What Study Bible Would You Recommend?

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In relation to free grace theology, what makes for a good study Bible?

Are there any that Grace Evangelical Society would suggest?

A discussion about this is forthcoming, and we thank you for joining us today here on Grace in Focus.

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And now with today's question and answer discussion,

here are Bob Wilkin and Kenye.

And we have a question from Jody.

Jody asks a question that I'm asked occasionally, and I'm sure you are as well,

and it refers to, or it's related to study Bibles.

Right. There's a lot of study Bibles out there,

and Jody asked a very simple question.

When it comes to a free Grace perspective, what study Bible would we recommend?

As we just talk about that, just some pop up, we have the Rirey Study Bible.

Okay, I was at Dallas Seminary when the Rirey Study Bible New Testament came out.

I got a free Rirey Study Bible New Testament because they gave it to all the DTS students.

I believe that was 1978 that came out and I started in 78.

And then the entire study Bible, I'm not sure the year it came out,

but somewhere around 81 or 80 or something.

Anyway, yes, Dr. Rirey Study Bible, it's free Grace.

It's clear on most things, but if you look at his note on James 2,

Faith That Works is dead, terrible.

Yeah. He says faith is a two coupon ticket,

and it's not good if detached.

I was in, I had him for the doctrine of soteriology and he said the same thing.

And in my mind, I just said, here's a man who's basically with us,

but he's wildly inconsistent on this point and he doesn't realize it.

Yeah, I had the same thought and I thought, does he not realize how inconsistent?

He was the one that came and questioned me for an ordination.

And he was at church when I had my ordination exam and preached that Sunday.

And he signed my ordination papers.

So I've known Dr. Rirey a long time and I really like Dr. Rirey and

he and Zane Hodges had lunch once a month up until the end of Zane's life.

And Zane considered him a person that was basically with us,

even though he had some areas of confusion.

So yes, I would recommend the Rirey Study Bible with caveats.

There you go. So yeah, so we have here.

And by the way, this is going to be a recurring theme.

As we recommend some of these things, we could say, okay,

yeah, there's going to be some good things in here.

A lot of good things maybe, but every now and then you're going to go,

oh, that's not right.

What's going on here?

Another one would be the Nelson Study Bible, right?

Okay, Earl Rodmocker was the general editor of the Nelson Study Bible.

It is for the most part very good.

Unfortunately, he had a few people that he thought were

free grace people that were actually mild Lordship salvation that wrote some of the notes.

And so some things got in that weren't as clear as others.

Now as the editor, he caught some of that, but a lot of it couldn't catch,

because you'd be very hard to analyze every note carefully.

Well, plus in a situation like that, you know more about the publishing side of it than I do.

But even if you're the general editor and you're paying these guys,

and you say, hey, this isn't right, they may say, well,

that's what I want to put in there.

And you know, and could you override so I don't know how much authority he had.

Right. I don't either.

Yeah, so I don't know what he had.

And so once again, you can get a Nelson Study Bible.

And on one page, it may be really, really good.

You turn the page and you see something that's not really good.

I think it's probably comparable to the Irish Study Bible.

I wouldn't say either one is particularly better than the other.

Another would be the Skofield reference Bible, you know, C.I. Skofield.

It was very famous for basically establishing dispensationalism as a viable option.

And my understanding is that book was the manual for missionaries, right?

I don't know if it was meant to be or if that's the way it was that it was used,

was missionaries used it as kind of like a systematic theology as they as they went out in the field.

Well, I think there's some definite benefits with the Skofield reference Bible.

But again, and I haven't looked at long time, but I would say you want to be careful

because not everything is going to be correct.

There's Unger's Bible Handbook, which is a little bit different, but Unger's Bible Handbook,

I found helpful because it gives introductory material for the various books.

And it's going to have more material, right?

Yeah.

Then a study Bible.

It'll have, yeah, like outlines and introductions to books and things.

And the history behind it.

Now, on the Skofield one, one of the problems is how old it is.

Right.

You know what we're talking about?

I think it was about 1919, 1920.

Yeah, it's back in there.

I thought it was even before that, like 1909 or something like, but, but regardless,

it's over 100 years old.

And so correct me if I'm wrong, a couple of things.

Number one, it may not, well, it's not up to date, but the other thing is my experience

with the older guys is they were not as careful as GES is about precise language.

No, that's correct.

You know, and so I think you'll run into that as well.

That's even true a little bit with Dr. Ryer.

Yes, you know, and it's kind of disappointing.

When we read these guys who what we would say were at least free grace friendly,

you know, 100 years ago, I find that they're very loosey goosey with the terminology they use.

You know, like, I would imagine that sometimes they may even say things like,

invite Jesus into your heart.

I mean, I don't know if they'd work.

Yeah, you know, something like that.

It's coming.

It'll be here before you know it.

What am I talking about?

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Well, here's another one.

Dr. Tony Evans came out with his own study Bible.

Now I don't recall reading through it.

I think I did see some of it.

I think that Tony Evans study Bible would be well worth looking at

because he's coming from a free grace perspective.

Now he does have an odd view that he calls trans-dispensationalism

where he believes that people who've never heard the name of Jesus

can be born again by being faithful in their own religion.

Yeah, I wonder if that comes through in the note.

I don't know, I bet it probably does, but you know,

if it does come through, just realize that's not a good position to hold.

He also seems to hold the view that's the way Gentiles were born again in the Old Testament,

which is wrong.

Of course, everybody has always been by grace through faith apart from works.

But the fact that I disagree with Dr. Evans on this point

is really not a major point because 99% of the people in the United States

have heard the name of Jesus, right?

And we're not dealing with Old Testament people right now anyway.

I mean, I do think it's important that we get it right

on how Old Testament people were born again.

But it's possible to get that wrong and still believe that John 316

is the saving message and that we need to share that with people.

And that's what Dr. Evans believes.

In fact, Zane Hajj was a member of his church

last few years of his life and he and Zane were very close.

So I may ask you on that.

What about his view of the kingdom?

Because he has a lot of like kingdom living and kingdom principles, right?

The kingdom agenda and all that.

Yeah, he gets a little bit, in my opinion, caught up in the already not yet.

In some sense, the kingdom is here and in some sense, it's not here.

Now, I don't know if he is a progressive dispensationalist or not.

I don't think he is, but maybe he is.

But yeah, I think it would be better.

And of course, it's true we should have a kingdom mindset.

We should be praying that kingdom comes.

That will be done on earth is in heaven.

But that kingdom come means it's not here yet, right?

Right.

So we're living in light of the coming kingdom,

but we're not in the coming kingdom.

And I would say to Jody's question,

and I know you'd agree with me on this,

that no matter whether you use a study Bible or not,

or whatever study Bible you use,

because now some study Bibles are more,

the notes are more extensive than others.

You know, they have the background information and stuff like that.

But whichever one you use,

you need to understand that use it with caution.

That's an absolutely important caution.

We have a great New Testament commentary.

We came out with this originally,

it was two volumes, hardback,

and then we came out with one volume, softback.

And you can get it on logos.

And a lot of people use it.

I highly recommend it.

I wrote a number of the commentaries,

and I edited all of it.

And we're getting ready to come out

with a Grace Old Testament commentary.

Volume one should be ready by the conference

by May 18th of this year, 2026.

And I think having commentaries can be very helpful.

Short commentaries like one volume

or in our Old Testament case three volumes,

they're similar to study Bible.

Well, that's what I was about to say.

I mean, I know it's a little more bulky,

but not much more bulky.

I mean, if you talk about the New Testament commentary,

it's one volume.

I know it's a big volume,

and you got to have your Bible next to it.

So it's just one extra book.

And the good thing about the Grace New Testament commentary

and the Grace Old Testament commentary

is we're not talking about 400 pages per book.

We're talking about we aim at 800 words of chapter.

Right. And so for the Old Testament.

So roughly that.

And so if you're looking for something quick

and it's going to have background information as well

and it's going to talk about each book

is going to talk about the free Grace issues

that are present in each book.

And so for a pretty quick thumbnail sketch

of these books,

I think it's going to be better than any Bible study.

Well, I think so.

And you know, the other thing you warned before the caution

about reading these study Bibles with discernment,

recognizing there are some errors in there.

Well, the same thing is true with reading

our New Testament commentary, our Old Testament commentary.

We tried hard to make sure that all the doctrine is correct,

all the exegesis is correct,

that we've got it down right.

But each person has to decide

what they are convinced based on their prayer

and study of the Word of God.

And not everybody's going to agree on every single pet,

like head coverings for women

in 1 Corinthians 11.

Is that for today or not for today?

What is head coverings as long here for women head coverings?

Well, those are decisions you need to make.

We make some comments in our commentary,

but the fact that we make that is not definitive.

You need to study it and pray about it.

And the same thing is true with all kinds of issues

in the Old and New Testament.

And I would just encourage people,

be a Berean, Acts 17-11.

Search the scriptures, see if these things are so.

But we do have study Bibles and we do have commentaries.

And these can be helpful.

And use them with caution, but certainly use them.

Thanks for the question, Jody.

We hope this helps.

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