So, as you know, Josh and I have been doing a study through the book of Galatians. Never in my life, have I ever gone this deep into scripture! It's almost overwhelming at times and we're only on verses 1-10 in chapter one! This week I focused on verses 6-10 and boy was it a lot of work! I totally enjoyed it though! I did a word study on the words "apostle," "grace," "sin," "gospel," "bondservant," and "accursed." It's amazing to go back to the greek and find the actual meanings of words! For example, to be a bondservant of Christ is to "devote to another (Christ) to the disregard of one's own interests." That's just one of many things I learned!
I also surveyed the verses looking for repeating words, phrases, and connecting them to each other. It helps you to focus on what the overall theme is for the verses. That's so important so that nothing is taken out of context! After studying these verses, it's important that no one preach any other gospel, except the gospel of Christ, or he will be accursed!
The next thing I did was write down 25 things the verses say. The verses have to actually say whatever it is I write down. This is not interpreting what I think it says. It's amazing how you can come up with 25 different things out of 5 verses! I love this part!
Then I wrote down 5 things the text doesn't say. For example, the text did not say who was troubling the Galatia churches and perverting the gospel.
Finally, I come up with some interpretive questions. These questions help me think more deeply about what I'm reading. For example, "When did the Galatians recieve the gospel?" or "Why does Paul repeat himself in these verses?"
I love doing this so much! It's a challenge at times, but I've never truly went to this much depth before in my reading of scripture! What a blessing to have the resources to do so! I wanted to share a link to a site I used to study the greek words: www.greekbiblestudy.org You have to sign up, but it's free!
Are you doing any scriptural studies? If so, what? I'd love to hear :)
