By Oyewole O. Sarumi
If you have spent any significant time in church circles, you have likely witnessed it. Someone stands to testify about a “word” they received during their quiet time. They flip open their Bible, place a finger on a verse, and announce, “God told me to claim this promise!”
The verse might be God’s assurance to Joshua as he prepared to lead Israel into the Promised Land: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Or perhaps it is Jeremiah’s familiar words about plans to prosper and not to harm. And the congregation nods in agreement, affirming the declaration.
But here is a question that rarely gets asked in such moments: Who was God speaking to when those words were first written?
I have spent years in gospel ministry, and if there is one thing that burdens my heart above others, it is the casual way many of us handle the Word of God. We treat the Bible like a spiritual vending machine, insert a verse, receive a blessing. We read it as if every word was written directly to us, in our exact circumstances, without any consideration of the historical context, the original audience, or the covenantal framework within which God chose to reveal Himself.
The result is confusion. Christians claim promises that were never made to them. They attempt to follow instructions that were never given to them. They live under burdens that Christ has already lifted. And many pastors, sadly, perpetuate this confusion because they themselves were never taught how to read Scripture properly.
It is time for us to recover a biblical way of reading the Bible. It is time to understand that while everything in Scripture is written for our instruction, not everything in Scripture is written to us.
The Global Crisis of Biblical Literacy
Before we go further, let me paint a picture of where we stand. The most comprehensive global study of attitudes toward the Bible in a generation was recently completed, the Patmos Initiative, launched by United Bible Societies in partnership with Gallup. They surveyed 91,000 people across 85 countries and territories, representing 3.8 billion people worldwide .
The findings are sobering. In Western Europe, over half of the population has never opened a Bible. Yet remarkably, 70 percent of people across the globe still believe it is valuable for children to learn Bible stories . There is a deep cultural intuition that Scripture matters, even among those who have never engaged with it personally.
Among professing Christians, the survey revealed something equally concerning. Many believers do not use the Bible regularly, and among those who do, understanding varies widely . In the United States, Brazil, and South Africa, nations where faith remains more visible in public life, there are significant gaps in what people actually understand about what the Bible teaches .
The Patmos research identified 64 different types of Bible users across seven global faith cultures. Young Christians between eighteen and twenty-four are actually using the Bible more frequently than older generations and are more comfortable talking about their faith. Fifty percent of young Christians use the Bible weekly . That is encouraging news. But it also means that if we fail to teach this generation how to read Scripture covenantally, we are setting them up for confusion at a time when they are hungry for clarity.
What people want, the survey found, is guidance. They open their Bibles seeking answers to existential questions, looking for direction in their lives . That desire is good. But the way we go about satisfying that desire matters immensely. If we teach people to treat the Bible as a collection of disconnected promises to be claimed, we are giving them a spiritual diet that will ultimately leave them malnourished and confused.
The Covenant Structure of Scripture
The Bible is not a random book. It is not a collection of inspirational sayings assembled for our convenience. It is a divinely orchestrated library of documents, written over centuries, that tells a unified story, and that story is structured around covenants.
What is a covenant? In its simplest terms, a covenant is a formal arrangement that defines relationship. It defines who belongs to whom. It defines what each party is responsible for. It defines what has been promised and to whom it has been promised. When God enters into covenant with His people, He is not merely giving them information. He is establishing a relationship with defined terms.
The Puritan theologians understood this with remarkable clarity. They spoke of a “covenant of grace” that runs throughout Scripture, with distinct administrations at different times. But they also understood that mixing covenants, treating the Old Covenant as if it were the New, or the New as if it were the Old, led to spiritual confusion.
The great Puritan preacher Isaac Watts, whose hymns we still sing today, once reflected on the “better covenant” we enjoy under Christ. He wrote:
“Does divine mercy reign in the promises of the gospel with superior glory, and shall our faith in these promises be more feeble and wavering? O let us set the pattern of Abraham and David, and other ancient saints before us, and shame ourselves out of our earthiness of spirit, our lazy humour, our cold affection to divine things, and our languishing hope of immortality.”
Watts understood that while we learn from the saints who lived under the Old Covenant, we do not relate to God the way they did. Their covenant was real. It was binding. It was given by God. But it was not the final expression of His plan.
The early church fathers grasped this as well. Irenaeus, writing in the second century, addressed the relationship between the two covenants with profound insight. He explained that the Lord Jesus Christ is “the good man of the house, who rules the entire house of His Father; and who delivers a law suited both for slaves and for those who are as yet undisciplined; and gives fitting precepts to those that are free, and have been justified by faith” . Notice what Irenaeus is saying. The same God, through the same Christ, gives different instructions to different people at different stages. The covenant defines which instructions apply to whom.
Irenaeus made an even more important point: “Greater, therefore, is that legislation which has been given in order to liberty than that given in order to bondage; and therefore it has also been diffused, not throughout one nation, but over the whole world” . The New Covenant is not a contradiction of the Old, but its fulfillment. It is greater because it brings what the Old could only point toward: actual liberation from sin and actual access to God.
Augustine, writing two centuries later, picked up this same theme. He explained that the Old Covenant is called old not because it was wrong, but because it was temporary. The New Covenant is new because it brings what the old could not, the writing of God’s law not on tablets of stone but on human hearts . “They continued not in my covenant,” Augustine quotes the prophet, and that is why a new covenant was needed .
This is not complicated theology. It is simply reading the Bible the way the Bible itself tells us to read it. The author of Hebrews makes the argument explicitly: “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13). The writer does not say the Old Covenant was worthless. He says it was preparing for something greater.
What Changes When You Read Covenantally
When you begin to read Scripture through a covenantal lens, everything shifts. You stop approaching the Bible as a flat collection of promises and start seeing it as a progressive revelation of God’s redemptive plan.
Let me give you an example. When God gave the Law to Israel at Mount Sinai, it was real. It was binding. It defined the terms of their relationship with God under that covenant. But the apostle Paul makes clear that the Law was never intended to be the final word. He calls it a “guardian” or “tutor” designed to lead us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The Law showed Israel, and shows us, that we cannot earn our way into God’s favor. It was meant to drive us to the One who could do for us what we could never do for ourselves.
Now, consider how many Christians today approach their relationship with God as if they were still under the Old Covenant. They wake up each morning wondering if they have done enough to earn God’s approval. They measure their standing with God by their performance. They live in constant anxiety about whether they have pleased Him.
This is what happens when you mix covenants. You end up with a spirituality that is neither fully Old nor fully New, a hybrid that produces confusion, insecurity, and exhaustion.
The Puritans wrestled deeply with this question of assurance. How can a believer know that they are truly saved? How can they have confidence before God? The answer they found was not in looking inward at their performance, but in looking outward at Christ and the covenant promises sealed in His blood.
William Perkins, one of the great Puritan divines, taught that believers “ought” to have assurance of their salvation and “must endeavor to attain thereto” . But this assurance was not to be found by measuring oneself against the Law. It was to be found by resting in the promises of the New Covenant, which are sure because they depend not on our performance but on Christ’s finished work.
When Jesus took the cup at the Last Supper, He said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20). Those words change everything. They tell us that the New Covenant was not sealed with the blood of animals, as the Old Covenant was, but with the blood of the Son of God Himself. And a covenant sealed with such blood cannot be broken.
The Difference Between “Written To” and “Written For”
Here is a principle that can transform your Bible reading. I want you to hold it tightly. Not everything written in the Bible is written to you, but everything in the Bible is written for you.
Let me explain what I mean. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he was writing to a specific group of people facing specific challenges. His instructions about head coverings, for example, addressed a cultural situation in first-century Corinth. That instruction was written to them. But it was written for us, meaning there are principles about order, about cultural sensitivity, and about the gospel transcending cultural norms that we can learn and apply in our own contexts.
The same is true of promises. When God promised Abraham that he would make him a great nation and give him the land of Canaan, that promise was made to Abraham and his physical descendants. I cannot claim that promise as a guarantee that God will give me a house or make me wealthy. But that promise was written for me because it shows me the faithfulness of God, the pattern of His covenant dealings, and the way He works through generations to accomplish His purposes.
When we confuse “written to” with “written for,” we end up claiming things that were never meant for us and imposing obligations that were never placed on us. We become like someone who reads a love letter addressed to another person and tries to claim its promises for themselves. The letter is beautiful. It teaches us something about love. But it is not our letter.
Jen Wilkin, a Bible teacher who has helped many Christians learn to read Scripture more carefully, warns about the common mistakes we make when approaching biblical promises. She notes that we often confuse a promise with a principle. Proverbs, for example, gives us principles, generally true statements about how life works, not guarantees. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” she points out, is a wise principle, not a promise that every child raised in the church will inevitably follow the Lord .
She also warns about ignoring context. We apply a promise to ourselves without asking who it was originally given to and why. We choose promises selectively, favoring those that appeal to our desires while neglecting promises that call us to obedience or warn us of consequences. Sometimes, she notes, we even use promises manipulatively—trying to “coerce God into doing what we ask” by claiming a verse out of context .
The antidote to all of this is to do our homework. Before we declare a verse to be “our word” from the Lord, we need to study where it lives in Scripture. We need to understand the covenant context. We need to ask: Who was God speaking to? What did these words mean to the original audience? How does this passage fit into the larger story of redemption?
The Assurance That Covenant Clarity Brings
When we learn to read Scripture covenantally, something beautiful happens. We stop living in anxiety about whether we have measured up, and we start resting in what Christ has already accomplished.
The Old Covenant said: “Do this and you will live.” The New Covenant says: “Christ has done this, therefore you live.”
The Old Covenant demanded righteousness. The New Covenant provides righteousness.
The Old Covenant revealed sin. The New Covenant removes sin.
This does not mean we have no obligations under the New Covenant. Of course we do. We are called to love, to obey, to follow Christ. But our obedience is not the basis of our relationship with God. It is the evidence of a relationship already secured by Christ. We obey not to be saved, but because we are saved.
The Puritan Richard Sibbes captured this beautifully when he wrote about the believer’s longing for Christ. He spoke of assurance not as arrogant presumption but as the natural fruit of resting in the promises of a faithful God . When we know whose covenant we stand in, we can have confidence.
This is why the apostle Paul could write with such boldness: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Under the Old Covenant, condemnation was always a possibility because the covenant depended on human performance. Under the New Covenant, condemnation is removed because our standing depends on Christ’s performance, which is perfect and complete.
The writer of Hebrews makes the same point: “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:22). Full assurance! That is the inheritance of those who understand that they are living under a better covenant, established on better promises, sealed with better blood.
A Call to Church Leaders
To my fellow pastors, teachers, and church leaders, I want to speak directly. We have a sacred responsibility to teach God’s people how to read God’s Word. If we fail in this, we are setting them up for confusion at best and spiritual shipwreck at worst.
The Patmos survey revealed that many people today are turning to friends, videos, and podcasts for answers to life’s questions rather than to churches . Why? Perhaps because they have found that the answers they get from digital sources seem more relevant, more directly applicable to their lives. But relevance without context is dangerous. We need to be the ones who teach our people not just what the Bible says, but how to read it rightly.
This means we need to preach covenantally. When we preach from the Old Testament, we must show how it points to Christ. When we preach from the New Testament, we must show how it fulfills what the Old promised. We must help our people see that they are not Israelites wandering in the wilderness, not citizens of ancient Corinth, not recipients of letters written to first-century churches. They are members of the New Covenant, grafted into the people of God through faith in Christ, living under a covenant of grace.
We also need to teach our people to ask the right questions when they read Scripture. Before they ask “What does this mean for me?”, they need to ask “What did this mean to the original audience?” and “How does this fit into the story of redemption?” These questions slow us down. They require us to do the hard work of interpretation. But they protect us from the kind of shallow, context-less reading that leads to confusion.
The apostle Paul told Timothy to “rightly handle the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). The Greek word there implies cutting a straight line—carefully dividing what needs to be divided. This is what covenant theology helps us do. It helps us distinguish what belongs to the Old Covenant and what belongs to the New. It helps us see what has been fulfilled and what we are still called to observe. It gives us a framework for understanding the unity of Scripture without flattening out its diversity.
Conclusion
When we open our Bibles, we are holding in our hands something precious. It is the Word of the living God, breathed out by the Spirit through human writers, given to us so that we might know God and be saved. It is not a random collection of spiritual sayings. It is a unified revelation structured around covenants that trace God’s redemptive purposes from Genesis to Revelation.
If we ignore covenant, we will misread Scripture. We will claim promises that were never given to us. We will carry burdens that Christ has already lifted. We will live in confusion about our standing before God.
But if we learn to read covenantally, clarity comes. We see that we are not under the Old Covenant but the New. We approach God not through the Law but through Christ. We relate to Him not based on our performance but based on His finished work. We rest not in our ability to keep promises but in His ability to keep His promises to us.
The Puritan Isaac Watts asked a question that still echoes across the centuries: “Do we enjoy the privilege of knowing this better covenant, and shall any of us content ourselves without a certain interest in the blessings of it?” His point was that knowing about the covenant is not enough. We must be in the covenant. We must have a saving interest in Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant.
That is my prayer for you. Not that you would simply understand covenant theology intellectually, but that you would know yourself to be a member of the New Covenant, sealed with the blood of Christ, secure in His love, and freed to live for His glory.
Everything in the Bible is written for your understanding. But not everything in the Bible is written to you. Learn the difference. Read with covenant eyes. And let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, not as a collection of random promises to be claimed, but as a unified testimony to the God who keeps covenant forever.
Oyewole O. Sarumi is a gospel minister committed to teaching the Scriptures with clarity and faithfulness, helping believers understand the grand narrative of redemption and their place in it through Christ.