October 19, 2025

Jack Wilkie wrote a short article a few years ago for Think magazine I have adapted some of his thoughts for a few bulletin notes that might help us as we approach our study of scripture. 

Bad Bible study ignores context

With the Bible being divided up into easily cited verses, we can end up treating it unlike any other written text. Imagine taking letters from your spouse and dividing them up line by line, then grabbing individual lines out of each letter and recombining them to make up a whole new paragraph. Yeah, it would be factually true to say she wrote those words. But she didn’t write them in that order, and may not mean them the way they come across when recombined that way. We realize it would be absurd to do that with letters from a spouse, and yet it’s the primary way many (if not most) study the Bible.

The Bible was not written as a series of disconnected verses to be strung together as we choose. Every verse is placed within multiple layers of context for a reason, and it cannot be properly understood unless it is understood in the light of those contexts.

Before you can assert the meaning of the verse, look at the immediate context (2-3 verses before and after). In Philippians 4:13 Paul did say he can do all things through Christ who strengthened him. But without context we end up defining “all things” the way we want to rather than the way Paul meant it. A quick scan of the immediate context shows he was talking about enduring any situation in life with Jesus’ help. 

After the immediate context, zoom out a bit and look at the context of the section. The section can range from a couple of paragraphs to a few chapters, depending on the book. In Philippians 4 Paul is talking about having the right mindset of peace and joy. So, 4:13 continues in that theme and loses its intended power if it is made to be more broad than intended. 

Then, look at the context of the book. In Philippians Paul is speaking about the joy that results when Christians unite for the Gospel, a needed message for a church who was divided (4:2-3). He speaks of the sacrifices Jesus made for us, along with the sacrifices Paul, Timothy, and Epaphroditus made for the Gospel. 1:21 is key – “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” When you’re living in service to Christ, with the promise of being with Him when you die, you can get through anything. Thus, the foundation is laid for 4:13.

Philippians 4:13 is maybe the most well-known of verses taken out of context and therefore the easiest to diagnose, but the truth is we can stumble into this mistake with virtually any verse in the entire Bible. The Bible student must engage in the work of exposing the context in order to understand a verse correctly. 

A good habit to help with context is to work on developing outlines of the books you are study this way you can get a quick overview of a book and better remember how what you are reading fits with what you have already read.

~ Kevin Cleary