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The Big Idea
How can we understand Scripture if we are not first familiar with it? How will we know if we are indeed inline or not unless we see how scripture speaks as a whole?
Note
Used as LCOS 📃Epistle in series Mediation on Scripture, July 2025.
Reading Scripture for Familiarity
We read written words for many different purposes throughout our daily life. While driving we read signs quickly to know where we are. While ordering a meal we read menus to learn what is available to eat. In school we read textbooks and articles to absorb information. We may also read novels, news stories, social media feeds, emails, texts… You get the point.
All of these different ways of reading come with particular expectations and uses. For example, a text message (should) be shorter than a book. A cook book should have recipes in it while a comic book should have pictures.
Day to day we switch automatically between all these different modes of reading. We may even bring some of these ways of reading to our times in Scripture. We might think of the Bible like a “recipe book” for our lives. Or we may think of it as a source of inspirational sayings. While many of these approaches can be helpful in their own way, being unaware of the “mode” in which we read Scripture can get us stuck and confused.
A common example of this is treating the Bible like a textbook, unless I really like reading textbooks, staying motivated to read Scripture is going to be very difficult. Just like students rarely read textbooks without a teacher’s demand, reading Scripture can end up feeling more like a school assignment than hearing God speak to us through His word.
Yet this is not the only way Scripture can be read. Academic pursuit around Scripture is good, but for many Early Church Fathers and later Theologians this kind of reading should come after a very different kind: Reading for Familiarity.
Unlike reading a textbook where the main point is to extract, remember and absorb information, reading Scripture for familiarity is exactly what it sounds like becoming familiar with the words of Scripture. The simplicity of this approach can feel a little offensive to someone who is stuck in the academic mindset of reading Scripture. Have you ever had someone tell you that understanding what you are reading is not the most important thing? Well now you have, if you are reading for familiarity understanding is not the most important thing. Who cares if you know what Proverbs 26:4-5 mean:
Proverbs 26:4-5 ESV
Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.
You could drive yourself crazy trying to understand exactly what is meant by that proverb. Even if a test came along and said “should you answer a fool” a yes or no might both be wrong. But that is kind of the point, reading Scripture for familiarity helps to break down our personal reliance on our own “full” understanding. I do not understand everything and that is okay. Something better than simply understanding is being familiar.
Luther points out the importance of this reversal of perspective when discussing Psalm 1:
Luther's Works, Volume 10, p. 18 - Commentary on Psalm 1
Their meditation is not on the law of the Lord, but rather, to the contrary, the law of the Lord is in their meditation (which is a horrible situation). They are the ones who twist the Scriptures to their own understanding and by their own fixed meditation compel the Scriptures to enter it and agree with it, when it ought to be the other way around. In this way, then, the law of the Lord is in their meditation, and not their meditation on the law of the Lord.
In other words, reading Scripture for familiarity flips the script. Rather than me trying to force understanding and “make” Scripture mean something (or in post-modern language mean something to me), I am able to slow down and be honest, reading Scripture as God speaking to me.
How many parents speak to a small child that has no idea what they are saying? In the same way, when we read simply so that we get more and more familiar with the words of Scripture, we acknowledge that often we are the child listening to the deep beautiful words of God and have no idea what He is saying. But just like parents keep talking so that the child can learn to speak, God keeps speaking to us through His word so that day by day, verse by verse, we may allow the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out.
A beautiful picture of what this approach can look like comes from Athanasius while he gives advice about how to read the Psalms:
Letter to Marcellinus by Athanasius, Para. 10
Therefore let there be a common grace of the Spirit with all of Scripture and let the same grace which is in all of the books be found present in each book as the situation demands and as the Spirit wills. For the greater and the lesser in this do not differ according to need, since each unyieldingly fulfills and completes its own service. Indeed, the book of Psalms also has a certain grace of its own and an elevated style. For in addition to the other things it has in common with the other books, it has this amazing aspect—that within it the movements of each soul with all its changes and chastisements are detailed and worked out. The result is that anyone who really wants to receive or to understand from its limitless possibilities finds himself formed in just the way we find written there in the Psalms. For in the other books you only hear the law pronounced—what you need to do and not to do. And you listen and pay attention to the prophets as the only way to know the coming of the Savior, or you turn to the historical books in order to know about what the kings and the saints did. But when you listen to the book of the Psalms you not only learn about these things, but also apprehend and are taught the movements of your own souls. Consequently, when the passions take their toll on you, you are able to bring to bear the image of the words gleaned from the Psalms so they not only teach you, when you listen to them, to elude passions, but also what you need to say or do in order to heal the passions. Now there are words of warning also in the other books when they, for example, forbid evil. But in the Psalms you are also told how to keep away from evil.
So the next time you pick up your Bible, put away your commentaries, your phone, and anything else that promises to teach you what you are reading. Just read the words of God. Allow them to be in your mind, repeat them, get to know them, because only when you begin to become familiar with them can the Holy Spirit open your eyes to the depths of what He is saying. Our Father is speaking to us as His children. May His kingdom come, and will be done. Amen.