The Benefits of Outlining a Book of The Bible
Immersing Yourself in God's Word to Grasp the Context
For Christians committed to studying God’s Word, we should strive not just to read the Bible superficially but labor for understanding. Immersive study of a book of the Bible helps you to understand it better.
Most pastors will tell you this irony: you aren’t ready to preach a book until after you’ve preached it. For ministers committed to the consecutive exposition of books of the Bible, the discovery of key themes and structure comes through week-by-week study. Each sermon helps you better understand how the threads of words, sentences, and paragraphs weave into the tapestry of the whole book. While a minister should strive to have a handle on a book of the Bible before preaching it, the process of preparation and preaching over many weeks inevitably deepens our understanding. Scripture is an inexhaustible mine of the riches of divine truth. So it’s no surprise that pastors who labor to understand the Word keep finding new insight, fresh applications of truth, and new delights to relish.
Just as it is for pastors, so it is for every Christian. Immersing yourself in a book of the Bible helps you better understand how the parts of the book fit into the whole—and vice versa. For most of this year, I’ve been preaching through the book of Ephesians. For our fall core seminars (our equivalent of Sunday School), we have done a New Testament survey giving a broad overview of each New Testament book. We’ve had many gifted men in our church lead overview those books, and I, as you might guess, taught Ephesians. In my preparation for that core seminar, I sketched out an outline for Ephesians birthed out of my year-long study of it.
The process of outlining a book can help you in your study. Let me share with you my Ephesians outline as an example.
Outline of Ephesians
1:1–2 - Greeting
1:3–3:21 - The Work of Unity: God’s Redemption of his Church
1:3–14 – Doxology: The Triune God’s Redemption of the Church
1:15–23 – Thanksgiving: Christ’s Cosmic Authority and Union with the Church
2:1–10 – Resurrection: The Personal Implications of Union with Christ
2:11–22 – Reconciliation: The Corporate Implications of Union with Christ
3:1–13 – Revelation: The Mystery of God’s Purpose in the Church
3:14–21 – Supplication: Prayer to Experience Divine Strength and Love
4:1–6:24 - The Walk in Unity: The Church’s Living in Christ
4:1–6 - Invocation: Walking in Unity
4:7–16 – Maturation: Growing in Unity
4:17–5:2 – Sanctification: Living as the New Self
5:3–21 – Distinction: Shinning in the Darkness
5:22–6:9 – Relation: Embracing our Familial Roles
6:10–20 – Protection: Putting on the Whole Armor of God
6:21–24 – Conclusion
Knowing a Book’s Context
Drafting an outline of a book can be an excellent aid for personal Bible study, as it forces you to grasp the key arguments and themes as they develop in the book. As you can see in my outline above, unity is a key theme of the book that shapes the indicative/imperative or doctrine/application structure in many of Paul’s letters. The first half of the letter elaborates on God’s work of unity as he redeems sinners and unites them to Christ. The second half of the letter urges the church to live consistently in light of their unity. With the two-part structure of the letter, it’s easier to see how each paragraph fits in with Paul’s overarching aim for the book.
Outlining a book guards us against treating texts out of context. Prooftexts can easily be relativized and weaponized, twisted by the teacher to support an unbiblical opinion. But contextual awareness of a book of the Bible has more benefits than a protective measure against false teaching. Knowing the context deepens our understanding of the text, better helps us understand the original author’s intent, and helps us discover fresh truths to enjoy.
How can you better grasp a whole book of the Bible? Here are a few ideas.
First, start by reading (or listening) to a book of the Bible over and over again. If possible, read through the book in a single sitting. The time commitment can be challenging for longer books, but the understanding it provides is worth it. Immerse yourself in the whole book to better understand its structure and themes.
Second, attempt to sketch out an outline of the book. Take a pad of paper or a text file and break the text into key sections. Then ask yourself, “What is the main point of this section?” and “How does this section fit into the aim of the entire book?” As you answer those questions, write down a sentence or phrase next to those verses. Look for connections between verses, paragraphs, and chapters. Pay attention to narrative or argument transitions. Constructing an outline can be tedious. But the fruit is not the end product but the actual process. By writing an outline, you are forcing yourself to understand how the parts fit into the whole, deepening your contextual awareness as you study the book in the future.
Third, consult other scholars in study Bible notes and commentaries and compare your outline to theirs. Scholars will differ (sometimes quite wildly) in their outlines. Consulting another commentator’s sketch of the book will spark new insight you didn’t realize when you first assembled your outline.
We can spend our lives studying the Scripture and never exhaust its treasures. In a sermon called “The Importance and Advnatage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth,” Jonathan Edwards urged his church to consider the study of divinity as the primary pursuit of every person. He preached, “The word of God, which is given for our instruction in divinity, contains enough in it to employ us to the end of our lives, and then we shall leave enough uninvestigated to employ the heads of the ablest divines to the end of the world.”1 Let us then employ ourselves in the study of God’s Word!
Jonathan Edwards, Works, vol. 22, 95.