Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan

The point of the Bible is Jesus Christ. Therefore, it makes sense to have a plan for reading the Bible that is designed with Him uppermost in mind. Therefore, this Bible Reading Plan (BRP) I am presenting you is designed to be a Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan (CCBRP). That means it gives the most attention to those parts of the Bible that are the most explicit about Christ. Reading the Bible in conventional left-to-right fashion is more likely to get you bogged down in Leviticus than anything else. Remember: from a reader’s standpoint, the Bible is more like a library than a book. Therefore, it needs to be navigated like it’s a library, not like we would a book.

There’s a reason our Bible reading needs to be centered on Christ. Our goal in life is not to become experts on the Bible; rather, our goal is to use the Bible to know Jesus Christ and to know Him better over time. Therefore, this Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan (CCBRP) focuses more on the New Testament (NT) than on the Old Testament (OT); and, within the NT, it focuses more on the Gospels than on the Epistles. This is because the Gospels are where almost all of the direct words of Jesus are found (with some Bibles even printing them in red letters – a vivid reminder of the blood He shed for us). I am not suggesting that we can do without the Epistles, or even without the OT. Quite to the contrary, I’m totally opposed to eliminating a single word from any of the 66 books of the Bible. I’m only saying that in the Bible we find a logic and emphasis to its message, and our study of the Bible should reflect that logic and emphasis. Thus we should understand the Epistles in the light of the Gospels, and we should understand the OT in the light of the NT. In that way, we allow the Bible to speak most clearly and completely to us about Jesus Christ – which is, and who is, the Bible’s essential message (1 John 3:23).

Each of the the three readings focuses on just one chapter per day, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions is Psalm 119 which is spread across six days because the chapter contains 176 verses – by far, the most of any chapter in the Bible. (The Audio Bible Reading Companion supports this division with six audios for this one psalm.) The rest of the exceptions consist of combining some chapters in the OT reading in order to get as much content into 365 days as possible.

New Testament
(Plan One)

NT Gospels – This reading focuses on the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Over the course of a year, we’ll read through the four Gospels four times. The Gospels describe Jesus’ time on earth. Almost all the direct statements of Jesus that we have are found in the Gospels. This is the most important part of the Bible with which to be familiar because it’s when Jesus spoke most directly to humanity. This will take 356 days; the remaining nine days of the year are filled in by revisiting nine key chapters from the Gospels.

Matthew reads like an expanded version of Mark, but with a Jewish orientation. Mark’s Gospel is the shortest. Luke reads like an expanded edition of Mark, with a Gentile orientation. John comes last because he takes a different approach than the first three, is more reflective, and probably wrote his Gospel last. They are like four character witnesses testifying at a trial.

NT Epistles – This reading focuses on Acts through Revelation, which are the remaining 23 texts of the NT after the four Gospels. Technically speaking, Acts is not an epistle, and Revelation is a very unusual epistle; but since these exist as bookends to the more conventional epistles, it seemed reasonable to keep the label simply as “Epistles” – which, of course, means “letters.” Over the course of a year, we read through these 23 texts two times. Although there are few direct statements of Jesus (red letters) in these texts, the epistles are extremely helpful for understanding what Jesus says in the Gospels. Acts and the Epistles give context to Jesus’ direct teaching in the Gospels…and paraphrase it as well. This takes 342 days; the remaining 23 days of the year are filled in with revisiting six of the shorter letters from various NT authors.

Old Testament

The most difficult aspect of creating a Christ-centered Bible reading plan is how to handle the OT. To construct a Bible reading plan that centers on Jesus Christ requires that the plan focus more on the chapters of the Bible that are more explicit about Him. That means emphasizing the NT. But 78% of the Bible is OT! This creates a tension between learning the Bible and learning Jesus.

Even though the OT dwarfs the NT in size, that doesn’t mean we can just ignore the OT. For one thing, Jesus declared it to be the world of God. For another, it does teach about Christ – just in a less explicit way. In fact, so greatly does the OT speak of Christ that the apostles had no need of a NT! Rather, the NT came to be only because churches wanted to preserve for themselves and their posterity the apostles’ understanding of the OT. Therefore, the best way to rightly understand the OT is to read it through the lens of the NT. And, therefore, to stay centered on Christ, we first need to understand the New Testament and then begin – gradually – to read the Old Testament.

My Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plans – four in number – all have two NT chapters (one from the Gospels and the other from the rest of the NT) as their core. The first plan consists only of those two chapters. Each of the remaining three plans add a third chapter. Either comes from Psalms, from the historical narrative of the OT, or else from the entirety of the OT (taking three years to cover all 929 of them).

There is a progression in the reading difficulty of each of these plans. Plan One is the easiest because it’s NT and it’s only two chapters. Plans Two through Four are all three chapters each. Psalms (Plan Two) is the easiest section of the OT for NT readers to grasp. History (Plan Three) harder to read than Psalms but easier than dealing with every chapter of the OT (Plan Four) which, of course, includes the minutia of Moses’ law and extended genealogies. The progression in difficulty, however, is not the only consideration. What’s important is finding Jesus in your OT reading. This is a rewarding challenge in all three of the plans that include a chapter from the Old Testament. You should gravitate to the plan that seems to offer you the most promise of revealing Christ. In the long run, that’s not necessarily going to be the least demanding on the most demanding. What follows is a little more detail on each of these three plans.

Plan Two: Psalms – We read the Psalms through one day at a time, spreading the 176-verse Psalm 119 over six days. We do this twice, accounting for the first 310 days of the year. The remaining 55 days are given to reading a third time selected psalms.

Plan Three: OT-NT History – This chapter-a-day reading is comes from a condensation of the OT, with Luke and Acts providing the NT’s history. The OT is divided into books of history (e.g. Genesis and Exodus), wisdom (e.g. Psalms and Proverbs), and prophecy (e.g. Isaiah and Jeremiah). The condensation was achieved by preserving almost all the history, and then supplementing it with sizable and representative samples of the wisdom and prophecy books. In order to maximize the content, about 14 of the 365 days involve reading a couple of chapters (usually two relatively short and contiguous ones) instead of just one. For more explanation, see Condensing the Old Testament.

Plan Four: Entire Old Testament – There are 929 chapters in the OT. Reading one chapter a day therefore requires almost two-and-a-half years to complete it. To fill out the third year, I’ve selected key historical chapters to re-read – hopefully, reinforcing the historical time line.

The Bible is about Jesus Christ. Therefore, let it speak to you in that way. The treasure map is not the treasure. The Bible is the treasure map; Jesus Christ our Lord is the treasure.

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