The Christian Life
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."
Psalm 119:105
A great many people who believe the Bible is God's Word have never read it. They own one, sometimes several. They have heard portions of it read aloud for years. They could tell you it is true and would be uneasy about anyone who said otherwise. But they have never sat down and read it through for themselves, and if pressed they could not say what is in most of it.
The reasons are usually honest ones. It is long. Parts are difficult. Earlier attempts foundered somewhere in the wilderness with the measurements of the tabernacle, and were quietly abandoned. And underneath all of it is a suspicion that this is really a book for experts, and that ordinary people are better served by having it explained to them.
That last idea is the one this article is written to destroy.
There is a small account in the New Testament that settles the question, and it is worth noticing exactly what is commended.
For most of Christian history, ordinary people could not do this. Copies were scarce and hand-made, few could read, and for a long stretch the text was kept in a language the ploughman did not speak. Men were burned for translating it.
You can hold it in your hand this evening in your own tongue, and the greatest danger now is not that it will be taken away but that it will sit unopened on a shelf.
And it must be you who reads it. Not only your pastor, not only a devotional writer summarising it for you. Those are helps and they are good; they are not substitutes.
"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." (Acts 17:11)
Mark what they were praised for. Not scepticism — they received the word readily. But they checked it, daily, against the Scriptures, and it was counted noble in them.
"These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." (Acts 17:11)
Consider the situation. The man preaching to them was an apostle. If anyone in history could have expected to be taken on trust, it was he. And these hearers did not simply take his word for it. They went home and checked.
Now notice the verdict Scripture passes on that. It does not call them suspicious, or difficult, or lacking in respect for authority. It calls them more noble — and the thing commended is precisely that they verified the preaching against the text.
Two things follow. First, no teacher, however gifted, is to be believed simply because he is confident and well spoken. Second, the ordinary believer is not merely permitted to check but expected to. Every serious error that has ever troubled the church has depended on people not reading for themselves.
And the checking is possible, which is the point. God did not write a book that only specialists can follow. He wrote to shepherds and fishermen and slaves, most of whom could not read at all and had it read to them, and He expected them to understand it.
Scripture describes itself in terms of eating far more often than in terms of study. New believers are told to desire the pure milk of the Word as newborn babies desire milk. The Lord Jesus Christ, refusing bread in the wilderness, said that man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
"As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." (1 Peter 2:2)
The picture is deliberate. Nobody teaches an infant to want milk; the appetite comes with the life. If the appetite is entirely absent, that is worth thinking about before anything else.
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)
"Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart." (Jeremiah 15:16)
And food works the way food works. You do not remember most of the meals you have eaten, and you are alive because of them. A man who says he has forgotten what he read last month has not wasted the month.
That comparison is worth taking seriously, because it changes what counts as success.
Nobody eats a meal in order to be able to describe it afterwards. A man may be unable to recall what he had for dinner three Tuesdays ago and yet be alive because of it. So it is with Scripture. The question after a morning's reading is not whether you can summarise the chapter, but whether you have been fed.
This relieves a great deal of unnecessary discouragement. Many people give up because they feel they are retaining nothing. But nourishment is cumulative and mostly invisible, and a believer who reads steadily for a year will find at the end of it that he thinks differently — without being able to point to the day it happened.
Do not start at Genesis and try to read straight through. That is how most attempts fail, usually around the third book. The Bible is a library, not a novel, and its books were not arranged in the order a new reader most needs them.
Do not begin at Genesis 1 with the intention of reading straight through. It is how most people start and how most people stop, somewhere in the middle of Leviticus.
Begin with the Gospel of John. It was written for exactly this purpose, and it says so:
"But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." (John 20:31)
Then Acts, which continues the story and shows what the first believers actually did. Then Romans, which explains the gospel in order. Then the Psalms, a little at a time, alongside whatever else you are reading — they will give you words for things you could not otherwise say.
After that you can go anywhere. But get those four into you first.
Start instead with the Gospel of John. It was written expressly so that readers might believe, and it says so. It is plain, it moves, and it is about a Person rather than a system.
Then read the other three Gospels, then Acts, which tells you what the first Christians did and how the message spread.
Then take Romans, which lays out the whole argument of the gospel in order — man's guilt, God's remedy, and the life that follows.
Alongside all of this, read a psalm and a chapter of Proverbs most days. The Psalms will teach you how to speak to God in every condition of soul, including the ones nobody mentions in church. Proverbs will teach you how to live sensibly among people.
The Old Testament histories and the prophets will make far more sense once you know the Person the whole book is about, which is why they come later rather than first.
Three questions will carry an ordinary reader a very long way, and they can be asked of any passage.
Four questions, asked of any passage, will carry you further than most commentaries.
Who is speaking, and to whom? A promise made to Israel in the wilderness is not automatically a promise to you this Tuesday. Nothing produces more disappointment than claiming what was never addressed to us.
What does it actually say? Read the words that are there before deciding what they mean. A surprising amount of error comes from remembering a verse slightly wrong.
What does the context do to it? Read the verses either side. Most abused verses are abused by being lifted out.
And what does it say about God? Every passage tells you something about His character, and that is worth having even from a chapter of names.
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15)
What does it actually say? Before deciding what it means, be sure what it says. Read it twice. Notice who is speaking, to whom, and about what. A surprising proportion of confusion comes from people answering a question the text never raised.
What does it mean? Take the plain sense unless the passage itself signals otherwise. Scripture uses figures, and it usually tells you when it is doing so. But a reader who begins hunting for hidden meanings will end up finding whatever he brought with him.
What does it require of me? This is the question most often skipped, and the reading is not finished without it. Is there a promise to rest on, a command to obey, a warning to heed, something about God to admire?
And one caution that saves a great deal of trouble: read verses in their surroundings. Almost every serious misuse of the Bible depends on lifting a sentence away from what stands before and after it. If a verse seems to teach something the rest of Scripture denies, the fault is in the reading.
One further principle deserves a section of its own, because it resolves more apparent contradictions than anything else.
If one thing clears up more confusion than any other, it is this: not every part of the Bible is addressed to you.
All of it is for you — written for your learning, profitable, God-breathed. But it is not all written to you. The instructions given to Noah about a boat, to Israel about sacrifices, to the disciples before the cross about not going to the Gentiles — these are Scripture, and they are not your marching orders.
"For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." (Romans 15:4)
Written aforetime, and written for our learning. Both halves matter.
So ask of every command: is this addressed to Israel under the law, to the disciples before the cross, or to the church in this present age? Answer that, and half your difficulties will dissolve without anyone having to explain them.
Scripture tells a workman to handle the word of truth rightly — literally, to divide it straight, as a man cuts a straight line. The implication is that the Bible has divisions in it, and that a reader who ignores them will make himself and others miserable.
Here is the simplest form of it. Everything in the Bible is for you, but not everything in the Bible is addressed to you.
Instructions given to Israel about sacrifices, feasts and a priesthood were given to a particular people at a particular time, under an arrangement that has since been fulfilled in Christ. They are profitable — they teach us about God, about sin, about what the sacrifice of Christ accomplished — but a Christian is not under them, and does not build an altar.
Grasp that one distinction and a hundred difficulties dissolve. A reader who does not grasp it will careen between guilt over ceremonies he is not keeping and confusion over promises made to another people in another circumstance.
So when you read, ask a simple question: who is being addressed here, and under what arrangement? The whole book is God's Word to us; not every command in it is God's command to us.
You will meet passages you do not understand, and some that trouble you. Every honest reader does. A few practical rules.
You will meet passages you cannot follow. Everyone does. Here is what to do with them.
Do not stop. Read on. Much of what is opaque at first becomes clear later, because Scripture explains itself as you accumulate it.
Let the clear interpret the unclear. Build on what is plain, and let the difficult passage stand unresolved rather than making it overturn something obvious. Nobody has ever been ruined by holding a hard verse loosely; a great many have been ruined by building a system on one.
Ask. Ask God before you ask anyone else. Then ask a believer who knows the Book better than you do — and be suspicious of anyone who has an instant answer for everything.
"The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Some things are simply not our business yet. That verse gives permission to leave a matter open, and it is a permission many anxious readers have never been given.
Do not stop. Mark the place and keep going. A great many difficulties are answered later in the same book, and stopping to solve everything guarantees you will never finish anything.
Let the clear interpret the difficult. Scripture says a great deal plainly and a little obscurely. Build on what is plain, and read the obscure in its light — never the reverse.
Distinguish what you do not understand from what you do not like. These feel identical and are not. The first calls for patience; the second calls for honesty.
Ask. There is no shame in asking a believer who has read longer than you. The Bereans were commended for checking, not for working entirely alone.
And accept that some things will remain unresolved. A book written by an infinite God that a finite reader could exhaust in a lifetime would not be worth much. Difficulty is not a defect in Scripture; it is evidence of its depth.
Our habits of reading are formed by screens, and they are almost exactly the wrong habits for this.
Speed is the enemy here. Nobody was ever fed by reading quickly.
Better to read five verses and think about them than three chapters and remember nothing. A single sentence, turned over during the day, will do more than a schedule kept anxiously.
"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly... But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night." (Psalm 1:1-2)
Meditate in Scripture is not emptying the mind; it is the opposite. It is chewing something over, returning to it, letting it work.
And read some of it aloud. It was written to be heard, most of it was first received by ear, and hearing your own voice say it slows you to the right speed.
Scripture commends meditation — turning a verse over, staying with it, letting it work. The man of the first psalm delights in the law of the LORD and meditates in it day and night. Meditation here is not emptying the mind but filling it with one thing and holding it there.
In practice this means it is better to read one paragraph and think about it than five chapters skimmed. If a verse arrests you, stop and stay with it. That is not falling behind; that is the reading working.
The Word has been described as a lamp:
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." (Psalm 119:105)
Notice how modest the promise is. Not a floodlight over the whole landscape — a lamp unto my feet. Enough light for the next step. Which is exactly how it works: you will not be shown the whole route, but you will be given light enough to move.
"I have no time." Almost always this means it has no place. A person who waits for a spare half hour will wait for years. Fifteen minutes at a fixed time, before the day takes hold, will outlast every good intention. And it is worth being honest about what the time actually goes on; most of us can find fifteen minutes if we look at where the last hour went.
The obstacles are ordinary, and naming them takes away half their power.
No time. Usually untrue, and easily tested: most of us can account for an hour on a telephone we could not account for in a Bible. Ten minutes at a fixed point in the day beats an hour you keep meaning to find.
Guilt about the gap. A man misses four days, feels ashamed, and stays away a month because starting again feels like an admission. Simply start again. There is no penance to work off, and God is not keeping the tally you imagine.
Dryness. Some seasons are dry. Keep going. Food nourishes whether or not the meal was enjoyable.
And the sin nobody mentions. Unconfessed sin makes the Book taste like dust, and no reading plan will fix it. If Scripture has gone flat, the trouble may not be with your method.
"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." (Psalm 66:18)
"I feel nothing when I read." Sometimes you will, sometimes you will not, and the second is not failure. Meals are not always memorable, and are nourishing regardless. Read for what is true rather than for what is felt, and the feeling will follow often enough.
"I don't understand it." Understanding grows by reading, not before it. Nobody learned a language by waiting until he could speak it. Read what you can follow, and the difficult parts will become less difficult as the rest of the book fills in around them.
"I keep starting and giving up." Then start somewhere easier and shorter, and do not attempt to make up missed days. Guilt over a broken schedule has ended more Bible reading than difficulty ever did.
Scripture claims to act upon the reader rather than merely inform him.
"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." (John 17:17)
"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
Note the direction of that verse. You open the Book to examine it, and discover it is examining you. A discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart — not merely of actions, but of motives you had not admitted to yourself.
"Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." (Psalm 119:11)
Hidden in the heart, not merely on the shelf. What is stored there is available at the moment of temptation, which is exactly when nobody has time to look something up.
"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." (Psalm 119:105)
A lamp for the feet lights the next step, not the whole road. That is usually all we are given, and it is enough to walk by.
"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
Quick here means living. This is the strange experience nearly every serious reader reports: the sense that at some point the book turned around and began reading him. It names things you have never told anyone. It gets past the defences and the long-rehearsed explanations, and puts a finger on the actual motive.
It also cleans. The psalmist said he had hidden God's word in his heart that he might not sin against Him — which is a strategy, not a sentiment. Truth stored in advance is what is available at the moment of temptation, and nothing else is.
And it sets you apart:
"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." (John 17:17)
One last thing, and without it all the rest can go badly wrong.
The Lord Jesus Christ once rebuked men who searched the Scriptures diligently, thinking that in them they had eternal life — and who would not come to Him, of whom those very Scriptures testified. It is possible to know the book and miss the Person, and that is the saddest form of Bible study there is.
After His resurrection, walking with two grieving men, He began at Moses and all the prophets and expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. The whole book is about Him. Read it looking for Him and it opens; read it as a manual of religion and it closes.
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
If you are reading this and have never trusted Christ, the book will remain a closed thing to you in the deepest sense, however much of it you can quote. The gospel is plain, and it is here:
"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." (Acts 16:31)
You do not need a course, a commentary, or a qualified guide to begin. You need a Bible, a fixed quarter of an hour, and the willingness to start with the Gospel of John.
Men were burned alive so that this book could be in your language, and it is now within arm's reach of you, in a country where nobody will trouble you for reading it. That is a strange inheritance to leave on a shelf.
Do not take anyone's word for what is in it — not a preacher's, not this article's. Open it and see.
"...and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so."Acts 17:11
Nothing elaborate. This is what a working man or woman can actually keep.
Fix the time before you fix the amount. The same ten minutes every day — before the house wakes, on the bus, at the kitchen table after supper. A fixed hour survives a bad week; good intentions do not.
Read one paragraph, not one chapter. Stop where the thought stops. If a verse catches you, stay there and read no further; you have found what you came for.
Write one sentence. Not a study. One line about what the passage said — and, where it applies, one thing to do. Writing forces the mind to slow down and stops the eyes from sliding.
Pray it back. Turn what you have just read into your own words to God. If it is a promise, thank Him for it. If it is a command, ask for help. If it is a warning, ask to be spared it. This joins reading and praying into one thing instead of two.
"Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." (Psalm 119:18)
Pray that before you begin. The same Author who gave the Book must open the eyes, and He has never refused that request.
And read some with other people. Around a table at home, or with one friend. You will see things another believer sees and you had walked past for years.
There is a danger peculiar to people who read a great deal, and it needs saying plainly.
A man can become an expert in a Book he does not obey. He can hold accurate views, defend them well, and be entirely unchanged. The Pharisees knew the Scriptures better than most of us ever will.
"But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." (James 1:22)
Mark the phrase deceiving your own selves. The hearer is not deceiving anyone else; he is deceiving himself, and the mechanism is that hearing feels like doing.
"For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was." (James 1:23-24)
He saw the mark on his face and walked away without wiping it. That is what a chapter read and not obeyed amounts to.
So one honest test at the end of a reading: is there anything here I must now do, stop, say, or put right? If there is, do it before the day ends.
The Bible is not a collection of religious material. It is one book with one subject, and the subject is a Person.
He said so of the Old Testament, to men who read it professionally:
"Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life." (John 5:39-40)
That is the sharpest warning in this whole article. It is possible to search the Scriptures diligently, all your life, and never come to the One they are about. Reading is not the destination. He is.
And on the road to Emmaus, walking with two disconsolate men, He did not comfort them with sentiment. He gave them a Bible study:
"And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 24:27)
Moses. The prophets. All the scriptures. Things concerning Himself.
So read looking for Him. In the lamb of the Passover, in the rock struck in the wilderness, in the scapegoat, in the kinsman-redeemer, in the suffering servant of Isaiah, in the Shepherd of the twenty-third Psalm. He is on every page, sometimes in shadow and sometimes in full light.
And when the eyes are finally opened, it is not information a man comes away with:
"And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luke 24:32)
Our gracious heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.
We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who opened the Scriptures and made hearts burn on the road. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet" (Psalm 119:105), and which cannot be broken.
We confess before You that we own many Bibles and read them little. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.
Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to put the Book back into the hands of every reader, and open it to him, for Your glory and not for ours.
We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?
You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin — but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.
If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words — but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:
Dear Holy and Almighty God, I come to You just as I am. I confess that I am a sinner. I have broken Your law, I have gone my own way, and I deserve the judgment and the everlasting fire that my sin has earned. I cannot save myself, and I bring You nothing.
I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Your Son; that He loved me and died on the cross in my place, shedding His precious blood for my sins; that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Here and now I turn from my sin, and I trust Him alone — not my works, not my religion, not my goodness — to save me. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, and be my Saviour from this moment and for ever.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.
1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).
2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).
3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.
4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved — you already are — but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.
5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).