For Jesus, Scripture wasn’t simply a collection of laws, stories, proverbs, and psalms. He read the Bible as a coherent narrative about who God is, who we are as human beings, and what God’s purposes are for the world. And he made the staggering claim that all of it, in some way, points to himself.

As Christ’s followers, we’re called to imitate him in the way we live (Mark 8:34; 1 Cor 11:1). We tend to think of this command in terms of how we act, speak, and think. But what about how we read the Bible?

If Jesus Christ is the fullest revelation of God, it makes sense that he’d be the person we look to for guidance on how to read the Bible. Not only should we have the same view of the Bible that Jesus had, but we should read it the way he read it.

So how did Jesus read the Bible? He read it as a means to fulfilling the two greatest commandments and as a narrative that points to him.

Fulfilling the Two Great Commandments

In Matthew 22, an expert in the law affiliated with the Pharisees asks Jesus what the greatest commandment in the law is. Jesus responds,

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (vv. 37–39)

Instead of giving just one commandment, Jesus gives two—both citations from the Old Testament. The first is Deuteronomy 6:5, which was part of the Shema, the central confession of Jewish piety in the first century. The second is Leviticus 19:18, which calls Israel to govern their interactions with one another with love. But notice what Jesus says next: “On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (v. 40).

Jesus broadens the question’s scope from the greatest commandment in the law to include the entirety of the Old Testament. The verb translated “depend” in the ESV has the sense of “hang.” Just as a door hangs on its hinges, allowing it to move back and forth and fulfill its purpose, so too these two commandments are the hinges on which the entire Old Testament moves to accomplish the purpose of enabling God’s people to love God with their whole lives and to love their neighbor as themselves.

Consider what Jesus is saying. Everything in the Bible is given to enable us to love God and our neighbor. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Leviticus, Lamentations, or Luke. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Joshua, Judges, Job, Jeremiah, or John. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Chronicles, Corinthians, or Colossians.

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