Welcome to my series on Bible study, exploring the questions of who should study it, why we should study it, why we can trust it, and, most importantly, how to study and interpret scripture. My goal with this series is to equip women of God to navigate these increasingly deceptive times in which we live by being thoroughly grounded in the truth of God’s word and fully armed with the Sword of the Spirit. Subscribe so you don’t miss a post!

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Bible study and interpretation of scripture should be left to the clergy. It’s dangerous for laypeople who lack sufficient seminary training and theological education to study and interpret scripture for themselves. Everything we need to understand about the faith is summed up in the creeds, confessions and traditions which were settled in antiquity by scholars and theologians. These men were geniuses, and we should trust that they knew what they were talking about.

No, this is not a belated April Fool’s joke. Sadly, the above paragraph sums up an article I read a while back. While the article was frustrating enough, even more disheartening was the attached comment thread, which was full of people who agreed with this sentiment. Not only that, but many of the commenters—some of them pastors—argued that the modern democratization of Bible study is responsible for all of the error and division in the church, not to mention the reason we have so many denominations.

The average layperson isn’t capable of properly understanding and interpreting scripture for themselves, they said. Attempts to do so lead to heresies and divisions.

I can’t argue with that last part. Pretty much every major split in church history, from the original split between the schools of Alexandria and Antioch that led to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, respectively, to the Reformation, to the formation of various denominations and to local congregations deciding to leave those denominations, comes down to people actually reading and studying their Bibles, realizing that so many of the traditions they’d been adhering to are unbiblical, and being unable to get church leadership to see or care that they were off-track.

And believe it or not, that’s a Biblical principle. In 1 Corinthians 11:19, Paul says:

For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

Or as the ESV puts it:

For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

The word translated as factions in the ESV is the Greek word haireseis, which is indeed the word from which we get the English word heresy that appears in the KJV version. In Paul’s view, such heresies were a good thing because they made it easy to tell who is genuine. So when you get called a heretic for siding with what scripture actually says over what church tradition claims, just know that you would probably get a fist bump from the Apostle Paul.

Sadly, this view that we should just let the learned authorities study scripture (or study what ancient “church fathers” and medieval theologians said about what scripture says) and then disseminate those traditions down to us unwashed, unlettered masses flies in the face of—wait for it—what scripture itself says about our personal responsibility to study and know scripture. It also spits in the face of good men down through history—men like William Tyndale and John Wycliffe—who were heavily persecuted and even martyred for trying to restore access to scripture to the laity by translating it into English and distributing copies.

So what does the Bible have to say about who should study the Bible? For this we can start in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 6:

⁶ And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. [ESV]

Of course, at this point in history, Israel didn’t have completed Bibles, nor did they have centuries’ worth of theological writings and debates by learned scholars to fall back on. But they had the written Law, and they had Moses, Aaron, and all of the Levitical priests to instruct them. And yet, each individual Israelite was commanded to not only personally learn the scripture that was available to them, but to teach it to their children. Not to go to the tabernacle on Saturday and take their kids to hear the word preached to them, but to commit it to memory and teach it to their children, making it a daily part of their lives.

This calls to mind Hebrews 5:12:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

The letter of Hebrews wasn’t written to pastors or church elders, but to Jewish Christians in general—suggesting that the unnamed author of Hebrews (arguably the apostle Paul) fully expected all believers to know scripture well enough to be able to teach it.

While it can be argued that the instructions about Bible study in the letters to Timothy were written specifically to instruct a young pastor, we have two mentions in 2 Timothy (vv. 1:5 and 3:15) that tell us that Timothy had been studying scripture since childhood and that he had been taught by his mother and grandmother.

Psalm 119 not only tells us in verse 105 that God’s word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path (but only if we actually know the word well enough that it can light our way), but that even a “young man” can know it well enough to keep his way pure (v. 9).

In Acts 17, the Jews in Berea are called “more noble” than those in Thessalonica because they “eagerly” searched the Hebrew scriptures to verify Paul’s teaching. This seems to be completely backwards from the attitude that we should passively receive our understanding from the learned authorities and unquestioningly accept their teaching as gospel truth. These Bereans diligently studied scripture and held it in the highest authority—higher even than Paul himself, who authored most of the New Testament—as they rightly should have done. And they’re blessed for it by being praised and memorialized in the pages of scripture.

All of this contradicts these claims of “apostolic succession”—this idea of an unbroken chain of teaching and interpretation that has been handed down and preserved through the ages by popes, bishops and clergy who are the only ones who have the truth. It also contradicts this idea that only trained and learned men are capable of properly understanding scripture.

After all, the word itself says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27). Scripture was written so that fools, illiterate slaves and even young children could understand it, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. -- John 14:26

Does that mean we have no need of pastors or teachers? Of course not. Those are gifts of the Spirit, and they have their place. God uses those with teaching gifts to give us insight into scripture and help us apply it. But we have to be discerning about who we listen to, to be sure that they are led by the Holy Spirit in their understanding and not simply indoctrinating us into the traditions into which they themselves have been indoctrinated. Jesus said of prophets and teachers, “You will know them by their fruit.” Not by their degrees or titles or how many theology books they’ve read or written or how revered they are by their followers. If their understanding and interpretations of scripture don’t produce the fruit of love, that’s a red flag that they’re relying on their own intellect and not on the Holy Spirit to understand and interpret scripture.

The truth is that erroneous methods of interpreting scripture began to creep into the Church around the AD 300s, introduced by the intelligentsia of the School of Alexandria, who began to view scripture through the lens of gnostic and pagan influences. These new interpretations were favored by politically influential bishops such as Augustine of Hippo, who added their own spin and used their power and influence to silence those who held to what was then considered orthodoxy. They treated the ancient traditionalists as heretics and established a new orthodoxy that has since been passed down as sacred Church tradition. And woe to those who point out that those traditions don’t match up with what scripture actually says. I go into this in detail in my podcast, Let’s Talk About Truth.

Why would Satan be invested in keeping knowledge and correct understanding of scripture from the vast majority of Christians? It’s simple: Ephesians 6:17 tells us that God’s word is the “sword of the Spirit,” our greatest defensive weapon against the Enemy’s lies. What more effective way to disarm God’s spiritual warriors than by convincing us that the sword is not ours to wield without years of training and a special calling on our lives, along with a title or a string of letters behind our names?

It only takes a few minutes scrolling on social media or glancing at headlines on any given day to see that we’re living in a time when it’s more crucial than ever to be fully armed against deception and the schemes of the Enemy. Deception is rampant and, with the advent and the rapidly increasing sophistication of AI, it’s getting harder and harder to discern. The only way to survive these assaults on our reality is to be thoroughly grounded in the absolute truth of God’s word.

Over the coming weeks and months, we’re going to be studying not only why it’s so important and necessary to know the Bible backwards and forwards, but also how to study the word to gain understanding. But for now, you must understand that each individual believer is not only personally responsible for learning scripture but also has a mandate to do so, and to know it well enough to be able to teach it. This is not something we can outsource to our pastors or church elders.

If you have the Holy Spirit, you have all you need to learn and understand God’s word. After all, He’s the one who authored it.

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