Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Studying the Scriptures: My Approach

I wrote the other day about my goal to read the entire Bible with this question in mind: How is it that Jesus has corrected the problem of sin thereby allowing rebellious people to turn in faith to God?  My goal is to develop an understanding of atonement, the nature of sin and salvation, based on the entirety of Scripture.  Since then I read a post from April 2012 where I suggested that there are two basic questions that the entire Bible is answering: Who is God? and What does He want with me?  While these two questions do not directly relate to the question of how God has accomplished salvation, it seems that they would be appropriate to consider as I read through the Bible asking the question about the nature of the atonement.

So this is how I will approach my goal:
Tuesday and Wednesday I will read a passage of Scripture and begin to reflect on these four questions:
     1) Who is God?
     2) What does He want with me?
     3) What is the nature of sin?
     4) What is the remedy for sin?
Thursday I will write my thoughts in relation to the first question: Who is God?
Saturday or Sunday I will write in relation to the second question: What does He want with me?
Monday I will write in relation to the last two questions: What is the nature of sin? and What is the remedy for sin?

In approaching it in this way I hope to give a full week of thought to each passage before writing my conclusions on what it says about atonement.  Hopefully asking all four questions rather than just the last two will also make the whole exercise more fruitful.

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