The method
How to study a passage: sword.
Most people read devotionally and stop there. This is the method that turns reading into understanding. Five steps, always in this order, because you cannot rightly apply what you have not correctly interpreted.
See
Read the passage at least three times before you form a single opinion about it. You are collecting, not concluding.
- Repeated words and phrases
- Commands and warnings
- Contrasts and comparisons
- Cause and effect: therefore, because, so that
- Characters, questions, promises
- Old Testament quotations sitting inside New Testament text
World
Recover the situation the text was written into. A passage cannot mean today what it could not have meant then.
- Who wrote it, and to whom
- When, and where
- What was happening historically
- What genre is this
- What would the first audience have assumed without being told
Original meaning
Ask what the author intended his first readers to understand. Not what it means to you. That question is real, and it comes later.
- State the author’s point in one sentence
- Test it against the paragraph, then the chapter, then the book
- If your reading requires ignoring the context, the reading is wrong
Relationships
Connect scripture with scripture. This is how sixty six books stop being a shelf and start being a network.
- Where else does this idea appear
- Does a later writer quote it
- Does it touch creation, covenant, temple, kingdom, sacrifice, Messiah, Spirit, wisdom, or new creation
Do
Only now. And the application has to be measurable, or it is a feeling rather than a decision.
- Weak: trust God more
- Strong: tomorrow when I get anxious about the invoice, I will pray Philippians 4:6-7 before I reply
- What do I believe, stop, start, confess, pray, and teach