Read Before You Explain

You are teaching Philippians. You look up joy in a concordance, find it eleven times, and build an hour around the theme.

Nothing you say will be false. Philippians does talk about joy. But you have not read Philippians; you have searched it. And the difference will show, because what Paul is actually doing in that letter — writing from custody to a church that has sent him money and is quarreling — never comes into view. The hour is about a topic that appears in the book rather than about the book.

That is the most common failure in lay teaching, and it is not a failure of effort. It is a failure of sequence. Explanation arrived before observation.

This chapter is about the first half of that sequence: what you have to see before you are entitled to say what it means. It is the least glamorous chapter in this book and the one that will change your teaching most.

Observation before explanation

Here is the discipline, stated as a rule: do not ask what a passage means until you can say what it does.

Those are different questions. What does this mean invites you to supply something. What does this do asks you to describe something that is already there — how the argument moves, where it turns, what is being claimed and what is being assumed.

Most bad teaching skips straight to meaning, and the reason is understandable: meaning is what the class wants. But a meaning that has not been anchored in observation is just the teacher’s impression, and impressions are exactly what chapter three said carry no authority.

So slow down at the front. Five things to observe, in this order.

One: the whole, then the part

Read the passage aloud. Then read what surrounds it. Then, if the book is short enough, read the whole book in one sitting.

This is the step people skip because it feels like it isn’t work. It is the highest-yield twenty minutes in your preparation.

Reading the whole shows you things that are invisible up close. Where the argument began. What the author has already established and is now assuming. Whether your passage is the point being made or an illustration of a point made earlier. Whether a word you were about to explain carefully is one the author uses casually eleven times.

A composite. A teacher preparing a hard verse in Romans 7 spent two hours on it and got nowhere. Then he read Romans 5 through 8 in one sitting and the verse stopped being a puzzle, because he could finally see what Paul had been building since chapter five. The two hours were wasted; the forty minutes were not.

A practical note: your passage’s boundaries were chosen by someone. Chapter and verse numbers were added centuries after the texts were written, and they are frequently placed badly. If your passage starts mid-argument, say so to the class and read the preceding sentence.

Two: genre

Ask what kind of writing this is, because the answer changes what counts as a faithful reading.

A proverb is not a promise. Train up a child in the way he should go is wisdom — a description of how life generally goes — and reading it as a guarantee has broken the hearts of faithful parents whose children walked away. A psalm of lament is not a doctrinal proposition; it is a prayer, and it is permitted to say things in the way grief says them. A narrative reports what happened, which is not the same as endorsing it. Apocalyptic writing uses images the way a political cartoon does, and reading it flatly produces nonsense.

You do not need technical vocabulary for this. You need one question: what kind of thing am I holding, and what does this kind of writing do?

Get this wrong and everything downstream is wrong, confidently.

Three: the argument

For anything that argues — the letters especially — trace the movement.

Find the connectives and take them seriously. Therefore, but, so that, because, in order that. These are the joints of the argument, and a reader who ignores them is reading a pile of sentences instead of a case.

Try this: write the passage’s argument in three or four short sentences, in order, in your own words. If you cannot, you do not yet know what it says. That failure is information, and it is better to have it on Thursday than on Sunday.

Watch particularly for the therefore that connects an imperative to an indicative — a command grounded in something God has already done. That structure runs through the New Testament and it matters more than almost anything else you will notice, because it is where the whole shape of the Christian life sits.

Ephesians is the clearest case in the Bible. Three chapters of pure indicative — chosen, redeemed, made alive, seated with Christ, brought near, built together — and then chapter four opens with therefore, and the commands begin. Everything after that hinge is grounded in everything before it. A teacher who takes his lesson from chapter four without chapter three has the commands and no ground, and what he will produce is a moral lecture from a letter that spent three chapters preventing exactly that.

Cut a command loose from its ground and you have manufactured moralism out of a text that was preaching gospel.

Four: the words themselves

Now the part that goes wrong most often, and the reason it goes wrong is that this is where a teacher feels most like a scholar.

Some genuine facts about words, and then the traps.

Words have ranges of meaning, not single true meanings. Context selects which sense is in play. Repetition is significant — when a short passage says a word six times, that is the author pointing. And sometimes a word carries weight that an English translation cannot easily show.

Now the traps. All four are extremely common and all four make a teacher sound more learned while being less accurate.

The etymology trap. A word’s history is not its meaning. What a word once came from tells you very little about what it means in the sentence you are reading, because words drift away from their parts.

The example every lay teacher has already met is the Greek word for church. You have probably been told it means called-out ones — from a preposition meaning out of and a verb meaning to call — and that the church is therefore those called out of the world. The elements really are in there. But by the time the New Testament was written, that word did not mean called-out ones to a Greek speaker any more than breakfast means breaking the fast to us. It means the morning meal. The word in question simply meant assembly — the citizens’ assembly, the gathering summoned for public business — and that is a richer thing to know about the church than the false etymology, not a poorer one.

So when someone says this word literally means, and then hands you a root, be careful. The root is often interesting. It is almost never the point of the sentence in front of you.

The one-verse-per-word trap. Taking a rich definition from one passage and importing it into every other place the word appears. Authors use words differently in different places, and so does the same author.

The “the Greek really says” trap. This phrase is almost always doing rhetorical work rather than exegetical work. It says: I have access you don’t have. If the point cannot be shown from a reliable English translation — or from comparing two of them — it usually isn’t there.

The vending-machine trap. Treating original-language tools as a way to extract hidden meanings the translators missed. Translators are not hiding things. They are a committee of people who have spent their lives on this and disagree with each other in public.

Here is the useful version of language work, and it is genuinely useful. Compare two or three good translations. Where they differ, you have found something — either a genuine ambiguity in the original or a real interpretive decision. That is worth showing the class, because it teaches them that translation involves judgment without teaching them that translation is untrustworthy. And when you do use a language tool, use it to check a reading you formed from the text, never to generate one you would not otherwise have had.

A test before you say anything about a Greek or Hebrew word in class: could I explain why this matters to someone who will never learn the language, in one sentence, without sounding impressive? If not, leave it out. It was decoration.

Five: the canon

Last, place the passage in the whole book.

Two principles do most of the work here, and both are old.

Scripture interprets Scripture. Where a passage is genuinely unclear, other passages that are clear on the same subject govern the reading. This is not a trick for making texts say what you want. It is a recognition that the Bible has one Author and does not contradict itself, so a reading that sets one passage against a plain teaching elsewhere is a reading that has gone wrong somewhere.

Clear governs unclear, never the reverse. Build doctrine from the passages that state it plainly, and let those govern the hard ones. Almost every serious error in the church’s history has run the other way: an obscure verse, read confidently, used to overturn something plain.

And notice the practical relief in that. You are not required to solve every difficult passage before you teach. You are required to know which passages are load-bearing and to teach those accurately.

Choosing what to read about the text

At some point you will consult something. Three questions to sort what is worth your time.

Who is this writer accountable to? A commentator who belongs to a confessing tradition, writing under its scrutiny, is in a different position from an anonymous website. This does not mean only Lutherans are useful — careful scholarship from other traditions is often excellent, and you should know when you are reading it.

Does he show his work? A source that gives conclusions without reasons is asking to be trusted rather than checked. Prefer the one that shows why, even when it is slower.

Does he tell you when the question is disputed? A writer who presents every question as settled is either not aware of the discussion or is hiding it. Either way, be careful.

On the internet in particular: the shorter and more confident the answer, the more caution it deserves. A three-sentence explanation of a famously difficult verse is a warning sign, not a convenience. And a word-study site that offers you the “real meaning” of a term without context is the vending machine described above, wearing a nicer interface.

A working rubric. Score anything you are about to rely on:

You do not need a source to score well on all six. You need to know which ones it failed before you repeat it in a room where nobody can check you.

When to stop

There is a category of problem this book’s method cannot solve, and knowing you have hit one is part of competence.

Stop and get help when:

• Two translations differ in a way that changes the doctrine, not just the phrasing.
• A footnote in your Bible says some manuscripts read otherwise, and the difference matters.
• The passage seems to teach something that contradicts a plain teaching elsewhere, and you cannot resolve it.
• The commentaries you trust disagree with each other about what the passage is even claiming.
• You find yourself constructing an explanation you have never heard anyone make. (See chapter eight.)

None of these means you have failed. They mean you have hit the edge of what a lay teacher’s toolkit is for — and the edge is real, and it has a phone number. Take it to the pastor. The alternative is a confident answer manufactured to fill a silence, which is the one genuinely bad option.

One reassurance: questions of manuscripts and textual variants sound alarming and are, in the vast majority of cases, both well understood and doctrinally inconsequential. A teacher who says there’s a variant here, the difference is small, and I’ll ask Pastor about it has handled it correctly and has taught his class something true about how we got the Bible.

All five, on one passage

The chapter has described five steps. Here they are on Philippians 4:4–7 — the rejoice always passage, which is beloved, frequently misused, and short enough to work in full.

One: the whole, then the part.

Read the four verses aloud. Then read the last chapter. Then read the letter — it takes twenty minutes.

Reading the whole letter changes these verses completely. Paul is in custody. The church at Philippi has sent him money and a man to look after him. And two women in that congregation, both named in the text, are in a dispute serious enough that the apostle addresses it publicly a few sentences before rejoice always.

That is the setting. Not a serene devotional aside — a command to rejoice, written from prison, into a quarrel.

Also notice: the passage starts mid-paragraph. The paragraph break in most Bibles falls in an awkward place, and reading from verse four alone hides that the rejoicing is being asked of people who are angry with each other.

Questions written down, including the hard one: is this a command about feelings? What do you say to someone who cannot rejoice?

Two: genre.

A letter — occasional, to a specific congregation, about a specific situation. That matters immediately: this is not a general principle floating free. It is pastoral instruction, from a man in chains, to people he names.

The practical consequence: whatever rejoice always means, it must be something the two quarreling women could actually do that week.

Three: the argument.

Trace the movement. Rejoice in the Lord always. Let your gentleness be evident to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Now the connectives, which most readings ignore. The Lord is near sits in the middle, and it is an indicative — a statement of fact — planted between two imperatives. It is the ground. The rejoicing and the not-being-anxious both rest on it.

And the last clause is not a command at all. The peace of God will guard is a promise. The passage ends by giving something, not by requiring something.

Written as movement in four sentences: Rejoice — in the Lord, which is where the joy is located. Be gentle, because he is near. Instead of anxiety, ask him. And what follows is not your achievement but his guarding.

Four: the words.

Two are worth noticing and one is not.

In the Lord is doing everything. The command is not be happy; it is rejoice in the Lord, which is a different instruction and one available to a person whose circumstances are terrible. Cut those three words and you have a demand nobody can obey in a hospital corridor.

Guard is a soldier’s word — a garrison posted around something. Worth one sentence, because it shows the peace as something stationed rather than felt.

And here is the one to leave alone: the word rendered gentleness is genuinely hard to translate, and the versions differ. Note the difference for the class if you like. Do not build the hour on it.

Five: the canon.

Is this passage clear or unclear on its subject? Clear — and it should govern rather than be governed.

But check it against what else is plain. Scripture also gives us the lament psalms, and Paul elsewhere reports being so burdened he despaired of life itself. A reading of rejoice always that makes lament sinful has set this passage against plain teaching elsewhere, which chapter four’s rule says is a reading that has gone wrong.

So the canonical check does real work here: it rules out the sunny reading, and it does so from the Bible rather than from pastoral instinct.

The same five steps, faster, on poetry

Run them once more compressed, on a psalm, because poetry breaks the habits an epistle rewards.

Take Psalm 1 — the blessed man, the tree by streams of water, the chaff the wind drives away.

Whole, then part. Read it aloud. Then read Psalm 2, because the two open the Psalter together and were almost certainly meant to be read as a pair. Reading only Psalm 1 gives you a wisdom poem about two ways to live. Reading both gives you a wisdom poem followed immediately by a coronation — and the question of who the blessed man finally is becomes live.

Genre. Hebrew poetry, and wisdom. Which means: parallel lines that restate rather than advance, and general truth rather than promise. That single observation prevents the passage’s most common misuse — treating whatever he does prospers as a guarantee about a Christian’s circumstances. Wisdom describes how life generally goes. It is not a contract.

Argument. Poetry does not argue with connectives; it argues with structure. Here the structure is a contrast held across the whole psalm — the man who is like a planted tree, the wicked who are like chaff. Notice what is not symmetrical: the tree gets four lines of description and the chaff gets one. The imbalance is the argument.

Words. Blessed is the first word and it is not happy; it describes a standing rather than a mood. Planted is passive — the tree did not put itself there. And the word rendered meditates is worth one sentence, because it is a physical word, closer to muttering than to silent reflection: this man is saying the words out loud.

Canon. Is anyone actually like this man? Read honestly, nobody is — and that observation is where the psalm stops being moral advice. Which is why Psalm 2, and its King, sit immediately next to it.

Same sequence. Different genre. And notice the difference: in the epistle the payoff came from tracing connectives, and here it came from noticing structure and a neighbor psalm. The steps do not change. What they turn up does.

What the five steps produced.

A governing claim available for chapter seven: Christians in real trouble are commanded to rejoice in the Lord — not in their circumstances — because he is near; and the peace that follows is a guard he posts, not a mood they generate.

And notice what was avoided. The concordance search would have given you a passage about attitude. Observing first gave you a passage about where the joy is located — written into a quarrel, by a prisoner.

What the class should learn from watching you

Everything above is about your preparation. But the class is watching the method, not just receiving the results, and over a term they will absorb your habits.

So make some of it visible.

Read the surrounding paragraph aloud, every time. Say this verse begins mid-argument, so let’s back up. Say these two translations differ here, and here’s what that tells us. Say the word he keeps repeating is this one — count it.

Do that for ten weeks and you have taught nineteen people to read. That outlasts every particular lesson you will ever teach, and it is the actual goal: not a class that knows what you concluded about James, but a class that could open Philippians on their own and see what is there.

The next faithful step

This week, before you consult anything, read your passage aloud and then read the whole surrounding argument. Then write its movement in four sentences.

If the four sentences come, you are ready to prepare. If they do not, you have learned the most useful thing available to you this week, and you have learned it early.

But observation and argument are not the whole job. A teacher can trace every connective in a passage and still leave a class with information rather than with Christ. Which raises the question the next chapter has to answer: how is this text about him — and how do we get there without inventing the route?