Course 4: Bible Reading
- Jia Han
- May 8
- 5 min read
John J.L. Han
After you become a Christian, the most important thing is Bible reading. Matthew 4:4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” After you become a Christian, you are born-again with a new life (John 3:1-8). That life is your spiritual life. Just like your flesh life, it needs daily nourishment. Reading the Bible and praying regularly (if possible, everyday) are necessary for your spiritual life to stay healthy and grow. In Matthew 13:1-23 (the parable of the sower), Jesus taught us that some may ignore gospel, some accept it but failed to hold it, while some grow strong and become children of God. I hope that everyone of you grows in spirit and enjoy the presence of the Lord.
I became a Christian in 1983 and was baptized one year later. God had mercy on me and gave me miracles many times when I was in the dark. So I vowed to read Bible everyday. I also went to church almost every Sunday. However, my understanding of Bible had been slow. It took me many years to understand some biblical truths. After more than 10 years later, around 1997, I read some Watchman Nee’s books. That was really helpful. Most his books are in Chinese. In addition, unfortunately many in the denomination he established deviate from mainstream Christianity. His theology also has faults. In this sequence of essays, I will try to extract Watchman Nee’s good points. Another book I strongly recommend is Donald Knuth’s book: Donald E. Knuth, "3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated", A-R Editions, Inc.; 1991. I will refer to this book often.
Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. This is one of my favourite verses. If you do not have light or lamp, you grope in the dark. It is also important to know who can understand Bible. I Corinthians 2:12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, This passage actually has a lot information. For us now, in plain language a Christian may understand Bible while a non-believer cannot understand Bible fully because a Christian has the Holy Spirit in him/her.
Watchman Nee in his book “How to Read Bible” emphasized preparation of ourselves before reading the Bible. The key is to prepare one’s heart, i.e., to remove our sins. Then, the word of God becomes meaningful to us. 2 Corinthians 3:13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. We will remove the veil and see God face to face.
There is a well known saying: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The New Man web page is designed in a way to help you grow into an independent new man (or woman) in Christ. Unlike my past journey which took more than 10 years to understand key points of the Bible, I wish to help you to grow into spiritual maturity in a relatively short time. I will try to pass you methods and routines so that you can establish a healthy spiritual life.
John17:(Jesus Prays for All Believers) 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— One key to Bible reading is how to interpret the Bible. I will elaborate this in another essay. It is important that we interpret the Bible in such a way in the Body and in Christ. Wrong interpretation may mislead you, even might lead to heresy.
How to Start Reading the Bible?
I have written an essay on how to study Bible for a Christian. If you are a Christian, you may go there. If you are a non-believer, you may also glance that essay. As you can see in that essay, as a non-believer you are not able to truly understand the Bible because you do not have the Holy Spirit within you. However, you still may learn more about the Bible and Christianity, which is why I am writing this article.
Obviously, understanding Bible is a hugely important task. The importance of Bible cannot be overemphasized. Bible is the most printed book in the world and serves as the guide to more than one billion Christians. Bible can also be intimidating, difficult to know the true meaning of Bible passages.
An excellent introductory book on Bible is Robert Hann, “The Bible, an owner's manual”[1]. It was used for third rate or lower US universities for a Religion 101 level course. It is unbiased with fair coverage for Catholics and Protestants. It is relatively easy to understand. Prestigious universities may use excellent textbooks but might be more difficult to understand. This book is out of print but if you are in the US you can buy a cheap copy on eBay.
The first step of Bible reading is to know its formation and its key overviews. For a broad context of world religions, one might want to refer a textbook [2].
Another key question for you might be whether God exists. I will direct you to two good websites [3,4]. I also have written an article in Chinese [5]. If warranted, I might write more later. But do read [3,4] carefully before asking your questions.
One thing you do not want to do is to learn Bible from movies or books that viciously attack Christianity, such as “The Da Vinci Code”[6]. Now where to start? Unlike some other sacred books such as Buddhist books or Quran of Islam, some books in the Bible are actually very easy to understand. Some say that The New Testament is easier to understand while The Old Testament is harder to understand. In my opinion, it might be the opposite for a deep understanding. Some books of The Old Testament are very good stories, such as Ruth, Esther, Jonah. You may start with them. I would suggest Genesis and Exodus. They are not too difficult to understand and have enormous implications throughout the Bible. For The New Testament, I suggest to read Mark first. According to Watchman Nee, the four books on gospel each describe one aspect of Jesus, Matthew on His kingship, John on His divinity, and Mark is on His humanity. Mark is relatively easy to understand yet has almost all important aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching. I will open a web page on teaching Mark.
References:
[1] Robert R. Hann, “The Bible, an owner's manual” : Paulist Press, c1983.
[2] N. Smart, "The World's Religions", 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
[5] 韩家亮：谁创造了上帝与上帝投骰子吗？ http://my.cnd.org/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=31481
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