God for their own purpose. Jesus will have none of it, even to the point of losing followers.
In John chapter 6, right after feeding the 5,000, Jesus had to avoid being made an earthly king by hiding from the people . In vs 26, Jesus questioned their motives for following Him and spoke to them about being the bread of life and by verse 66, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” This is a profound change of direction.
Jesus took a crowd of thousands of loving followers and scared them away. Why? in John 18:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world…” He would not submit himself to be a useful tool to overthrow the oppression of the Romans. The people wanted a king of the country. Jesus came to be King of their hearts and they did not want it. Jesus would not take any other place.
It is in this context of John 6, one of the most famous one-verse phrases about the Bible come in John 6:67 and 68 “So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,”
Peter was also confused by what Jesus said, but he knew for sure who Jesus was.
Conclusion
This is the beauty of the Bible. The words can be confusing sometimes, but the author, is not.
If we are confused by the words we can trust that God will reveal his greater plan to us if we seek Him (Heb 11:6).
