Cross References

I've given suggestions on Bible study tools in the past. I've also talked about how there are many tools for the layman and how the Bible was not written only for "professional Christians" but for the entire church. But today I'm going to talk about the one man-made Bible study tool I would recommend to everyone.

Due to my general lack of blog post creativity, you probably already know what I'm talking about: cross references!

You may have seen them before in your Bible. You know all those little letters in the middle of words in the Bible verses? If you see them, you may also see those letters with verse numbers next to them. Here's a picture uploaded by St. Luke's Lutheran Church to demonstrate:

Well, those are a handy reference system given to help you out. What this reference system is doing is pointing the reader to other verses with similarities to the verse being read. In the above case, we see that in verse 16 (indicated by the number in bold), the phrase "God so loved" (indicated by the letter "p" next to the verse reference and in the verse itself) is being cross references with Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:4, 2 Thessalonians 2:16, and 1 John 3:1 and 4:9-10. Let's look up those verses to see what they have to do with the phrase "God so loved."

Romans 5:8: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Ephesians 2:4: "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us"

2 Thessalonians 2:16: "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,"

1 John 3:1: "See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

1 John 4:9-10: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

For some of them (like Ephesians 2:4), the reader may need to read a few more verses (like Ephesians 2:5) to get the picture. But you see what I mean.

So why do I recommend this? Because Scripture is Scripture's best interpreter. We can find common themes through the Bible, we can figure out what is meant by a verse more precisely. And it's available in most regular Bibles (i.e. not study Bibles, though some study Bibles have them too). It's extremely useful and very edifying, if you ask me.

The Bible is God's Word. We should know what it says about itself - that is, what God has to say about it.