Why Study the Bible?

As believers, we know that we need to study the Bible. However, somethings, it is not always clear why we should study it.

“God wants to communicate with you in the 21st century. He wrote His message in a book. He asks you to come and study that book for three compelling reasons: it’s essential for growth. It’s essential for maturity. It’s essential for equipping you, training you, so that you might be an available, clean, sharp instrument in His hands to accomplish His purposes.” – Howard Hendricks

Here are a few reminders of why we should study the Bible.

1. To know God
2. To know God’s Word
3. It provides direction in life
4. To learn how to be pure and holy
5. It provides comfort and hope

1. To know God

We would not know anything about God apart from His Word. The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to us. The Bible reveals to us God’s nature and character. The Bible is a unified story of God’s redemptive plan.

We learn not only of God the Father but also about God the Son Jesus Christ, teaching us more about Himself and His sacrifice for us. And before Christ ascends into heaven, He tells us about the Holy Spirit.

God is a big part of our lives as believers, and it is important to know Him.

2. To know God’s Word

God inspired the Scriptures. It is God’s message for us.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

The Bible tells us about how God created the world and the order He established. God has a standard for what is acceptable and what is not. The Bible provides us with the truth. God’s truth. God speaks to us through His Word.

We learn what He commands of us as believers. The Bible gives us the measuring stick by which we can distinguish truth from error.


3. It provides direction in life

While the Bible will not tell you what job to take, it does provide us with wisdom to navigate through life. As a follower of Christ, we have a purpose. To glorify God and to make Him know. The life of a believer is to be a selfless one. Here is what we must do, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:37-39 NLT


4. To learn how to be pure and holy

As a believer in Christ, he has given us a new life. “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV.

Our old identity is gone. Instead, we are to identify with Christ.

We are to live a different kind of life. One that is amid pleasing the Lord. Reading and studying Scripture teaches us how to please God and look more like him and less like the world.

Paul reminds us of this in Romans,
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good, pleasing, and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2 NLT

The Bible teaches and equips us on how to live for Christ.

5. It provides comfort and hope

The Bible is sufficient to speak to every human need, even the darkest ones—pain, insecurity, confusion, shame, stress, disability, or betrayal.

No matter the magnitude of the mess we carry, the Word is alive and powerful to speak to those needs.

“And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him.”
1 John 5:14 NLT

The Bible is the foundation and source of confidence in our prayers.

“The Bible is meant to be bread for daily use, not cake for special occasions.” -Unknown