Why Don't We Know Our Bibles? by Holly D. Sands
What surprises me is who's in that quiet room. It isn't only new believers. I've seen it in people who have walked with the Lord as long as I have. Time in the faith doesn't automatically turn into depth in the Word. The writer of Hebrews said as much to believers who should have been further along:
"For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food." (Hebrews 5:12)
I'm not writing this to shame anyone. I'm writing this out of deep concern. A Christian who doesn't know the Word is easy to deceive and hard to steady, and we've never had more voices competing for our attention.
Discernment Comes by Use
The writer of Hebrews doesn't leave those believers on milk. He goes on to say what maturity looks like:
"For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." (Hebrews 5:13–14)
Look at the words unskilled and by reason of use. Knowing the Word is a skill, and skills come from practice. The Greek word behind "exercised" is gymnazō, which gives us our word "gymnasium." Discernment isn't handed to believers once they've been saved long enough. It's trained by time spent in the text.
That's why years in the faith don't guarantee maturity. A person can sit under teaching for decades and still be unskilled, because hearing about the Word isn't the same as using it.
And discernment is the point. The mature believer can tell truth from error. The one still on milk has a much harder time telling the difference.
Why It Happens
I don't think most believers set out to neglect the Word. It slips, for a few common reasons.
We get it secondhand. Sermons, devotionals, podcasts, and posts can be good gifts, but they can't replace the text itself. That's an easy trap for those of us who've been in church a long time. We've heard so much about the Bible that we can mistake it for knowing it. A Christian who only gets the Bible through someone else is only as grounded as the last teacher they heard. And in the American church, that can be extremely dangerous.
We read verses, not books. Scripture was written as whole letters, histories, and songs. When we read it one verse at a time, we lose the context that tells us what the verse means. That's also how false teaching gets in. It comes with a verse attached and leaves off the rest of the chapter. So don't just read the verses before and after. Read the entire book to get the actual context.
We think it's for the theologians. Somewhere along the way, many believers decided Bible study is for pastors and scholars. But the New Testament letters were written to ordinary churches and read aloud to ordinary people (Colossians 4:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:27).
The world gets the hours. As I wrote in "Who's Training Your Conscience?", whatever gets our time does our training. Most of us aren't choosing against the Bible. We're just choosing everything else first.
And yes, pulpits share the blame. Paul charged Timothy to "preach the word" (2 Timothy 4:2) because he knew the alternative: "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers" (2 Timothy 4:3). Itching ears create the demand, and weak pulpits sadly supply it.
The Bereans Checked Paul
Luke gives us the opposite of itching ears:
"These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so." (Acts 17:11)
Think about who they were checking. It was the apostle Paul, and Luke commends them for doing it. And they didn't check him once and move on. Luke says they searched the Scriptures daily.
If the Bereans could check an apostle against Scripture, we can check our pastor, our favorite podcaster, and whatever showed up in our feed this morning. But we can only check what we know. And listen, some false teachers will actually tell you to look it up for yourself. When you do, you'll find the verse right where they said it was. But if you don't know its context, the verse can be right and the teaching still wrong.
Why It Matters
When the disciples asked Jesus about the end of the age, He started with a warning: "Take heed that no one deceives you" (Matthew 24:4). A few verses later, He said false christs and false prophets would rise "to deceive, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:24). Deception was the first thing on His list, ahead of wars, famines, and persecution.
Peter warned that false teachers would come from inside the church, and that they "will secretly bring in destructive heresies" (2 Peter 2:1). False teaching almost never announces itself. It shows up sounding like the real thing, and the only way to catch it is to know the real thing well.
Paul told Timothy, "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come" (2 Timothy 3:1). A few verses later, he described part of what would make them perilous: "evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived" (2 Timothy 3:13). His answer wasn't a new strategy. It was the old one. Timothy had known the Holy Scriptures since childhood, and Paul told him to keep going in them, because "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God" and makes the believer "complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:15–17).
A believer who doesn't know the Word gets "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting" (Ephesians 4:14). Every new teaching sounds reasonable when there's nothing to measure it against.
When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus answered him three times with Scripture: "It is written" (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10). At one point, Satan quoted Scripture back at Him, lifting a promise from Psalm 91 out of its context (Matthew 4:6). Jesus didn't argue with the verse. He answered with another: "It is written again" (Matthew 4:7). He knew the Word well enough to recognize a twisted version of it. If the Son of God met the enemy with the written Word, we shouldn't expect to stand in the last days on anything less.
So here's my challenge: stop settling for the verses you've heard and start studying the Bible you own. Open it every day. Read it whole. Dig in until you know it well enough to recognize a lie the moment you hear one. The days ahead will demand nothing less.
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Holly D. Sands has walked with Christ since 1983. She writes at He is My Song, helping fellow believers walk faithfully through every season with biblical encouragement, sound doctrine, and honest reflection. She lives in South Carolina, where she and her husband, Shane Sands, are members of a local Baptist church. Shane's been called by God as an evangelist and leads United in Christ Jesus ministry. At home, they're joined by their idiot cat, Mister Bojangles, whose main contribution to the household is sleeping and eating treats.
© 2026 He is My Song. All rights reserved.
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