ANNOUNCER: 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. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society, and our website is faithalone.org. Please also take an excursion over to our YouTube channel, YouTube, Grace Evangelical Society, lots of recent and past videos there for you, subscribe, enjoy them, and like them, and then you can learn a lot more about us at our website, faithalone.org. Get registered for our national annual conference coming up, May 18th through the 21st. Our theme this year is “Believe in Christ for Life” and discipleship. Get all the information you need at faithalone.org.
And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.
KEN: 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. There’s a lot of study Bibles out there, and Jody asks a very simple question. When it comes to a free grace perspective, what study Bible would we recommend? As we just talked about that, just some pop up, we have the Ryrie Study Bible.
BOB: Okay, I was at Dallas Seminary when the Ryrie Study Bible New Testament came out. I got a free Ryrie Study Bible New Testament because they gave it to all the DTS students. I believe that was 1978 that it came out and I was started in 78. And then the entire study Bible, I’m not sure of the year it came out, but somewhere around 81 or 80 or something.
Anyway, yeah, Dr. Ryrie’s 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. He says, Faith is a two-coupon ticket, and it’s not good if detached. 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.
KEN: Yeah, I had the same thought, and I thought, does he not realize how inconsistent?
BOB: He was the one that came and questioned me for my 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. Ryrie a long time, and I really liked Dr. Ryrie, 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 Ryrie Study Bible with caveats.
KEN: 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 say, okay, yeah, there’s going to be some good things, and there are a lot of good things maybe, but every now and then you’re going to go, ooh, what’s going on here? Another one would be the Nelson Study Bible, right?
BOB: Okay, Earl Radmacher 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 he couldn’t catch, because you’d be very hard to analyze every note carefully.
KEN: 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, you know, and could you override, so I don’t know how much authority he had.
BOB: Right, I don’t either. I don’t know what he had.
KEN: 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.
BOB: 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 Scofield Reference Bible, you know, C.I. Scofield. It was very famous for basically establishing dispensationalism as a viable option.
KEN: And my understanding is that book was the, oh, 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.
BOB: Well, I think there’s some definite benefits with the Scofield Reference Bible, but again, and I haven’t looked at a 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.
KEN: And it’s going to have more material, right, than a study Bible.
BOB: It’ll have, yeah, a lot like outlines and introductions to books and things.
KEN: And the history behind it. Now, on the Scofield one, one of the problems is how old it is.
BOB: Right. I think it was about 1919, 1920.
KEN: Yeah, it’s back then there. I thought it was even before that, like 1909 or something like that. But regardless, it’s over a hundred years old. And so correct me if I’m wrong, a couple 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.
BOB: No, that’s correct.
KEN: You know, and so I think you’ll run into that as well.
BOB: That’s even true a little bit with Dr. Ryrie.
KEN: 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, a hundred 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 were.
BOB: Yeah, you know, something like that.
ANNOUNCER: It’s coming, it’ll be here before you know it. What am I talking about? The Grace Evangelical Society’s National Conference 2026, May 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass, an absolutely beautiful campground in North Texas right on the lake with lots of recreation, great food, a great place to stay, wonderful fellowship, and wonderful Free Grace Bible teaching. Information and online registration now at faithalone.org/events. First timers waive registration fees. Faithalone.org/events.
BOB: 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 Evan’s 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.
KEN: Yeah, wonder if that comes through in the notes.
BOB: 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, it’s 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 3:16 is the saving message and that we need to share that with people. And that’s what Dr. Evans believes. In fact, Zane Hodges was a member of his church the last few years of his life and he and Zane were very close.
KEN: So let me ask you on that, what about his view of the kingdom? Because he has a lot of like kingdom living and kingdom principles.
BOB: The kingdom agenda and all that. Yeah, he gets a little bit in my opinion caught up in the already-not yet, that 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 to me, of course, it’s true we should have a kingdom mindset. You know, we should be praying “Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but “Thy kingdom come” means it’s not here, right? So we’re living in light of the coming kingdom, but we’re not in the coming kingdom.
KEN: 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.
BOB: That’s an absolutely important caution. We have a Grace 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 the 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 a study Bible.
KEN: 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 a chapter 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 study Bible.
BOB: 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 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 point, like head coverings for women and 1 Corinthians 11. Is that for today or not for today? What is head coverings? Is long hair for a woman a head covering? 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.
KEN: And use them with caution, but certainly use them. Thanks for the question, Jody. We hope this helps. And in the meantime, keep grace in focus.
ANNOUNCER: We invite you to check out our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five minute YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. You will love the content and learn a lot. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address: it’s radio@faithalone.org, that’s radio@faithalone.org. Please make sure your question is as succinct and clear as possible, that would be a great big help.
On our next episode: how many verses in John’s Gospel are evangelistic? Please join us for that. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.
What Study Bible Would You Recommend?
Welcome to the Grace in Focus podcast. Today, Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates are answering a question about study Bibles. Are there any good ones? In relation to free grace theology, what makes for a good study Bible? Are there any recommended ones? Please listen today and each weekday, to the Grace in Focus podcast!
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: 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. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society, and our website is faithalone.org. Please also take an excursion over to our YouTube channel, YouTube, Grace Evangelical Society, lots of recent and past videos there for you, subscribe, enjoy them, and like them, and then you can learn a lot more about us at our website, faithalone.org. Get registered for our national annual conference coming up, May 18th through the 21st. Our theme this year is “Believe in Christ for Life” and discipleship. Get all the information you need at faithalone.org.
And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and Ken Yates.
KEN: 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. There’s a lot of study Bibles out there, and Jody asks a very simple question. When it comes to a free grace perspective, what study Bible would we recommend? As we just talked about that, just some pop up, we have the Ryrie Study Bible.
BOB: Okay, I was at Dallas Seminary when the Ryrie Study Bible New Testament came out. I got a free Ryrie Study Bible New Testament because they gave it to all the DTS students. I believe that was 1978 that it came out and I was started in 78. And then the entire study Bible, I’m not sure of the year it came out, but somewhere around 81 or 80 or something.
Anyway, yeah, Dr. Ryrie’s 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. He says, Faith is a two-coupon ticket, and it’s not good if detached. 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.
KEN: Yeah, I had the same thought, and I thought, does he not realize how inconsistent?
BOB: He was the one that came and questioned me for my 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. Ryrie a long time, and I really liked Dr. Ryrie, 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 Ryrie Study Bible with caveats.
KEN: 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 say, okay, yeah, there’s going to be some good things, and there are a lot of good things maybe, but every now and then you’re going to go, ooh, what’s going on here? Another one would be the Nelson Study Bible, right?
BOB: Okay, Earl Radmacher 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 he couldn’t catch, because you’d be very hard to analyze every note carefully.
KEN: 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, you know, and could you override, so I don’t know how much authority he had.
BOB: Right, I don’t either. I don’t know what he had.
KEN: 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.
BOB: 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 Scofield Reference Bible, you know, C.I. Scofield. It was very famous for basically establishing dispensationalism as a viable option.
KEN: And my understanding is that book was the, oh, 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.
BOB: Well, I think there’s some definite benefits with the Scofield Reference Bible, but again, and I haven’t looked at a 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.
KEN: And it’s going to have more material, right, than a study Bible.
BOB: It’ll have, yeah, a lot like outlines and introductions to books and things.
KEN: And the history behind it. Now, on the Scofield one, one of the problems is how old it is.
BOB: Right. I think it was about 1919, 1920.
KEN: Yeah, it’s back then there. I thought it was even before that, like 1909 or something like that. But regardless, it’s over a hundred years old. And so correct me if I’m wrong, a couple 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.
BOB: No, that’s correct.
KEN: You know, and so I think you’ll run into that as well.
BOB: That’s even true a little bit with Dr. Ryrie.
KEN: 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, a hundred 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 were.
BOB: Yeah, you know, something like that.
ANNOUNCER: It’s coming, it’ll be here before you know it. What am I talking about? The Grace Evangelical Society’s National Conference 2026, May 18th through the 21st at Camp Copass, an absolutely beautiful campground in North Texas right on the lake with lots of recreation, great food, a great place to stay, wonderful fellowship, and wonderful Free Grace Bible teaching. Information and online registration now at faithalone.org/events. First timers waive registration fees. Faithalone.org/events.
BOB: 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 Evan’s 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.
KEN: Yeah, wonder if that comes through in the notes.
BOB: 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, it’s 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 3:16 is the saving message and that we need to share that with people. And that’s what Dr. Evans believes. In fact, Zane Hodges was a member of his church the last few years of his life and he and Zane were very close.
KEN: So let me ask you on that, what about his view of the kingdom? Because he has a lot of like kingdom living and kingdom principles.
BOB: The kingdom agenda and all that. Yeah, he gets a little bit in my opinion caught up in the already-not yet, that 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 to me, of course, it’s true we should have a kingdom mindset. You know, we should be praying “Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but “Thy kingdom come” means it’s not here, right? So we’re living in light of the coming kingdom, but we’re not in the coming kingdom.
KEN: 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.
BOB: That’s an absolutely important caution. We have a Grace 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 the 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 a study Bible.
KEN: 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 a chapter 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 study Bible.
BOB: 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 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 point, like head coverings for women and 1 Corinthians 11. Is that for today or not for today? What is head coverings? Is long hair for a woman a head covering? 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.
KEN: And use them with caution, but certainly use them. Thanks for the question, Jody. We hope this helps. And in the meantime, keep grace in focus.
ANNOUNCER: We invite you to check out our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five minute YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. You will love the content and learn a lot. Maybe you’ve got a question or comment or feedback. If so, please send us a message. Here’s our email address: it’s radio@faithalone.org, that’s radio@faithalone.org. Please make sure your question is as succinct and clear as possible, that would be a great big help.
On our next episode: how many verses in John’s Gospel are evangelistic? Please join us for that. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.
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