As we use the word "love" in everyday speech, it has an extremely flexible meaning. I say that I love God. I say that I love my wife. But I also say that I love chocolate, and mountains, and Fridays. Other items on the list of things I love include a road without potholes and a pen that does not skip . But do I love a pen in the same way that I love my wife? Certainly not. My love for her is deep and multidimensional, capable of enduring regardless of circumstances. But my feeling for a good pen would barely register on a meter of emotion. At its absolute peak it is no more than a mild approval. If the pen suddenly fails to please me, I, without a moment's sadness, stop loving it and throw it away.

Here then is the difficulty when Scripture teaches us to love the Word of God (Psa. 119:97; 119:127). What kind of love does it mean? Recognizing that we speak of love rather loosely, the Holy Spirit has given us an extended definition of the love we should cultivate for the Bible. This definition appears in the middle of the Bible, in the Bible's longest chapter, Psalm 119. Just in the first fifty verses we find a full description of what accompanies a true love for God's Word. According to the psalmist, to love the Word of God means that we

praise the author (v. 7)

yearn after it with great longing (v. 20)

seek wondrous things in it (v. 18)

meditate upon it (v. 15)

remember it (v. 16)

obtain moral guidance from it (v. 9)

seek counsel from it (v. 24)

use it to gain strength (v. 26)

use it as comfort in affliction (v. 50)

use it to answer an adversary (v. 42)

forsake the ways of lying (v. 29)

reject vanities (v. 37)

keep its commandments (v. 4)

make it the foundation of hope (v. 43)

declare it without fear to others (v. 46)

Principles of Bible study

Bible study cannot yield all the benefits that God intended unless it proceeds with an understanding of the following principles.

1. God intentionally put difficulties in the Bible. These difficulties include a broad assortment of texts that, when viewed superficially, appear foolish or false. We have all heard the question, "Where did Cain get his wife?" Like other difficulties, this has a satisfying explanation. He married his sister or niece. When the human race was genetically perfect, inbreeding had no drawbacks. But to many readers, the failure of Scripture to identify his wife seems like an insoluble problem.

A devout reader should understand that the many difficulties serve a purpose, which the Bible itself reveals (Matt. 13:11-7). Jesus says that His parables are constructed so that only the right people—those who know Him by faith—will discern their meaning. All other people, having hearts which have waxed gross through sin, will see nothing profound in them, nothing to shake them out of their complacent choice of self-destruction. Indeed, they may actually view the impenetrability of these parables as proof that they can safely dismiss the teachings of Jesus.

All difficulties in the Bible have the same twofold purpose. They reserve truth for the chosen and furnish the proud an excuse for rejecting the Bible. Men come to the Bible with either of two biases. Either, through a work of the Holy Spirit, they desire to believe, or, because of the innate perversity of the human heart, they desire not to believe. God does not want anyone in the latter group to find the Bible so undeniably divine that he has no choice but to believe. To believe something supported by overwhelming evidence is, as it were, to believe under coercion, but God desires faith motivated by love.

If you discover a difficulty while reading the Bible, adopt the following strategy:

1. Regard it as a test of your faith. Believe from the outset that the Bible is true despite what seems like a difficulty.
2. Without wavering in faith, ask God to explain the difficulty. If you approach Him with a meek rather than a demanding spirit—if your question is not an ultimatum that He must satisfy or else lose your confidence—He will be happy to give you an answer. He said to Abraham, His friend (2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8; James 2:23), "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" (Gen. 18:17). He may not give you an answer right away. He may require you to persevere in study and seeking, but eventually He will show you how the difficulty can be resolved.

2. To understand the Bible is impossible without the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Bible itself affirms this principle (John 14:26; 1 Cor. 2:13; 1 John 2:27). The work of the Holy Spirit that enables a believer to see Scripture unveiled is called enlightenment or illumination. To receive the benefit of illumination, a believer should, when he comes to Scripture, explicitly acknowledge His dependence on the Holy Spirit and seek His aid. The same believer should clear aside all hurdles of sin and unbelief that stand in the way of understanding.

3. The Bible contains mysteries that God expects us to explore. The Bible, being a work of God, is rich and deep. Everywhere within its wide compass, the reader finds dim windows to profound mysteries. The tendency of a modern reader, under the influence of the idea that the only safe truth is simple truth, is to bypass these windows, averting his eyes lest he glimpse something beyond. To excuse his incuriosity, he may quote Scripture, such as Deuteronomy 29:29.

The problem with this excuse is that a window is not secret. It is there to look through. Perhaps the greatest mystery of prophetic revelation is the riddle of the seventy weeks in Daniel 9:24-7. Yet notice the angel's opening words when he introduces the riddle, "Understand the matter, and consider the vision" (v. 23). Again, he says "Know therefore and understand" (v. 25). It is a fair generalization that whenever the Bible views its own mysteries, it declares them transparent to a reader endowed with wisdom (Prov. 1:5-6; Dan. 12:9-10; Rev. 13:18).

Bible students in days gone by did not hesitate to delve into the mysteries of the Bible. I have whole shelves of old books that tackle the hardest questions. An outstanding Christian author from the nineteenth century was Andrew Jukes, who wrote such works as The Names of God in Holy Scripture, The Law of the Offerings, and Four Views of Christ. He commented,

God's Word is His work as much as creation; and it is its infinite depth and breadth, and the diverse and manifold ends and aims of all we find in it, which make it what it is, inexhaustible. To look, therefore, on the mere surface of the Bible, is one thing; to look into it quite another; for each part may have many purposes. The very words which, in one dispensation and to one people, conveyed a literal command, to be obeyed literally, may, in another age and dispensation, supply a type of some part of God's work or purpose; while in the selfsame passage the humble believer of every age may find matter of comfort or warning, according to his need.

Still, there are some readers of the Bible who suppose that the only meaning to be found is the meaning sitting on the surface. They regard any attempt to dig for deeper significance as reading too much into the text. But the same God who wrote the Bible also packed all the key numerical concepts of mathematics into the small equation e (exp ip) = -1 and all the design specifications of the human body into a single tiny molecule of DNA.

4. Holiness and faith are prerequisites for comprehending the mysteries of the Bible. This principle rests both on precept and example.

1. Precept. Several texts say clearly that God has secrets which he shares only with the righteous (Prov. 3:32; Psa. 25:14).
2. Example. The most outstanding Biblical example of a man who gained access to divine secrets is Daniel. Daniel was a man who sought the approval of God alone, and to gain that approval he was willing to adopt a lifestyle of rigorous separation from all the defiling practices of the world. For example, he refused to violate God's law by eating the king's food (Dan. 1:8). We might think that he was making a fuss over a little thing. It was merely a question of what he would have for supper. Yet he refused to eat the king's food even though the scruple he would surrender by such compromise with the world was relatively minor, and even though the cost of obeying his conscience might be his own life.

In reward for his courageous refusal to compromise with the world, God gave Daniel dreams and visions revealing progressively more of Himself and of His program for the future history of nations and empires. The book that Daniel wrote, known as the Book of Daniel, is divided down the middle into two parts. The first six chapters include all the famous stories about the life of Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. The last six tell of Daniel's prophetic visions. These contain the most specific and comprehensive prophecies to be found anywhere in the Bible outside the Book of Revelation.

1. They tell exactly what will happen to the Jewish nation for the next 370 years after Daniel's time—in other words, from about 535 B.C. to 165 B.C.
2. They tell exactly when the Messiah will come.
3. They give God's program for the rise and fall of nations from Daniel's time until the end of the age in which we live.
4. They give an overview of the key events during the Tribulation, the period at the end of the present age.

5. Regular devotions do not justify neglect of systematic Bible study. In an earlier lesson, we recommended that Bible reading in daily devotions be limited to a few verses. But a few verses per day do not meet the soul's need for nourishment by the Word of God. If you want enough strength to meet all the difficulties of life, you must be familiar with the whole Bible, and you must know large portions by heart. Therefore, in each day, you should set aside time for Bible memorization as well as for reading and studying long passages.

Many Christians follow a reading program that takes them through the Bible every year. The daily requirement is three or four chapters. If you can accomplish only one chapter per day, you will complete the Bible in three to four years. Another approach to Bible reading is to sit down occasionally and read ten or twenty chapters.

The quickest way to know Scripture is to teach it. Before you can teach others, you must teach yourself first, and the pressure to appear knowledgeable will drive you to deeper and more diligent study than you would ever have undertaken otherwise. You will learn more than your students. But lesson preparation, however worthwhile, should not be viewed as a substitute for a program of regular Bible reading.

Helps for Basic Study

A believer in today's Western world can easily obtain a multitude of aids to understanding the Scriptures. He need not struggle without help through a difficult text, or leave unanswered his questions about the historical and cultural setting of a passage.

For every Bible student—for a beginner as well as for someone with long experience—two aids are indispensable:

1. A modern translation. The King James Version is written in a style that is becoming more and more remote from today's spoken English. Where the language is especially antiquated, as it is in certain passages and books, a contemporary reader may sink into complete mystification as to the meaning. The hardest book in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians. Many Old Testament books, including Job and several minor prophets, frustrate attempts at comprehension. The greater clarity of a good modern translation is evident if we read it side by side with the King James. (The greater accuracy of the former is evident also if we compare both translations with the original text.) It is especially enlightening to compare renderings of obscure passages, such as the following (a small sample of those that might have been chosen): Habakkuk 1:9; Micah 2:8; Hosea 13:13; Job 28:3; 38:31; 39:13; 2 Corinthians 9:13.

Which modern translation is best? Here, we do not wish to become embroiled in the debate over versions that is currently raging in fundamentalism. Combatants take basically four positions: one, that the King James Bible is still the best version, and we have essentially no need of any other; two, that the only legitimate translations employ the Received Text of the New Testament; three, that translations employing the eclectic text are preferable, so long as they maintain close equivalence to the original; and four, loose translations in an understandable contemporary idiom are legitimate also. With respect to this debate, I will say only that I myself use the King James Bible for teaching and memorization and the New King James Bible for devotions. Based on the Received Text, this is the least controversial of the modern translations.

2. A concordance. A concordance tells every place in the Bible where you can find a particular word. For example, if you look up the word "heal" in a concordance, it lists all 40 occurrences, giving the reference for each as well as a few words of context. The three best-known concordances are Strong's, Young's, and Cruden's. It has often been said that Strong's is for the strong, Young's for the young, and Cruden's for the crude. Indeed, Cruden's is not as exhaustive as the others. The great advantage of Strong's is that next to every occurrence of an English word, it gives a number showing—by reference to Greek and Hebrew dictionaries at the end of the concordance—the original word.

A concordance is useful for several purposes. Most people use it mainly to find the reference of a verse that they remember at least in part. Generally, one word is enough to find the reference. Another use is to find all the texts employing the same word, the goal being to determine the word's meaning in Scripture. A concordance is also a good tool for locating verses relevant to a given topic or question.

Helps for Advanced Study

Whatever your budget, you should obtain a readable translation and a concordance. But if your budget allows, you should add other study aids to your library.

1. Study Bibles. These come in many varieties.

1. Topical Bibles. These offer lists of passages speaking on the same subject. Two classics are Thompson's Chain Reference Bible, my favorite as well as my father's, and Nave's Topical Bible. Thompson's has an appendix with thousands of topics arranged alphabetically, each followed by a list of texts. The major texts are quoted in full, so that the user can easily judge whether a particular one meets the need. When collating texts on the same topic, Nave's omits quotations, but provides more references. A topical Bible is handy for researching what the Bible says about a certain issue, or for preparing a topical lesson. Every preacher or Bible teacher needs one.
2. Parallel Bibles. Several study Bibles are currently available that offer different translations in parallel columns. If you can find one with a good choice of translations, you might consider purchasing it.
3. Annotated Bibles. The best known work of this kind is the Scofield Reference Bible, which has been a best seller for almost a century (originally published in 1909). Its chief rival in recent years has been the Ryrie Study Bible. Both offer an abundance of notes that provide background, expound doctrine, or explain difficulties. Although both are conservative in orientation, neither is completely right about everything. If you use an annotated Bible, do not give the notes the same authority as Scripture itself.
4. Bibles that facilitate linguistic study. The Bible I carry to church is a Zodhiates' Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible. Each key word in the English text has a number above it showing where it is discussed in the appendix, which contains ample dictionaries for both Greek and Hebrew. This Bible is useful during a sermon for making sure that the preacher is defining words correctly. Various other study Bibles specializing in linguistic helps are also available.

2. Interlinear translations. These provide the text in the original language, with the English equivalent of each word placed above or below it—that is, between the lines; hence, the name "interlinear." Thanks to such translations, a layman without formal training in Greek and Hebrew can still gain a good idea of how any text reads in the original language. If he wishes to delve further into the text as God gave it, he can expand his understanding of the words by consulting a Greek or Hebrew lexicon. Brief lexicons come at the end of Strong's Concordance. The most widely used exhaustive lexicon of Hebrew and Aramaic words (Aramaic is the language of a few passages in the Old Testament) is known, after its authors, as Brown-Driver-Briggs. The leading Greek lexicon is the one compiled by Arndt and Gingrich.

3. Commentaries. Commentaries come in two types, devotional and technical. Technical commentaries, assembling the results of latest scholarship on the meaning and background of the text, tend to be quickly dated, and many fall into some species of unbelief. Much better for the layman are devotional commentaries, if he can find some of the older writers who were outstanding both for wisdom and holiness of life. The best-known devotional commentary is Matthew Henry's, completed in about 1721 but still popular today. It sets the standard for godly reflection on God's Word, giving insights that are deep but not dense, wise but not proud, fervent in spirit but not reckless in conclusions. Apart from The Treasury of David (a commentary on the Psalms) and The Gospel of the Kingdom (a commentary on Matthew), Spurgeon himself did not write books in the form of ordinary commentaries. Nevertheless, his sermons may be viewed as the best devotional commentaries from the nineteenth century.

The twentieth century did not produce a large number of commentaries outstanding for spiritual depth. The best perhaps are those of Arthur W. Pink.

Some people imagine that the use of commentaries is somehow disrespectful to the supreme authority of Scripture alone. Yet a good commentary has the same value as a good sermon. It is not infallible, yet it is useful as a source of godly instruction on what the Bible means and how it should be applied to our lives.

Most (but not all) good commentaries were written by preachers, and most began as sermons. The ones that many generations of Christians have revered as superior represent the best insights of the best preachers—insights resting on a lifetime of study and Christian experience.