How to Truly Understand the Word of God, Test Every Teacher, and Know What Is Actually True

 I want to spend this blog answering three questions that I believe are the most practically urgent questions a Christian can ask in the age we are living in.

How do we truly understand the Word of God?

How do we test the teachings of others against His Word?

How do we know when something is actually true?

I have written before about sound doctrine and biblical literacy — about why they matter and what is at stake when Christians ignore them. This blog goes deeper. This is not about convincing you that the Word matters. If you are reading this, I am assuming you already believe it matters. This is about the how. How do you actually do this? How do you sit down with a Bible and come out the other side actually understanding what God is saying? How do you listen to a preacher or a podcast or a teacher and know whether what they are saying is true? How do you navigate a world drowning in competing voices all claiming to speak for God?

These are not theoretical questions. I have had to work through every one of them personally. And the Word of God gives us real, practical, testable answers to every single one.

Let us get into it.

What It Means to Truly Understand the Word of God

The Word Is Not a Book You Master — It Is a Book That Masters You

The first thing I have to say about truly understanding the Word of God is this: it requires a posture before it requires a method.

Most people approach the Bible the same way they approach any other book — as something to be analysed, categorised, and understood through the application of intelligence and effort. And while careful study is absolutely necessary, it is not sufficient. Because the Bible is not like any other book. It is living and active:

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12, ESV)

Living and active. Not a static document that surrenders its meaning to whoever is clever enough to decode it. A living Word that does something to the person who encounters it — it pierces, it divides, it discerns. It reads you as much as you read it.

This means that true understanding of the Word of God is not primarily an intellectual achievement. It is a spiritual encounter. And it requires you to come to the text with a posture of humility, surrender, and genuine expectation that God is going to speak — not just inform.

The Role of the Holy Spirit in Understanding Scripture

This brings me to the most important truth about understanding the Word of God, and it is one that gets almost no attention in discussions about Bible study methods.

You cannot truly understand the Word of God without the Holy Spirit.

This is not a pious cliché. It is a theological fact that Paul states directly:

"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14, ESV)

The natural person — the person without the Spirit of God — cannot accept or understand spiritual truth. It is not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of spiritual capacity. The things of the Spirit of God are spiritually discerned. They require the Spirit to open them.

And then Jesus promised that the Spirit would do exactly that:

"When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." (John 16:13, ESV)

He will guide you into all the truth. Not some of the truth. Not the easy parts. All the truth. The Holy Spirit is the primary interpreter of Scripture for the believer. Every time you open your Bible, you should begin by asking Him to open your eyes to what He inspired:

"Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." (Psalm 119:18, ESV)

That prayer — prayed honestly before you read — changes everything. You are acknowledging that you are dependent. That your natural mind cannot get you where you need to go. That you need the same Spirit who breathed out this Word to breathe it into your understanding.

The Scripture Interprets Itself

One of the most important principles for understanding the Word of God that most Christians have never been taught is this: Scripture interprets Scripture.

The Bible is the best commentary on the Bible. When you encounter a passage that is unclear or difficult, the most reliable thing you can do is look at the rest of Scripture to see how it illuminates that passage. God does not contradict Himself. The clear passages explain the unclear ones. The later passages deepen the earlier ones. The New Testament opens up the Old Testament. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This is why reading the whole Bible — not just your favourite passages or the parts that are comfortable — is not optional if you want true understanding. The person who only reads the New Testament is missing the foundations that make the New Testament intelligible. The person who only reads the Psalms and Proverbs has a devotional faith with no theological skeleton. The person who skips the hard books — Leviticus, Numbers, the minor prophets — is leaving the very texts that often contain the keys to understanding the ones they love.

Paul makes this principle explicit:

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16–17, ESV)

All Scripture. Not some Scripture. Not the parts that feel spiritually relevant. All of it is breathed out by God. All of it is profitable. And the word profitable here implies that you need all of it — the way a body needs all its parts — to be complete and equipped.

Context Is Not Optional

If the Scripture interprets Scripture is the first rule of understanding the Word of God, the second rule is: never read a verse without its context.

This single principle, if applied consistently, would eliminate the majority of false teaching in the church today. Most false teaching is not invented from nothing. It is built on real verses, pulled from their context and forced to say something they were never saying.

Context means four things.

The immediate context — what comes before and after the verse. A verse is part of a paragraph, and a paragraph has a flow of thought. You cannot lift a sentence out of the middle of an argument and treat it as a standalone statement without distorting it.

The book context — what is the writer trying to do in this book? Who is he writing to? What problem is he addressing? What is the overall argument? Understanding the book changes how you read every individual verse in it.

The biblical context — where does this passage fit in the overall story of Scripture? Is this in the Law, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles? Is it a command directed to Israel under the Mosaic covenant, or a command directed to the church under the new covenant? Is it poetry describing an experience, or prose stating a theological truth? These distinctions matter enormously and ignoring them produces catastrophic misreadings.

The historical and cultural context — what did these words mean in their original setting? Language changes. Cultural practices change. Understanding what a first-century audience would have heard when they read these words is often essential to understanding what the words actually mean.

None of this requires a seminary degree. It requires patience, a good Bible with cross-references, and the willingness to slow down and ask questions of the text rather than just scanning it for confirmation of what you already believe.

The Word Is Meant to Change You, Not Confirm You

I want to say something here that is uncomfortable but necessary. One of the biggest obstacles to true understanding of the Word of God is that most of us come to it wanting it to confirm what we already think. We read with our conclusions already formed. We highlight the verses that agree with us and skip past the ones that challenge us.

This is not Bible study. This is using the Bible as a mirror that only shows you what you want to see.

The writer of Hebrews says the Word discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That means it cuts. It exposes. It reveals things about you that you did not know and might not want to know. Genuine understanding of the Word of God requires being willing to be changed by it — to bring your assumptions, your theology, your lifestyle, your preferences to the text and let the text have authority over all of them.

James puts it simply:

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." (James 1:22, ESV)

The person who hears the Word and does not do it is self-deceived. They think they understand because they have processed the information. But understanding in the biblical sense is not primarily cognitive — it is transformative. You do not truly understand what the Word says about forgiveness until you have forgiven the person who does not deserve it. You do not truly understand what it says about prayer until you are actually praying. Obedience is part of understanding, not just a result of it.

How Do We Test the Teachings of Others Against the Word?

Why Testing Is Not Optional

The New Testament assumes that false teachers will exist inside the church. Not outside it — inside. Dressed as believers. Sounding biblical. Using the right vocabulary. And leading people astray.

Jesus said it:

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves." (Matthew 7:15, ESV)

Sheep's clothing. They look like the sheep. They smell like the sheep. They speak the language of the sheep. The only way to distinguish them from the genuine article is to examine what they produce — and to test what they say against the Word of God.

Paul said it:

"For I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them." (Acts 20:29–30, ESV)

From among your own selves. False teachers arise from inside the church. From people who were once sitting in the same pews, maybe even leading in the same ministries. This is not paranoia — this is the clear, repeated warning of the New Testament. And the response to this warning is not suspicion of everyone. It is testing everything.

John commands it directly:

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1 John 4:1, ESV)

Do not believe every spirit. Test the spirits. This is a command — not a suggestion for the especially cautious, but an obligation for every Christian who wants to stay on the right road.

The Berean Standard: What Testing Actually Looks Like

The gold standard for testing teaching is given to us in the book of Acts. The believers in Berea had received the teaching of the Apostle Paul — the greatest apostle and theologian the early church ever produced — and they did not simply accept it. They checked it.

"Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." (Acts 17:11, ESV)

Two things about the Bereans that I want you to notice.

First: they received the word with all eagerness. They were not cynical. They were not hostile. They wanted to hear what Paul had to say. Testing is not the same as suspicion. You can receive teaching with genuine openness and still examine it carefully. Eagerness and discernment are not opposites — they go together.

Second: they examined the Scriptures daily. Not occasionally. Not when something seemed suspicious. Daily. It was a consistent practice, not a crisis response. They were people of the Word, which meant they had a framework in place before any teaching arrived. When Paul spoke, they already knew their Bibles well enough to know whether what he was saying matched what was written.

This is the Berean standard. And it was praised by the Holy Spirit who inspired Luke to write it down. If the Bereans were commended for testing the Apostle Paul, you and I have absolutely no excuse for accepting any teacher without examination.

Nine Specific Questions to Test Any Teaching

Let me give you nine specific questions I apply when I am evaluating any teaching — whether it comes from a sermon, a book, a podcast, a Bible study, or anywhere else. These are not my inventions. Every one of them is rooted directly in Scripture.

Question 1: Does this teaching agree with the whole of Scripture, or does it rely on isolated verses?

False teaching almost always requires verses to be taken out of context. It needs a passage here and a phrase there, divorced from their surroundings and stitched together into something the Bible never actually says as a whole. True teaching stands up when you look at all the relevant passages together.

"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15, ESV)

Rightly handling — the Greek word here means cutting a straight line. The way a craftsman cuts material along its grain rather than against it. True teaching follows the grain of Scripture. False teaching cuts against it.

Question 2: Does this teaching exalt Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God, fully divine and fully human, the only Saviour?

This is the non-negotiable doctrinal test John gives us:

"By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God." (1 John 4:2–3, ESV)

Any teaching that diminishes the full deity of Christ, denies His bodily resurrection, presents Him as one of many paths to God, or strips Him of any part of His saving work — reject it immediately. This is the line that cannot be crossed.

Question 3: Does this teaching point you to Scripture or away from it?

A trustworthy teacher makes you want to open your Bible more, not less. They create hunger for the Word itself rather than dependence on the teacher's personality or platform. A dangerous teacher subtly positions themselves as the primary authority — as the one who has the special revelation, the unique interpretation, the deeper insight that the average Christian cannot access for themselves.

"To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." (Isaiah 8:20, ESV)

If they will not speak according to this word — there is no light in them. Everything comes back to the Word.

Question 4: Does this teaching make you more holy or more comfortable?

This is one of the most revealing tests, because false teaching almost always moves in the direction of comfort. It removes the parts of the gospel that demand something from you — repentance, obedience, self-denial, suffering — and leaves you with a Christianity that costs nothing and changes nothing.

Paul warned that the time would come when people would accumulate teachers to suit their own passions (2 Timothy 4:3). The test is simple: does this teaching make demands on your flesh? Does it call you to holiness? Does it make sin look serious and grace look costly? Or does it leave you feeling affirmed exactly as you are?

"Whoever says 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (1 John 2:4, ESV)

True teaching produces obedience. Teaching that produces only emotion, or only intellectual agreement, without transformation — examine it carefully.

Question 5: Does this teaching produce the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of those who follow it?

Jesus gave us this test explicitly:

"You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit." (Matthew 7:16–17, ESV)

Look at the people who have sat under this teaching for five or ten years. Are they more loving, more humble, more honest, more patient, more self-controlled, more Christlike? Or are they more entitled, more divisive, more proud, more dependent on experience and emotion than on the Word?

The fruit of a teaching shows up in the people it produces. That is not infallible — people can sit under good teaching and still be carnal. But a consistent pattern of a particular kind of spiritual fruit from a community of people tells you something important about the soil they have been planted in.

Question 6: Does this teacher handle money and power with integrity?

This sounds crass to some people but the New Testament is deeply concerned with it. Peter writes:

"And in their greed they will exploit you with false words." (2 Peter 2:3, ESV)

Greed is one of the primary motivations of false teachers in the New Testament — not ignorance, not well-meaning error, but greed. The love of money. The desire for influence and following and financial gain. A teacher who constantly positions you to give to them, who lives in obvious luxury while exploiting the generosity of their followers, who uses spiritual manipulation to extract financial support — these are warning signs that the New Testament takes seriously.

Question 7: Does this teaching add to or subtract from the gospel of grace through faith alone?

Paul is volcanic on this point:

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:8, ESV)

Accursed. That is the strongest language Paul ever uses about anything. He uses it twice in two consecutive verses. A gospel that adds works to justification — that says faith plus something earns your salvation — is a false gospel. A gospel that removes the necessity of repentance, that says grace means God does not care what you do — that is also a false gospel. The true gospel is salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Any deviation from that in either direction is a departure from the truth.

Question 8: Does this teacher welcome accountability and correction?

A teachable teacher is a trustworthy teacher. A teacher who cannot be questioned, who surrounds themselves only with people who agree with them, who dismisses criticism as spiritual attack, who claims a level of authority that puts them beyond accountability — that is a danger sign.

Proverbs says:

"Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence." (Proverbs 15:32, ESV)

True servants of God are correctable. They are under authority. They submit to the Word even when it rebukes them. The moment a teacher positions themselves above correction — above the Word, above the community of believers, above accountability — they have placed themselves in a very dangerous position.

Question 9: Do I feel pressured to accept this without examination?

This is the gut-check test. Any teaching that is genuinely true does not need to bypass your discernment. It does not need to create urgency that prevents careful evaluation. It does not need to emotionally overwhelm you into a decision before you have had time to open your Bible.

The Bereans examined the Scriptures daily. They took time. They were thorough. If a teacher or a teaching is pushing you to bypass that process — to accept before you examine, to feel before you think, to decide before you have prayed — slow down. The truth can withstand scrutiny. It is error that needs to rush you past the examination.

How Do We Know Something Is Actually True?

The Final Authority Is Not Your Pastor, Your Feelings, or Your Tradition

I want to address this directly because it is where so many sincere Christians go wrong.

We live in a world saturated with spiritual voices — all claiming authority, all claiming to speak for God, all offering certainty. Pastors. Prophets. Apostles. Traditions. Denominations. Councils. Experience. Emotion. Signs and wonders. Dreams and visions. And in the middle of all of that noise, the question becomes: what is the final court of appeal? When all these voices conflict — and they do conflict, daily — where do you turn to know what is actually true?

The answer of the Protestant Reformation, the answer of the Apostle Paul, the answer of Jesus Himself is the same: the Scripture alone.

Paul tells Timothy:

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV)

All Scripture. Breathed out by God. Not suggested by God, not inspired in the same way great literature is inspired, but breathed out — the very breath of God forming every word. That is why Scripture has the final word over every human authority, every tradition, every experience, every feeling, every spiritual impression.

Your pastor may be wrong. He is human. Your tradition may be wrong. It was built by humans. Your experience may be misleading you. Experiences are filtered through fallen minds. Your feelings are not reliable guides to theological truth. But the Word of God, breathed out by the God who cannot lie, is the standard against which everything else is measured.

The Clarity of Scripture

Here is something that brings me genuine comfort and I want to bring it to you as well. The Bible is not a book that God intended only scholars to understand. It is a book He intended for ordinary people — farmers and fishermen and tent-makers and mothers and children and slaves. The things that are necessary for salvation and godly living are clearly taught in Scripture, stated plainly enough that any person with a humble heart and the Holy Spirit can understand them.

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." (Psalm 119:105, ESV)

A lamp to my feet. Not a torch visible only to academic experts from a great distance. A lamp to my feet — close, personal, sufficient for the next step. You do not need a degree to understand what the Bible says about salvation. You do not need a theologian to tell you what the Bible says about sin, repentance, love, prayer, or the return of Christ. These things are written plainly for ordinary people who are willing to read carefully and pray honestly.

This does not mean every passage is equally clear. There are genuinely difficult texts in Scripture — passages that have challenged the greatest minds in church history. Peter himself acknowledged that some of Paul's letters contain things that are hard to understand (2 Peter 3:16). The principle is not that every verse is immediately obvious. The principle is that the things you need to know are clear, and the difficult passages are always illuminated by the clear ones — never the other way around.

Truth Is Testable

One of the great gifts of the Word of God is that it gives us a testable standard for truth. We are not left guessing. We are not left in a subjective fog where every opinion is equally valid and no one can say anyone else is wrong. God has spoken, and what He has spoken is the measure.

Isaiah draws a bright line:

"To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." (Isaiah 8:20, ESV)

If they will not speak according to this word — there is no light in them. That is a testable standard. Hold what any teacher says up to the light of Scripture. If it matches, it is true. If it contradicts, it is false. If it goes beyond what Scripture says in ways that cannot be supported by careful reading of the text — be cautious. Add nothing to what God has said and subtract nothing from it.

"Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar." (Proverbs 30:5–6, ESV)

Every word of God proves true. That is the confidence you can have in Scripture. Not in your interpretation — your interpretation can be wrong. But in the Word itself — it proves true. It has proved true through thousands of years of human history, through every attempt to disprove or destroy it, through every critic who thought they had found the fatal flaw. It stands. It always stands.

What to Do When You Are Genuinely Unsure

I want to speak practically to the person who reads all of this and says: I understand the principles, but there are specific things I am genuinely unsure about. How do I know what is true when I have studied the passage and I am still not certain?

Here is my honest answer from the Word and from personal experience.

Pray for wisdom. Specifically, persistently, and expectantly.

"If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." (James 1:5, ESV)

God does not withhold wisdom from the person who asks for it. He gives generously, without reproach — which means He is not annoyed by your asking. He wants you to understand His Word. Ask Him to show you what is true.

Stay close to the things that are clear while you work through the things that are unclear.

There are central, non-negotiable truths of the Christian faith — the deity of Christ, His death and resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, the authority of Scripture, the reality of judgment — that are stated clearly in dozens of passages across both Testaments. Anchor yourself there. Do not let uncertainty about secondary or tertiary issues destabilise your confidence in the things that are unmistakably clear.

Seek counsel from mature, Word-anchored believers.

"Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed." (Proverbs 15:22, ESV)

You are not meant to navigate every hard question alone. The body of Christ exists for this reason. Find believers who are further along in the Word than you are, who have demonstrated faithfulness over time, who hold the Bible as their final authority — and ask them. Discuss it. Wrestle through it together. The community of genuine believers is a means of grace for arriving at truth.

Be willing to wait.

Not every question gets resolved immediately. There are passages I have been sitting with for years that I am still working through. Theological humility means being willing to say: I am not certain about this yet. I am still studying. I am still praying. I am holding this question before God and trusting that in His time He will make it clear.

What you must not do is fill the uncertainty with something that goes beyond Scripture. The answer to genuine uncertainty is not to accept whatever teacher sounds most confident. The answer is to keep going back to the Word, keep praying, keep seeking, and refuse to build your life on a foundation that the Scripture does not clearly provide.

Conclusion: The Responsibility You Cannot Outsource

I want to close with something that I believe is the heart of everything I have said in this blog.

Understanding the Word of God, testing the teachings of others, and knowing what is true — these are responsibilities that belong to you. You cannot outsource them.

You cannot outsource them to your pastor, however faithful he may be. You cannot outsource them to your denomination, however sound its confession. You cannot outsource them to a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blogger, or anyone else — including me. Every one of those sources can help. Every one of them can be a gift from God for your growth. But not one of them is a substitute for your own personal, prayerful, daily engagement with the Word of God.

On the day you stand before Jesus Christ, you will not be able to say: I believed that because my pastor told me. You will stand before Him with your own soul and your own record and your own choices. The question will not be whose teaching you followed. It will be whether you followed His Word.

"So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17, ESV)

Faith comes from the Word. Not from the teacher. The teacher is merely the instrument through which the Word reaches you. But the Word itself — living, active, breathed out by God, sufficient for every question of life and godliness — is the source. The authority. The final word on what is true.

Know it. Love it. Live in it. Test everything against it. Trust it more than you trust your feelings, your traditions, your experiences, or the most gifted teacher you have ever heard.

It will not fail you.

"The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever." (Isaiah 40:8, ESV)

Forever. When every teacher is silent and every tradition has faded and every feeling has passed — the Word of God will stand.

Stand on it.

I am Michael. I follow Jesus Christ and the Bible alone.

Amen.