The Most important ingredient in understanding God’s word is God Himself. He has given each of us a personal teacher we know as the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our search for truth should be a relationship thing, not just a knowledge thing.

We are extremely blessed in our day to have tools to aid us in our quest for understanding.  These cannot take the place of God, but they can help us understand Him better. In my college days I believed the ultimate study aids were tools that helped me understand the Greek and Hebrew language. A Strong’s Concordance was a must for serious Bible study. I would spend a great deal of time trying to discern the exact meaning of particular words in the scriptures.
 
While such endeavors are worthwhile, I have grown to believe there is an even more important tool. It can be described by the word “context.”  Let me give you a little example. Suppose you pick up a copy of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” and you randomly pick out a sentence that talks about Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry leaving the shire. You could dissect every word in that sentence. You might be able to figure out things like the speed they were walking, etc.  After all your work, you might say, “Big deal, they left home.” However, if you attempted to get a bigger picture by looking at the whole story, you would reach a different conclusion. When you understood what a Hobbit was and the great troubles of the day, you might say something like, “They left the shire! Wow!”

Likewise, when we put Jesus in His context, he becomes all the more extraordinary. Usually, when we study the life of Christ, we take Him out of His first century Jewish context and make Him a 21st century Westerner. He is amazing even then, but when we make Him a first century Jew, there is only one word to describe it. “Wow!” His works and His teachings become even greater than we realized.

In a post that will come soon, I would like to talk about an author whom I believe might be the best first century historian of our day. His name is N.T. Wright. Wright has comprised an enormous body of work both for the scholar and the layman that puts Jesus and the early church in their first century context. Some might fear that such work might cause us to lose faith in Christ. We might find something we don’t want to find. On the contrary, studying the first century world unearths a Jesus more brilliant than we could imagine.
 
Just for fun, here are a couple of links that will whet your appetite on first century studies.

http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=1854

http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=1855