📖 Why the Bible has chapters and verses

I. We live in what Christian philosopher Charles Taylor calls an age of expressive individualism, which he defines as “the purpose of life is to look within yourself, discover your deepest desires, and then express them outwardly to the world.”

So true freedom, in our age, is “finding yourself” and doing whatever makes you happy, and if anyone says otherwise or gets in your way, they are the enemy, phobic, or ignorant.

That way of thinking shapes our culture, but it is the opposite of what Scripture calls followers of Jesus to do.

In Romans 12:3, Paul writes, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.”

Growth in the Christian life does not happen by centering ourselves, but by submitting ourselves to Jesus. One clear sign that you may be thinking too highly of yourself is when you treat the church as something that exists for you rather than a community you commit to.

To view the church as something you only go to and consume from is conforming to this age.

Followers of Jesus are not conformed to this age, but are transformed by the renewing of their minds, choosing commitment, humility, and faithfulness in the context of the local church.

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II. It’s ok to admit there are times when we doubt and need the Lord to help us.

In Mark 9:14–29, we read the story of a father who has an unwell son and wants him to be healed.

Eventually, he asks Jesus for help but is unsure whether Jesus can or will heal his son. Here is what happens next in Mark 9:23–24:

23 Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’? Everything is possible for the one who believes.”
24 Immediately the father of the boy cried out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”

Here we see a man who wants to believe but honestly shares that he has doubts. Jesus meets him in his doubts and heals his son.

We all struggle, and we all deal with doubt. Don’t be afraid to ask God to help you in times of unbelief.

The word “repent” in the New Testament comes from the Greek word metanoia, which means a change of mind and direction, not just feeling sorry for sin.

In Scripture, repentance involves a transformed way of thinking that leads to a reoriented life. It is turning away from old patterns and moving toward obedience to God.

Biblical repentance is less about momentary guilt and more about ongoing transformation as we learn to think and live differently under the lordship of Jesus.

We should feel sorry for our sin, but true repentance includes a change of direction as well.

The Bible originally had no chapter or verse numbers. Chapters were added in the 1200s to help readers navigate long books of Scripture, especially for teaching, preaching, and public reading.

In the 1500s, as the printing press made Bibles more widely available and Bible study became more precise, verse numbers were added so readers could reference and discuss specific lines more easily.

These tools are helpful but not inspired, which is why chapter breaks can sometimes interrupt the flow of a passage. Reading larger sections of Scripture helps us follow the author’s original train of thought more clearly.

The Art of Narrative Analogy by Seth D. Postell

A book about Biblical interpretation, specifically on how to spot when biblical narratives and passages are building off, referring to, or making an analogy to another biblical story.

Overall, the book was very interesting and helpful. The Bible is incredible, and the biblical authors’ use of calling back to, building on, and implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) referring to other Biblical characters and stories reveals even deeper and more significant understandings of what these narratives are trying to communicate.

This book was written for a popular, not academic, audience. However, the nature of the book is definitely more in-depth. While I was glad to read the book, it read rather dry at times. By the end, I was ready to tap out.

Also, and I'm not sure how much this could be avoided in a book like this, it was a lot to track and try to keep up with at times, especially as he was explaining how to spot narrative analogies in the Bible. Again, a helpful read, but it still would take a good amount of work to implement the principles in the book, and even his explanations of how to do it were kind of complex.

That said, the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus and is incredibly deep and beautifully written. This book gives a glimpse into how the Scriptures offer so much more the more you read, think about, and study them.

7/10

P.S. A short story about decisions…