The Bible is a complex and sometimes confusing book. And it’s not just in recent days that people have misread it and twisted its sacred truth.

In the second century, Bishop Irenaeus from Lyon, in what is now France, faced heretics who liked to quote certain Bible verses to support their false teaching. They were known as Gnostics, and they read the Bible wrongly, Irenaeus contended, because they didn’t know what it was about. They were biblically illiterate because they were theologically ignorant. To read the Bible rightly one must read it in light of the gospel that shines through it.

Irenaeus made this comparison: In his day, beautiful mosaics were shipped unassembled, and the tiles had to be pieced together on site. This was only possible because the shipped mosaics always included a plan or key showing how the pieces were to be rightly arranged.

The church’s basic understanding of the gospel message—known as the “rule of faith”—is like that key, Irenaeus argued. Whereas the heretics arrange the Scriptures wrongly (distorting their glory so as to form, say, the picture of a dog or a fox), the church’s rule of faith explains how the Scriptures are to be arranged so as to render the portrait of the King.¹

More Than a "Sword Drill"

Biblical literacy is more than just being able to recite the Ten Commandments, name the kings of the united kingdom or list the 12 apostles. It means more than being able to point to favorite verses that provide strength or solace.

Biblical literacy is the ability to read the Bible with an understanding of what it is about and to profit from the life and truth that flows from it as the Word of God. For that reason, biblical literacy is another way of talking about biblical competence. That is, it is an ability to use the Bible well for the purpose for which it has been given—to lead us to a redemptive and transforming relationship with God as He has been revealed in Jesus Christ.

Biblical literacy starts with an understanding that the Bible is essentially a story. The story begins with God’s good creation; it tells of a tragic fall into sin; it moves to the theme of redemption as the Lord reveals His character as a holy and merciful God; and it looks toward a great and final consummation of the good purpose of God in a new heaven and a new earth.

The center of this great story is Jesus Christ. Jesus only makes sense in the context of this story—the story of God’s redemptive purposes. In Christ, God is redeeming a people for Himself from this lost world, and biblical literacy comes through seeing this gospel of Jesus Christ as the interpretive guide in understanding the whole biblical story.

We must teach this grand story, following its basic plot-line and then showing how the smaller stories of the Bible fit into the basic narrative—pointing us to Jesus, showing us the holy love of God, revealing our own sinful condition, and calling us to trust in the God who saves and restores. We must expound the Bible’s own interpretation of that story, developing a more systematic unpacking of the central gospel message.

There's an intricate connection between biblical literacy and theological literacy

Mutually Reinforcing Skills

There’s an intricate connection between biblical literacy (competently reading the Bible so as to understand its meaning) and theological literacy (competently understanding the relationships between the various theological truths of the Bible). These two go together, the one helping us to grasp the other. Our study of the Bible always lays the foundation for our theological understanding, but we can’t understand the Bible without some theological perspective.

That is why our EFCA Statement of Faith is such a valuable tool—it’s one example of a basic theological framework for understanding the biblical gospel.

How do we promote biblical literacy? As a pastor, I begin by simply telling the story—over and over again. In constant expositional preaching from the Bible, I connect the particular preaching text with the larger story, and connect it all with Christ. Pastors must provide clear chronological and thematic markers—like Adam, Abraham, Moses, David and the Exile—to help situate our texts in the flow of biblical history.

To help people get the big picture, a pastor might try preaching one sermon on the message of the whole Bible. It is also important to preach from all of the Bible—from Leviticus and Song of Songs and Revelation—so people can see the connectedness of the whole modeled from the pulpit. We must help people to see that “all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable” (2 Timothy 3:16), and that all Scriptures testify to Jesus (John 5:39).²

It is helpful, also, to preach from bigger chunks so that you can cover more ground. I would avoid the example of Bernard of Clairvaux from the 12^th century: In 18 years, he composed 86 sermons on the Song of Songs. When he died, he had only completed the first two chapters, averaging more than two sermons per verse! Instead, preach from a variety of biblical genres—history, Psalms, prophecy, Gospels, Epistles—so that people can see how each contributes to the whole of Scripture.

Because biblical literacy is essentially about a great story, it is not reserved for educated intellectuals or wealthy Westerners. The Bible’s story-form makes it transcultural, and for that reason it has had a universal appeal—among rich and poor, young and old, and from every nation and tribe. We simply need to provide opportunities for people to learn its story, presented in a gospel-centered way, so that they can become biblically competent and able to feed on the riches of the Word of God themselves.