If our reading of Scripture does not lead us to love God and love our neighbor, then we have not truly understood it. Augustine made this claim over 1,500 years ago, and it still speaks with piercing relevance.[1] In one of his sermons, he compares the Scriptures to a road that leads to our true home. If we study the map endlessly but never start walking, we have missed the point. For Augustine, the goal was always clear: Our engagement with the Bible must move us toward love, for that is the very life of God in us.

This is not a minor point—it strikes at the heart of what the Bible is for. We live in a time when Christians have more access to biblical tools than ever before. With a few clicks, we can consult multiple translations, read centuries of commentary, and parse Greek verbs with digital precision. All of this can be a gift, but it can also subtly distort our aim. We begin to think of “application” as a secondary step, something that comes after the “real work” of exegesis. Transformation becomes an optional add-on, as if God’s Word were given primarily for information rather than for life.

But Scripture will not let us make that separation. From beginning to end, the Bible presents itself not as a static record of God’s past words but as His living speech to His people. It addresses us. It calls us. It comforts and confronts us. Reading is never merely an act of observation; it is an act of following. To read is to take up our cross again and again, to submit ourselves to the living God who speaks, and to be reshaped into the likeness of His Son.

The Goal of Reading Scripture: Transformation
into Christlikeness

Paul’s words to Timothy are as direct as they are profound: “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17). Notice the movement here: Scripture comes from God, it works on us through multiple channels, and it produces a certain kind of life. The end goal is not simply that we would know more, but that we would be more, that we would become complete, mature, and ready to live faithfully in every circumstance.

This truth is not unique to Paul’s pastoral letters. The Psalms open with this same vision. Psalm 1 paints the portrait of the blessed person who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night. The result is not merely an expanded storehouse of theological facts but a deeply rooted life—stable in trials, fruitful in season, and enduring through drought. The image is of a tree planted by streams of water, its life continually renewed by God’s truth.

James picks up this theme with equal force. He warns us not to be hearers of the Word only, deceiving ourselves. The Word is like a mirror, revealing who we are. But if we walk away unchanged, the mirror has not failed—we have. To truly hear is to respond, to let the implanted Word take root and bear fruit in obedience.

The early church instinctively read the Scriptures this way. They saw them as God’s living voice to His people, intended to heal, train, and transform. Pastors like John Chrysostom did not simply explain the meaning of the text; they pressed their hearers to act on it, to embody its truth in their daily lives. Scripture, they believed, was meant to move from the page to the heart and then out into the world.

The Posture of Reading: Openness to Change

If the goal of Scripture is transformation into Christlikeness, then how we come to the text matters just as much as what we take from it. Transformation is not a mechanical process that happens automatically whenever words are read. It requires a posture, a way of approaching the Bible that is humble, prayerful, and ready to be reshaped.

The great teachers of the church have always warned that knowledge without virtue is dangerous. Gregory the Great observed that interpretation which fails to produce holy living is “not worthy of God.”[2] In other words, if our study of Scripture leaves our character untouched, we are not reading it as God intends. Theological precision without Christlike humility is not merely incomplete; it is a distortion.

A true posture of discipleship is one that comes to the Bible expecting to be confronted and changed. It is an openness to hear God’s voice even when His words challenge our assumptions, unsettle our comfort, or call us to repent. It is the recognition that we are not masters of the text but servants before it, kneeling to receive what God gives.

Imagine a believer reading Jesus’s words in Matthew 11: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” In an academic mode, this might lead to a word study on “rest” or a cross-reference to Old Testament Sabbath themes—both valuable exercises. But in a posture of openness, those same words are heard as an invitation from the living Christ to lay down our burdens now. They become a doorway into prayer, confession, and renewed trust.

This is the difference between reading as an observer and reading as a disciple. The former seeks mastery over the text; the latter seeks to be mastered by it. Only the second leads to the kind of transformation the Scriptures are meant to bring.

It is possible to study the Bible deeply, to master its languages, to map its theology—and yet to miss its purpose entirely. Knowledge alone is not the goal. If the truth we learn does not take root in our lives as wisdom, then it remains incomplete.

Wisdom is more than the accumulation of facts; it is truth embodied in faithful living. It is the ability to navigate the complexity of life in obedience to God, to act in ways that reflect His character and purposes. In biblical terms, wisdom is inseparable from righteousness. It is the fruit of knowing God and walking in His ways.

Paul models this movement from knowledge to wisdom at the hinge between Romans 11 and 12. After plumbing the depths of God’s saving purposes—Jew and Gentile united in Christ, God’s mercy revealed through inscrutable providence—Paul does not end with a chart or a conclusion. He ends in worship: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33).

And from that place of awe, he moves immediately to a call for transformed living: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. . . . Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:1–2). Theology leads to doxology, and doxology leads to obedience.

This is the journey of reading Scripture as discipleship: from study to worship to offering ourselves to God in renewed, wise living. The Bible is not content to fill our minds; it aims to form our hearts, shape our loves, and direct our steps in the path of Christ.

Bounded Pluriformity

If Scripture is God’s Word to His people, then it speaks a unified message. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells a single, coherent story—the story of God redeeming the world in Jesus Christ. That message does not shift with the times, and it is not subject to our personal preferences. Yet this one truth, when it is lived out, takes on a rich diversity of expressions in the lives of God’s people.

This is the reality of what can be called “bounded pluriformity.” The “bounded” part matters: The truth of Scripture is not infinitely elastic. God has entrusted His people with clear boundaries—what Jude calls “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) These boundaries are not arbitrary; they are marked out by the creeds, confessions, and statements of faith that the church has produced, the guardrails that keep us in the path of the gospel. Within those bounds, however, the life of faith can take many faithful shapes.

Take the parable of the Good Samaritan. The meaning is unmistakable: love your neighbor without limit, even across barriers of culture, religion, or social standing. Yet the way that truth works itself out will look different in different settings. For a church in a suburban American neighborhood, it may mean opening its homes to refugee families. For a small congregation in rural Africa, it might involve sharing scarce resources with a struggling church in a neighboring village. For a Christian working in a secular corporate office, it could mean extending patience and kindness to a colleague who has been openly hostile to the faith.

The unity of truth and the diversity of application are not in tension; they are part of the beauty of God’s Word. The same gospel that formed the early church in Jerusalem also took root in Antioch, Philippi, and Rome—each with its own culture, struggles, and opportunities for obedience. What bound them together was not identical practice in every detail but a shared allegiance to Christ and fidelity to the apostolic gospel.

Reading Scripture with this in mind keeps us from two opposite errors. On one hand, it guards against a rigid uniformity that demands every believer’s obedience look exactly the same in every context. On the other hand, it protects us from an unbounded relativism that treats the Bible as a mirror reflecting only our own desires. Bounded pluriformity affirms that the truth is fixed, but the Spirit applies that truth in ways that are perfectly fitted to our lives, our communities, and our callings.

When we read this way—faithful to the boundaries, open to the Spirit’s particular work—we join the ongoing conversation of the global and historic church. We learn from believers in other times and places, and we contribute our own stories of how God’s Word is shaping us. In this way, transformation is never only personal; it is part of the Spirit’s work in forming a people, united in truth and alive to the many ways that truth can be lived.

Conclusion: Reading as Discipleship

Reading Scripture is never meant to be a detached exercise in religious curiosity. It is the daily, deliberate act of following Jesus. Every time we open the Bible, we are stepping into the presence of the living God, placing ourselves before His voice, and inviting His Word to search us and change us.

This is why the question we must ask after reading is not only, “Do I understand what this means?” but, “Am I becoming the kind of person this Word describes?” If the truth of Scripture remains at arm’s length—neatly outlined in our notes but untouched in our hearts—we have not yet read as disciples.

When we read as disciples, the Bible becomes what God intends it to be: a means of grace. It renews our minds, orders our loves, stirs our affections, and strengthens our wills to obey. It draws us into deeper communion with God and equips us to live faithfully in the ordinary and the extraordinary alike.

And as this transformation takes root, it does not remain hidden. Like the tree in Psalm 1, our lives begin to bear fruit that nourishes others. Our speech changes. Our priorities shift. Our compassion deepens. The very patterns of our thinking and feeling begin to align with the mind of Christ.

Biblical theology, then, is not an abstract discipline reserved for scholars. It is the Christian’s way of reading, thinking, and living under the Word of God. It is the conviction that every page of Scripture is meant to shape us—mind, heart, and body—until we reflect the One to whom it all points.

So let us come to the Scriptures with open hands and open hearts. Let us read not only to know, but to follow. Let us measure our engagement not by how much we can recall but by how much we have been remade. For the goal of reading is not information, but transformation—hearing the Word, loving the Son, and walking in the Spirit until the day when faith becomes sight.

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[1] Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 27.

[2] Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, trans. Henry Davis, Ancient Christian Writers 11 (New York: Newman Press, 1950), 74.