Lesson 1 | Cross-References
In Understanding a Passage
The point of a cross-reference is to present you with other verses to consider in understanding the passage at hand.
This means that cross-references are not designed to help you study a topic. They are also not intended to send you jumping around your Bible in search of favorite verses. Rather, cross-references assume you are studying a particular passage and are meant to help you understand that passage.
In fact, cross-references are not just focused on helping you understand a verse, they are (usually) specifically related to a single word or phrase. For example, let’s look again at the final cross-reference from the previous step.
John 6
A cross-reference dot relates to the word or phrase following the dot. So this cross-reference relates to “has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (Note how the verse we are presented also speaks of these same things.) But while a cross-reference might be anchored in a specific word or phrase alone, often it will help our understanding of the entire verse or passage.