1. Believe the Gospel
Anyone can read and study the Bible, but in order to really understand the Holy scriptures, you must be saved.
When a person is saved, he has God's very own Spirit living in his spirit. This Spirit of God in you includes the whole Godhead, but it's the person of the Holy Ghost that helps you to understand the scriptures. This is the Holy Ghosts ministry to believers (the church the Body of Christ) today in the dispensation of grace. The Holy Ghost is not enabling us with apostolic or sign gifts today, but is doing something even better- teaching us God's word. This spiritual education builds an edifice of sound doctrine in our inner man. This stays with us for eternity!
Let's look at some verses. As we study the word (rightly divided), then we have the choice to believe it or not, and then we can choose to yeild to obeying it or not to. God let's us decide for ourselves.
1 Corinthians 2:13-16 in the KJB says,
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Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; [the Holy Ghost teaches us through the word] comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man [an unbeliever; but can also include a believer that chooses to not study the word because his mind is like an unbelievers as he is only focused on carnal things] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual [a believer and more specifically, a believer that reads and studies the scriptures rightly divided] judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ. [God has given every believer the Holy Ghost to teach us the things of God so that Christ can be formed in us (Gal 4:19), but we must choose to read and study the scriptures regularly, even daily if we can]
An unbeliever is not capable of understanding the deep things of God. I remember watching a secular documentary about the history of the Bible and I was amazed by a woman who had a "doctorate of divinity" who claimed that Jesus isn't literally God and that the resurrection didn't really happen! She reads the Bible all of the time and even taught college courses about it and yet because she wasn't a believer, she couldn't actually understand the scriptures at all! What she taught had no depth to it at all and was full of lies! It's sad but not all Bible study teachers are actually believers.
Even worse is that there are some preachers in churches behind pulpits who also don't actually believe the gospel, yet they think that the Bible just teaches moral living and not about saving us from hell, and so they are just living according to the flesh and never understanding God's word at all, and leading people astray! They are as 2 Timothy 3:7 says, "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." Many times people will attend a Christian college or seminary and yet aren't actually believers or are being taught by unbelievers and so they learn a theological system but they never really understand the scriptures! They are oftentimes not saved Bible believers!
So, in order to really understand the scriptures you need to be saved first. To be saved forever, understand first that you are a sinner and that you cannot save yourself. Romans 3:23 in the King James Bible says,
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For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Isaiah 64:6a,b says,
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But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
God is a holy, righteous judge and will judge all people according to their works. All people will be judged according to Paul's Gospel which is according to whether or not they have simply believed the Gospel of the grace of God or not, which is how that Christ Jesus died for our sins, was buried and rose again for our justification.
Romans 2:16
"In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my [Paul's] gospel."
You cannot earn your way to salvation, you must simply believe how that Christ Jesus died for your sins, was buried and rose again for your justification. The moment that you SIMPLY BELEIVE that glorious gospel, you are saved forever!
1 Cor 15: 1-4 KJB "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, 👉how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures"👈
Romans 1:16
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
The gospel ALONE is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, not to everyone that worketh! This faith that we have isn't just a mere intellectual understanding of something occurring in history, but a true trust that Christ Jesus is your savior and that what He did for you was sufficient to save you.
Once you have believed the gospel of the grace of God, you now have God's Spirit in you to teach you the things of God through His word rightly divided.
*Search the scriptures for yourself. Click here for the King James Bible.
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