Don’t settle for quick answers on a text. Think bigger and take stock of how your text fits into the author’s larger argument. In this way, you may find your Bible study more enriching, encouraging, and enlightening than you expected.
Last week, I argued for the value of “thinking bigger” in your Bible study—of seeking to grasp how your text fits into the book’s larger argument. In this post, I’ll give some examples to show the payoff of such bigger thinking.
Proverbs 2
First, a rather simple example. Upon studying Proverbs 2, you may recognize that this poem describes how to become wise. All you have to do is passively receive wisdom and actively seek it, and the Lord is just waiting to dole it out.
So much, so good. But how does this chapter fit into the book’s argument?
As a whole, Proverbs 1-9 serve as an extended introduction to the book. In the long poems there, the sage poet explains the fundamentals of how wisdom works, what it does, and why it’s worth it. Chapter 2 on how to get it fits right in with the other fundamentals.
And all those fundamentals are to be assumed when we read chapters 10 and beyond. Therefore, to read particular verses of proverbs as points of secular business, finance, or relationship advice is to miss the entire point. Proverbs 2 plays a crucial role by explaining that God is the only source of wisdom and that he is generous in giving it to those who seek him. Recognizing this role enables us to perceive the weightiness of chapter 2 and the importance of constantly returning to it to help interpret the wisdom found in the rest of the book.
The Fruit of the Spirit
We love to give Sunday school children their coloring pages to help them learn about the cornucopia described in Galatians 5:22-23. But what role do those verses play in light of the letter as a whole?
Gal 2:16 could perhaps summarize the main point of the whole letter: “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Paul makes his case first through his autobiography (Gal 1-2) and then by drawing out the tension between law and promise (Gal 3-4).