There are lots of ways you might run a Bible study. You could do something thematic, trying to draw together the Bible’s teaching on a particular topic as it is spread throughout scripture. You could do a Word study, trying to figure out how a particular word or word-group is used across the scriptures. Or, you could do a plain old inductive bible study, looking at the text, making observations and then drawing conclusions about what it is saying. All have their place and all can be valuable.
There are also different modes of teaching for different purposes. Sermons are more didactic, showing you from the scriptures what they say and applying it to the the specific situations of those listening. Group Bible studies tend to be more Socratic, floating questions and then encouraging engagement with the text through other probing questions. Other modes of teaching might have a place too.
But in all these things, what we are trying to do is see what is in the text. Our goal is not to jump on any old verse and impose our ideas onto it, but to let it speak on its own terms. We are not seeking to pull together any old set of verses and meld them together in our minds to make whatever points we want. We are aiming to understanding this text, seeking to understanding what the author wanted to convey. Unless we are basing our interpretation of this text in this text we will run into problems.
None of that is to say other texts have nothing to say to this one. None of that is to say scripture will contradict itself. None of that is to say this text shouldn’t be accommodated and reconciled with other texts. If we believe the Bible ultimately has one author, then no one part of it will contradict another. If we believe that God speaks to us through his inerrant and infallible Word, we cannot simply ignore other texts and suggest they have no bearing on this text. All of that is necessarily true. But we cannot possibly understand how this text fits with the unified whole until we’ve understood this text on its own terms as the (human) author intended it to be understood.
The way we understand this text is to work hard to understand the author’s original intention. The author has a specific reason for writing in mind (often they expressly tell us what it is in the book, other times they leave pretty big clues). So we first understand what this text is saying in the light of the author’s primary purpose. Similarly, the author has written this bit in the context of the wider book. We cannot divorce this text from its wider context without necessarily taking it out of context and using it as a pretext for whatever we want it to say. So, we understand what this text is saying by interpreting in light of stated authorial intent and in context.
Once we know the authorial intent of the book, and we’ve understood the context into which it has been written and placed, we then have to understand the text by actually rooting our interpretation in the text. It is not good reading John 3:16 on its own and insisting the interpretation of it must come from James 2 because they both use the words ‘God’ and ‘believe’. The fact is, they’re writing with different purposes in mind and are placed in very different contexts. We have to root our understanding of John 3:16 in the text of John 3. We won’t necessarily get to the bottom of what John wants to say by looking at James. We have to let John tell us himself what he wants to say!
Does that mean James has nothing to say to anything John writes? Of course not! It’s just that we can only understand what James has to say to John when we understand John on his own terms and then James on his. Once we understand each on his own terms, rooting our understanding in the particular texts we are reading, then we can try to reconcile what they are trying to say. But we can’t reconcile what they are trying to say before we have figured our what they are actually saying! I have to understand John as John writes, James as James writes, and understanding them both, reconcile what they are saying together rather than force John’s writing through the prism of James’ as though one is a commentary on the other.
Which is why, when we do our Socratic Bible studies that think again about the applications of Sunday’s sermon, I am often heard to be asking, ‘where’s that in the text?’ That isn’t to say I am unhappy if somebody brings another text from elsewhere to bear on this text. It is just to say, whatever they are hearing that text to say, I want to know how and why they think it in any way relates to the this text. We can’t possibly know what that text would say to this one before we have understood what this one is saying on its own terms. We have to hear this text and understand it before we can think about what that one might say of any relevance to it.
Otherwise, we are just cherry-picking verses, bringing them together in our own minds, and establishing points without any evidence the original authors intended to make them. It is nothing more than a free-form, lateral thinking, bringing together of two things that can be taken out of context and melded into whatever thought in our own minds we want. If we can add a veneer of spirituality about it and claim the Holy Spirit has brought these things together for me, well, which of us can argue?
Unless, that is, we simply ask: where is that in the text? And, never mind reconciling James and John or whatever two verses you have plucked out at random, explain to me how you reconcile your reading with John himself! If you are using James (or whoever) to negate what John himself says earlier in the same passage, I think we can safely conclude you are not reading John aright. If you can show me how what John says earlier in this passage marries cogently with what John says here and then show me how James also reconciles with what John himself is saying, then we may have a point. But it all comes back to this: where is that in this particular text?