The following is the second post in a series looking at the ways the Bible functions for believers as they read, meditate on and live by the word of God and the ways God intends His word to function for us in those ways. Read the first post here.

Part 2 of this series continues the survey of ten ways that Christians use the Bible. We continue with #4-7. (Part 1 is available with uses #1-3.)

4. Ethical guidance

One aspect of the valuable information in the Bible is the revelation of God’s goodness to love people—even his enemies—and to draw people into living in God’s love for others. The natural self-interest of all people suffers God’s attack by the radical requirement that we are to serve others, forgive people, and value all human beings as the special representatives of God in creation (imago dei). Unfortunately, people can misuse the ethical instruction of the Bible to construct religion. The term legalism is a human scheme to perform obedience for God and strive to score points of right behavior as if our good deeds are the main thing that he wants (and not simply the effect of God’s presence in a person). We must be careful to see the requirements of God as a perfection to be accomplished by the Spirit of God filling and moving our little lives, not as an exalted standard we strive to meet.

5. Theological guidance

One aspect of information given in the Bible (alongside history, anthropology, law, ethics, and warcraft) is Christian theology: the topics of God and his works. We are right to use the Bible as a primary voice informing our knowledge of these topics. The scattered and buried distribution of God’s revelation among the many cultural documents of the biblical canon makes theology hard work. Some topics are clearer than others. All the content comes through cultural packaging of ancient peoples and individual authors. We may feel assurance to cite biblical statements as God’s word, as if these were all dictated by Yahweh to human secretaries. Many biblical statements can be misused for theological guidance, such as descriptions of ancient practices or accounts of God’s works and requirements that were specific to an individual or group. A transcultural application is often possible to discern from these occasions and cases, such as showing a pattern of God’s goodness or his