Lesson 10 | Digging Deeper into the Text
Phrase on Your Own
The title of this step is actually somewhat misleading, because you really shouldn’t phrase on your own! I’ll explain what I mean by that in just a minute.
In this step, I’m encouraging you to follow two practices as you leave this course and start Phrasing “on your own.”
Think and rely on the Holy Spirit
You need not only to phrase and think about grammar and genitive relationships, but also to pray, relying on the Holy Spirit. Notice how I said that: I didn’t say, “Don’t think about grammar,” but “Don’t only think about grammar.” Paul’s instructions to Timothy below were life-changing for me, setting a paradigm for how I should approach the Scriptures as I read and study them:
Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. —2 Timothy 2:7
If we’re not careful, we can fall asleep at the wheel of Phrasing and slide off the road into a ditch on either side. But, in the words of John Piper,
Paul does not put these in tension: thinking on the one side and receiving the gift of understanding from God on the other side. They go together. Thinking is essential on the path to understanding. But understanding is a gift of God. —John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, 30
Notice the structure of this verse: Paul gives Timothy an imperative: “think.” Then he gives him a ground for the imperative, starting with the word “for.” What Paul is doing is “emphatically [making] God’s gift the ground of our effort” (ibid., 65).
In other words, because God is the one who gives understanding of his word to his children, therefore you need to use your brain! Don’t believe that you have to choose between praying and thinking; rather, know that you need both. The Five Passes of Phrasing should frequently be paused as you pray, “Lord, open my eyes so that I can see wonderful truths about you in this passage. Lord, guide my mind so that I rightly identify the relationships between these phrases. Lord, help me apply this passage to my life with wisdom and accuracy.”
Share your finished phrase with others
You can do this on Biblearc by clicking the Share button under the phrasing module menu.
But don’t do that to show everyone how brilliantly you can phrase! Rather, sharing your phrase is contributing what the Holy Spirit has taught you to a community of learners. The folks you share with might be helped by how you identified a subordinate relationship in the Fourth Pass, or how you paraphrased the main point in the Fifth Pass. And they might have some push-back that will refine your understanding.
