What is the Bible Method?

The Bible Method is the set of rules for interpretation drawn from Scripture itself — the way the Bible tells us to read the Bible. Rather than laying a human system over the text, we gather the rules out of the sixty-six books and run every doctrine through them, letting Scripture interpret Scripture.

Where does the Bible teach that it has no private interpretation?

2 Peter 1:20 says, 'no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.' 1 Corinthians 2:13 adds that spiritual things are understood by 'comparing spiritual with spiritual,' and John 10:35 says 'the scripture cannot be broken' — so no reading may set one passage against another.

What does 'Scripture cannot be broken' mean for studying the Bible?

It means the Bible never contradicts itself. When two passages seem to clash, both are true, and our task is to find the harmony rather than silence one to save the other. A tension on the page is an invitation to dig until it resolves.

Our Method · Foundational Standard

The Bible, interpreting itself.

We don’t build doctrine on tradition, a teacher’s opinion, or a feeling. We let Scripture explain Scripture — by the Bible’s own rules. Here are all twenty-two, drawn straight from the text.

Why This Matters

This is the brunt of it — the actual way the Bible tells us to mine its own truth. Not a tradition handed down, not one teacher’s framework laid over the page, but the rules of interpretation drawn out of the sixty-six books themselves and turned back on every doctrine we hold. Behind every conclusion on this site stands the full weight of Scripture — far more passages than any page could ever cite, every one of them gathered cold, weighed line upon line, and allowed to correct the rest until the truth converged and nothing was left contradicting. That is why what you read here is not the warmed-over guesswork of men or the safe repetition of consensus, but Scripture read strictly by Scripture’s own rules — the freshest, most rigorously-tested biblical teaching you will find anywhere.

The Bible, interpreting itself. Nothing of man added.

“…no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.” — 2 Peter 1:20

The Standard

Twenty-two rules the Bible gives for reading the Bible

Every rule is held up by a teaching passage — because the Book that interprets itself also tells us how.

How We Weigh It

Every finding gets a strength tag

We never dress up a guess as a certainty. Each conclusion is labeled for exactly how firmly Scripture holds it.

The Model

How every tension resolves: we rest in two works

Most confusion in the Christian life comes from collapsing two different works into one. Keep them distinct, and the tensions dissolve before they start.

The work that saves us

We rest completely in Christ’s finished work for salvation. It is done. Nothing can be added, and nothing we do keeps it.

Eph 2:8–9 · Hebrews 10:14

The work that bears fruit

And right now, when we long to “work the works of righteousness,” it is Christ working in us. We rest in His ongoing work too — the fruit is His, not ours.

Phil 2:13 · John 15:5 · John 6:29

If we yield →

His fruit flows, and there is reward laid up for the life to come.

1 Corinthians 3:14 · 2 Corinthians 5:10

If we don’t →

A Father’s loving discipline — never the loss of salvation.

Hebrews 12:6 · Romans 8:1 · John 10:28

Salvation is never on the table. That is why the great tensions — faith and works, grace and reward, security and discipline — simply dissolve.

One More Standard

On the use of outside work

We are closed off from no one. Any scholar, tradition, or movement may have done careful work we can use — grammarians, textual scholars, historians of the manuscripts, the concrete research of the commandment-keeping traditions. But we keep a clean blade between two things: outside helps may establish facts — historical, grammatical, textual — and they may never establish doctrine or fix the meaning of a passage. That belongs to Scripture alone. Consensus has been wrong. History has been wrong. The majority has believed things the text plainly denies. So we take any man’s work up to the point Scripture holds it up, and not one inch past — re-testing every conclusion against the Book before it is ever believed. The text alone is final.