Three Famous Verses, Read in Context

Some verses are so well loved that they travel on their own. They appear on coffee mugs, gym shirts and graduation cards, and somewhere along the way they lose the paragraph they came from. The verse is still true. But cut loose from its setting, it can start to say something its author never meant, and we can miss what he did mean.

The simplest rule in reading the Bible is also the most important: read the verses around the verse. Here are three famous examples.

1. “I can do all things” (Philippians 4:13)

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

On its own, this sounds like a promise that Christ will help you win the match, pass the exam or reach any goal you set. Now read the two verses just before it:

I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. In any and every situation I have learned the secret of being filled and being hungry, of having plenty and having need.

Paul is writing from prison. The “all things” he can do are things like going hungry and living with very little, without losing his peace. Verse 13 is not a promise of success. It is the secret of contentment: whether he has plenty or nothing, Christ gives him the strength to stay faithful and at rest.

That is a bigger promise, not a smaller one. Christ's strength is not only for the day you win. It is for the day you lose, the month the money runs out and the season nothing goes your way.

2. “Plans to prosper you” (Jeremiah 29:11)

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope.

This verse is often read as God's personal promise that my plans will work out soon. But Jeremiah 29 is a letter, and verse 4 tells us who it was sent to:

This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles who were carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon:

These were people who had lost their homes and their temple, carried off to a foreign empire. And the verse just before our famous one sets the timetable:

For this is what the LORD says: “When Babylon’s seventy years are complete, I will attend to you and confirm My promise to restore you to this place.

Seventy years. Many who first heard this letter would die in Babylon. God told them to build houses, plant gardens and pray for the city they had been taken to (verses 5 to 7). The hope of verse 11 was real, but it was a hope for God's people over a lifetime and beyond, not a quick rescue.

Can Christians today take comfort from this verse? Yes, and many careful teachers say so, because the God who kept His promise to the exiles has not changed. But we read it best when we hear it the way they did: as a promise that holds even when the waiting is long, not a guarantee that the waiting will be short.

3. “Where two or three gather” (Matthew 18:20)

For where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them.”

This is often quoted to comfort a small prayer meeting. Look at what Jesus was talking about a few verses earlier:

If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’

The setting is a hard conversation in the church: what to do when a brother sins and will not listen. The “two or three” echo the two or three witnesses of verse 16. Many interpreters read verse 20 as Jesus promising to stand with His church as it handles these painful matters faithfully and humbly.

Does that mean Jesus is absent from a small prayer meeting? Not at all. Interpreters differ on how widely to apply verse 20, and the wider promise stands firm elsewhere: “And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20). The point is simply that this particular verse has a particular job, and it is a weighty one.

How to do this yourself

You do not need a seminary degree to read in context. Next time a verse stands out to you, ask four questions:

1. What comes just before and just after? Read at least the whole paragraph.
2. Who was this first written to, and what was happening to them?
3. What kind of writing is it? A letter, a song, a law, a prophecy and a story are each read differently.
4. What did it mean to them before I ask what it means for me?

The Bereans were praised for exactly this kind of careful reading:

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true. (Acts 17:11)

Go deeper

This is the heart of our Hermeneutics track, which teaches how to read the Bible well. Its lesson Context Is King works through this skill step by step, and the track begins with You Are Already Interpreting. Every lesson is free while we launch.