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February 24, 2025

Benefits From Reading Your Bible

by Jason Neill

Scripture reading: Matthew 22:34-40; Romans 3; Ephesians 1:3-14

You may be interested to learn there are many benefits to reading your Bible.

We know God better. The purpose of life is to know and love God (see Jeremiah 9:23-24). The fact of the matter is that God has revealed certain aspects of His character through creation (see Romans 1). We know He is powerful, wise, and an artist. The problem with nature is that it cannot tell us everything about God which is why we need the Scriptures (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17). We need divine revelation; we need God to tell us what He is like. In fact, if He did not reveal Himself to us, we would not know Him. Through reading the Scriptures, we know God is loving, just, Holy, Righteous, and patient.

We see ourselves clearly. I had a professor in seminary who was fond of saying, “the Bible is a call back to reality.” By that, he meant that the Bible tells us the truth about ourselves. We are sinners, spiritually dead (see Romans 2; Ephesians 2), and need God to make us spiritually alive by imparting eternal life (see John 3; 4; 5:24; 6:47; 11:25-26; Colossians 1:13-14). Intuitively, we all know there is something wrong with the world we live in; things are not as they should be. Although the different world religions try to determine the fundamental problem, they all fall short.

The moment we believe in Jesus for eternal life, we are the immediate recipients of a new identity and spiritual blessings (see Ephesians 1). Here’s a brief list to illustrate my point: we are a child of God (see John 1:12), we are slaves to righteousness (see Romans 6:18), we are enslaved to God (see Romans 6:22), we are joint heirs with Christ if we suffer with Him (see Romans 8:17), we are a new creation (see 2 Corinthians 5:17), we are hidden with Christ (see Colossians 3:3), we are an expression of the life of Christ (see Colossians 3:4), we are dearly loved (see Colossians 3:12), we are sons and daughters of the light (see 1 Thessalonians 5:5), and we are enemies of the devil (see 1 Peter 5:8). That’s quite a list! Take a moment to look up each one of these passages and meditate on our new identity and spiritual blessings.

We learn about eternal rewards. One of my favorite Bible teachers, Zane Hodges, said this regarding Revelation 22:12, “There is no getting around this Biblical truth. God gives us His salvation, but He pays us for our good works.” It seems very little is discussed today regarding eternal rewards. Since eternal life is free, what should motivate us in our Christian life? Rewards are the answer. All Christians will stand before Christ to be judged by Him (see Romans 14:10; 2 Corinthians 5:10). Granted, this judgement is not to determine whether we enter Heaven but the kind of rewards we will receive (see Revelation 22:12). Reading the Scriptures enlightens us regarding what types of rewards God promises to give those who faithfully follow Him (see Matthew 6:19-34; 19:16-20:16; 24:45-51; 25:14-30; Luke 19:11-27; 2 Timothy 2:11-13; 4:6-8; Hebrews 11:23-29).

As you can see, there are a number of benefits from reading the Scriptures. I hope these reasons will encourage you to keep reading your Bible!