A while ago I wrote an article titled “How to Study the Bible - Part One - Individual Book Study”.  It describes the steps that you should take if you want to study a single book of the Bible very thoroughly and get the most out of it as possible.  It was met with some good feedback, and that encouraged me to continue on the Bible study topic and write this article - how to study the Bible topically.

Before we dive in, I want to say one thing.  That is, there’s no “one right way” to study the Bible.  Whatever works for you is best.  I’m just trying to give you some ideas and suggestions that you might be able to use to get more out of your studies.  Without further ado…

How to Study the Bible - Part Two - Topical Study

Studying the Bible by topic can be one of the most exciting and rewarding methods.  Before the writing of books such as Nave’s Topical Bible (Orville J. Nave) and The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Mac Donald), to do a topical study, people would have to physically read through the entire Bible and find every verse that had to do with a certain subject.  This way of studying can be even more rewarding, because you will have spent so much time on the topic that it just seems to be a part of you, but most people don’t want to spend a long time on a single topic.  So below I have put together a basic outline of the way I study topically so that you can benefit from it.

Step 1 - Pick a System and Stick With It

When choosing a topic to study, you shouldn’t just pick whatever looks good to you at the moment.  Instead, you should come up with a system for working through the topics to make sure that you get the most out of it as possible.  Start by making a list of all the topics you can think of that are touched upon in the Bible.  Make it as comprehensive as possible.  The following is a short list of the topics that could be related to the Holy Spirit in the Bible.  It is but a few - there are many more not included in the list.

The Holy Spirit…

• Personality of
• Deity of
• Distinction from God the Father and Jesus Christ
• Names of
• The work of (in man in general, in the believer, in Jesus Christ, etc.)

To many, the thought of going through every topic in the Bible is a bit staggering.  For them, I would suggest picking the topics that seem the most important and studying those.  Then they could go into other, seemingly lesser topics, until ideally every topic is covered.

Step 2 - Find Every Single Verse on the Topic

When studying a topic of the Bible, don’t settle for examining only a few of the scriptures that have to do with it, or even most of the verses.  Instead, do your best to study every single verse that has to do with the topic.  If you don’t, you can’t truly have a thorough knowledge of the subject.  But how do we find every verse related to a topic?

First: Use a concordance such as Strong’s Concordance to look up every verse that has the word in it.  Then look up every verse that has synonyms to the word.  For example, if you are studying the word “praise”, you should also look up passages that have “worship”, “thanksgiving”, or “prayer” in them.  This website lets you search Strong’s Concordance and other concordances online for free, which can come in handy if you don’t own one.

Second: Use a topical digest such as Nave’s Topical Bible.  Topical digests don’t just list verses that have the exact word you are looking for, they list every verse that has to do with certain subjects.  For example, if you were doing a study on “praise”, a topical digest wouldn’t just give you every verse that has the word “praise” in it, but it would give you every verse the might have something to do with praise.  BibleGateway.com has an online tool that lets you search Nave’s Topical Bible and Torrey’s New Topical Textbook for free, if you need it.

Third: If the previous two methods don’t uncover all of the verses pertaining to the subject, then they are sure to turn up if you go through and do the Individual Book Study of the whole Bible.

Step 3 - Be Exact

Find the exact meanings of all the verses you uncover in your search.  Do this by using the method I mentioned in the Individual Book Study article.  If you just take a single verse by itself and rip it out of context, you can bend the Bible a lot of things it never actually said.  To prevent this, make sure that you read the context of all the verses and understand the definitions of all the words before moving on to the next one.

Step 4 - Categorize the Verses

Now that you have found all the verses on your topic, you need to put all the similar ones together into sub-categories.  This can be done by simple writing them down in a logical order.  For example, if you were doing a study on Jesus Christ’s Deity, you could have sub-categories like “Divine Names”, “Divine Attributes”, and “Divine Offices”.

Step 5 - Meditate on the Results

You should now have a rather long list of scriptures that are related to your topic.  The only thing left to do is think about them and observe what you can put into practice in your own life from them.  Take a step back and look at how they relate to each other, how they all give different perspectives to the subject, then take some time and just think about them.

That’s it!  If you have done your best to get every single verse on your topic, and have really meditated on them, then you should have gained a wealth of information.  If you have taken it to heart, your faith should be strengthened, and hopefully you are closer to the heart of God than before.

I hope that this is true for you, and that you have seen your faith grow as a result of this study.

Bibliography

• How to Pray/How to Study the Bible by R.A. Torrey
• Nave’s Topical Bible by Orville J. Nave