By Oyewole Sarumi
My beloved colleagues in ministry, fellow shepherds of the flock, and leaders who carry the weight of God’s calling upon your lives. I have spent more than four decades laboring in the Word and in doctrine, watching with both hope and heartache as the church has navigated shifting cultural currents.
I have trained men and women who now lead congregations and seminaries across continents, and one question has persistently arisen from their letters, their phone calls, and their late-night conversations: Why is there so much confusion among God’s people about what the Bible actually says?
The answer, I am convinced, lies not in the obscurity of Scripture but in our mishandling of it. The problem is not that God has spoken unclearly, but that we have stopped listening carefully.
The 2025 State of Theology survey commissioned by Ligonier Ministries and conducted by Lifeway Research reveals that 53% of evangelicals affirm that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature,” and a staggering 53% believe that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.” Even among those who profess a high view of Scripture, foundational doctrines are being lost. As the report soberly concludes, “Many of the survey answers from evangelicals in 2025 reveal an alarming lack of biblical literacy, as well as a tendency to hold contradictory beliefs without seeming to recognize the incongruity.”
This is not merely an academic concern. It is a pastoral crisis. And it is a crisis of our own making. Let us therefore examine the mistakes that have created this confusion, and let us recover the ancient paths of faithful biblical interpretation.
The Tyranny of the Isolated Verse
The most pervasive error in contemporary Bible reading is the isolation of verses from their literary, historical, and theological contexts. A verse torn from its setting becomes a slogan rather than a life-changing truth. It can be made to say almost anything, reflecting our personal assumptions rather than the author’s intended meaning. I have watched with growing concern as believers flit from one proof-text to another, constructing entire theological systems on the foundation of single verses wrenched from their native soil.
Consider how the enemy himself wielded Scripture in the wilderness. When tempting our Lord, Satan quoted Psalm 91:11-12: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” It was a verse, to be sure. But it was a verse stripped of its context and misapplied. Jesus did not argue with the quotation; He corrected the interpretation by placing it within the broader testimony of Scripture: “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'”
If the devil can misuse Scripture, how much more easily can we, in our haste and our pride, do the same? Lifeway Research identifies ignoring context as “perhaps the most common mistake when it comes to misused or misinterpreted verses or stories.” When we read verses in isolation, we lose the narrative flow, the covenantal relationships, and the specific historical settings in which the Word was given. We become like a man who reads a single sentence from a love letter and imagines he understands the entire relationship.
The Neglect of the Whole Counsel
Closely related to the isolation of verses is the failure to let Scripture interpret Scripture. The Puritans understood this principle intuitively. For them, the Bible was “the most precious possession that this world affords”.
Puritanism was, above all else, a Bible movement, and they approached the sacred text with a reverence that demanded they read it holistically. They knew that the Holy Spirit who inspired every word also ensures that no part contradicts another. When we encounter a difficult passage, we must compare it with what Scripture teaches elsewhere on the same topic.
I recall a young pastor who came to me troubled. He had built his entire ministry on a particular interpretation of a single verse about prosperity, only to discover that the rest of Scripture spoke with a very different voice.
He had not read the whole counsel of God; he had read a fragment and declared it the whole. The apostle Paul declared to the Ephesian elders that he had not hesitated “to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27). He did not offer them a selection of comfortable texts but the full counsel of divine revelation. We must do the same.
The Quenching of the Divine Interpreter
There is a third mistake that is perhaps more subtle but equally devastating: studying the Bible without actively seeking the Holy Spirit’s help. The Holy Spirit is our divine interpreter, promised by our Lord Himself: “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). To approach the Word without reliance upon Him is both dangerous and counterproductive.
Yet how many of us open our Bibles with the same casualness with which we might open a newspaper? We read for information rather than transformation. We study to acquire knowledge rather than to encounter the living God.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that the Scriptures “principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man”.
But this knowledge is not merely cognitive; it is relational. As we study Scripture, we find countless descriptions of God—patient, gracious, righteous, full of compassion, just—and these descriptions are meant to draw us into deeper communion with Him.
Augustine of Hippo, that great theologian of the early church, understood that the Bible’s character is intimately tied to the Christian spiritual maturation process. The Word is not a textbook to be mastered but a means of grace to be received. When we read without prayer, we read without power. When we study without dependence on the Spirit, we study in vain.
The Substitution of Sermons for Scripture
A fourth mistake, one that pains me deeply as a preacher, is the substitution of sermons for personal Scripture engagement. I love preaching. I have devoted my life to it. But I have never intended my sermons to replace the congregation’s own reading of the Word. Research reveals that only 32% of American churchgoing Protestants read their Bibles every day. This is a tragedy of immense proportions.
The 2025 State of the Church research shows that weekly Bible reading among U.S. adults has increased to 42%, up 12 points from a 15-year low of 30% in 2024. Among self-identified Christians, the rate is 50%, the highest level in over a decade. This is encouraging news, and we should give thanks. Yet even with this increase, half of professing Christians are not engaging with Scripture weekly. Half.
What does this mean for spiritual formation? The American Bible Society’s research reveals that when the Bible enters the equation, only 11% of Scripture-engaged respondents reported high levels of loneliness, compared to much higher rates among those who neglect the Word. Bible engagement, forgiveness, and church attendance all offer individual antidotes to loneliness, decreasing the malady by more than 50%. Yet we have raised a generation of believers who know their pastors’ opinions better than they know the Scriptures themselves.
The Puritan Thomas Watson wrote that “the Word is the glass in which we see our spots and blemishes.” But if we never look into that glass, how shall we know ourselves? How shall we be conformed to the image of Christ?
The Idolatry of Novelty
Perhaps the most alarming trend I have observed in recent years is the relentless pursuit of new teachings, popular sermons, and trending voices without subjecting them to the filter of Scripture. Believers today are drowning in a sea of voices—podcasts, YouTube preachers, social media prophets, best-selling authors—and they have lost the discernment to test what they hear.
The apostle John warned: “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The Bereans were commended because they “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). Notice that they did not accept even apostolic teaching without verification from the written Word. How much more should we test the endless stream of voices that clamor for our attention?
I have watched congregations chase one new teaching after another, like children running after bright objects. They have abandoned the ancient paths for the latest fad. They have traded the solid food of sound doctrine for the spiritual junk food of sensationalism. The apostle Paul warned Timothy that “the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear” (2 Timothy 4:3). That time has come.
The Scandal of Empty Profession
All of these mistakes converge in a final, devastating error: the assumption that verbal profession is sufficient for salvation. Our Lord’s words in Matthew 7:21 are among the most sobering in all of Scripture: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
This is not a contradiction of salvation by grace through faith. Rather, it is a clarification of what genuine faith looks like. As one commentator observes, “Matthew 7:21 challenges any dichotomy between faith and works by insisting that only those whose faith issues in doing the Father’s will truly know Christ.” The repeated address “Lord, Lord” shows fervor; yet fervent speech without obedience is empty. Jesus emphasizes doing the will of the Father to expose false security in verbal profession and to declare obedience as the fruit of authentic faith.
John Chrysostom, that golden-mouthed preacher of the early church, declared that we may claim to know the Lord, but we “derive no benefit as long as the actual fruits of good living are not present”. The Puritan divine John Owen insisted that every Christian believer ought to be clear on the reason they believe Scripture to be the word of God.
For Owen, “the revelation and doctrine of the person of Christ and his office” is the hermeneutical key providing interpretive cohesiveness for all of Scripture. That is, Christ Himself is the lens through which all Scripture must be read and the standard by which all profession must be measured.
The Path to Clarity
How then shall we recover clarity? How shall we lead our people out of confusion and into the light of God’s Word?
First, we must return to the text in its context. We must read verses within their paragraphs, paragraphs within their chapters, chapters within their books, and books within the grand narrative of redemptive history. A verse taken out of context becomes a slogan; a verse understood in context becomes a life-changing truth.
Second, we must let Scripture interpret Scripture. We must compare spiritual things with spiritual, allowing the clearer passages to illuminate the more difficult ones. We must consider the whole counsel of God.
Third, we must approach the Word in humble dependence upon the Holy Spirit. We must pray before we read, asking the divine Author to illuminate what He has inspired. We must read with expectation, believing that God still speaks through His Word.
Fourth, we must prioritize personal Scripture engagement. Sermons are means of grace, but they are not substitutes for the Word itself. We must encourage our people to read the Bible for themselves, to meditate upon it day and night, to hide it in their hearts.
Fifth, we must test all teaching by Scripture. No matter how popular a preacher may be, no matter how many books they have sold, no matter how many followers they have amassed, their words must be measured against the unchanging standard of God’s Word. As the Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “In regard to the divine and holy mysteries of the faith, not the least part may be handed on without the Holy Scriptures.”
Conclusion: The Restoration of Clarity
My fellow leaders, the confusion that plagues the contemporary church is not inevitable. It is the fruit of our own neglect and our own errors. But just as we have contributed to the problem, we can contribute to the solution. We can teach our people to read the Bible rightly. We can model faithful interpretation. We can refuse to chase every new wind of doctrine and instead anchor ourselves in the ancient Word.
The research tells us that there is a hunger for Scripture. Millennials and Gen Z are driving a Bible reading comeback. Bible reading is rising again across generations, “marking a reset to faith engagement levels we haven’t seen in a decade,” as Barna Group CEO David Kinnaman has observed. This is a harvest moment. People are opening their Bibles. The question is whether we will teach them to read well.
We stand at a crossroads. One path leads to continued confusion, fragmentation, and spiritual malnutrition. The other path leads to clarity, unity, and spiritual formation. The choice is ours. The Word is in our hands. The Spirit is in our hearts. The Lord is at the door.
Let us therefore resolve to handle the Word of God with the reverence it deserves. Let us read it in context. Let us interpret it by the Spirit. Let us submit to its authority. Let us test all things by its light. And let us lead our people into the clarity that only Scripture can provide.
For the Word of our God stands forever. It will not return void. And those who handle it rightly will find that it is indeed “living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). May God grant us the grace to be faithful stewards of His sacred Word, for His glory and for the good of His church. Amen.
