This lesson is part of Mel Lawrenz’ “How to Study the Bible” series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

The core meaning of the Bible is easy to discern when we simply read it from cover to cover. The core meaning is centered on God and people, and God’s action to save a broken people. In this, Scripture is like a great drama with one main character, God, and multitudes of supporting characters. Thousands of named characters, in fact. Some are only names in long genealogies, others are the subjects of epic narratives. Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Peter, Paul, and Jesus, to name a few. Scripture contains truth, of course, but the truth is incarnate in God himself and in the real-life stories of the people God moved.

So it is no surprise that, in Bible study, we want to occasionally do a character study. By character we mean the biography of a real person, and the inner qualities that made him or her great or evil, or both.

So how do we study a biblical character?

First, we need to start with the right assumptions. Remember that the narrative passages of Scripture tell us truthfully what the people who are mentioned did and said, and occasionally interpret their lives. The story of Abraham is told from Genesis 11 through 25 in great detail. We learn about his origins in Ur, his coming to Canaan, God’s promise to him, his sojourn in the land, his dealings with allies and enemies, his family relationships, his interactions with God, and more. We get from the account many profound insights on human nature and the ways of God. Abraham was, and is, the father of faith. But not all the details in Abraham’s story have a parallel in our experiences. There are lessons in the near-sacrifice of Isaac, and the life of the bedouin shepherd, and the struggle of faith, but we should not strain to apply the details of Abraham’s life to our own lives because the story of Abraham is the story of Abraham.

Also, though a heroic figure, not everything Abraham did was righteous. A “hero” in any biblical narrative is still a flawed and sinful human being—including Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Peter, and Paul. The narratives about the lives of major figures in Scripture give us a few major spiritual principles, rather than lessons in every small detail. We must not lose the forest for the trees. From Abraham we get the lesson of faith “counted as righteousness” by God. We also get a picture of hope. As Hebrews 11 says, Abraham and other heroes of the faith often went to the end of their lives without seeing what they were promised.

Second, we need to find the right passages. If you want to do a character study of Barnabas, for instance, you can easily find the 33 passages where the name comes up by using a concordance or online tool like Bible Gateway. But you need to make sure the list of passages all refer to the same person. There are numerous people named Mary, and James, and John, in the New Testament, for instance. The context of the passages will usually be all the guidance you need to focus on a single person.

Third, we need to read each of the passages, in context. Just reading isolated verses will not do, because we need context to understand every reference to a character. So we read the verses around the reference, or perhaps a whole chapter, making notes along the way of what we observe. Our observations may include:

• the circumstances of the narrative
• how the person behaved or spoke
• the rightness or wrongness in what he or she did
• the awareness the person had of God’s truth and righteousness
• the growth or decline of the character across the narrative

This last part is extremely important. Character development is often where we find the profound truths of a person’s life. Getting insight into Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the Apostle, for instance, is central to his significance. We have enough information to learn about his motivations and not just his actions (and, in Paul’s case, we are helped by what he says in his epistles). Studying the character of Judas may not seem like a high priority, but when you read the passages where he is mentioned carefully and progressively, a fascinating picture emerges of an ordinary man who gradually became confused and dark. We need to understand where a Judas went wrong.

Fourth, we need to draw conclusions and make applications. It may be helpful to think about the essence of the person’s life. What is the big picture of his or her life, and are there parallels with our lives today? Some characters yield few if any lessons, and we should not force the issue. Others are intended to be models for us. Hebrews 11, for instance, mentions Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, David, Samuel, and others, all as illustrations of this singular, powerful lesson: “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (vss. 39-40).

This is the power of the real lives of biblical characters and the dynamics of life in this world that still apply today.

Mel Lawrenz trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s minister at large. He has a Ph.D. in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel is the author of 18 books, the latest, How to Understand the Bible—A Simple Guide and Spiritual Influence: the Hidden Power Behind Leadership (Zondervan, 2012). See more of Mel’s writing at WordWay.