Lesson 2: The Law of Proximity
This series was adapted from several resources (See works cited at the bottom), and Gemini AI was used to help organize and populate points from those resources, but we heavily edited and adapted them for our context.
A reminder of why we are doing all of this.
Our heart’s desire is for every member to know God deeply through His Word and be able to teach others how to understand and apply God’s Word. Keep this in mind: you are not just learning to learn—you are learning to teach.
Introduction: "We Talkin' About Practice"
If you follow sports, you know the clip. NBA legend Allen Iverson sits at a press conference, leaning into the mic, repeating the word "Practice" twenty-two times.
"We talkin' about practice. Not a game! Practice!"
For twenty years, this clip has been played on ESPN and comedy shows to paint Iverson as a lazy, arrogant diva who didn't care about working hard. It is one of the most famous soundbites in history.
But that clip is a lie.
The lie isn't in what he said; the lie is in what we left out. If you obey the Law of Proximity—if you listen to the minutes immediately surrounding that rant—you don't hear a lazy athlete; you hear a man in deep grief.
Just days before that press conference, the trial had begun for the man who murdered Iverson’s best friend. He was traumatized. In the full unedited footage, immediately after the "practice" comments, Iverson says:
"I'm upset for one reason... I lost my best friend. I lost him, and I lost this year... My best friend is dead. Dead. And we lost. And we sitting here, I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about practice."
The "clip" was about laziness.
The "context" was about grief.
By ignoring the context, we turned a man's trauma into a punchline.
Yet, many of us treat the Bible not like a cohesive map of truth, but like a kidnapper’s ransom note. You know the look—letters cut out of different magazines, pasted together to form a sentence that the original authors never wrote.
D.A. Carson, in his book Exegetical Fallacies, gives this practice a clinical name: Contextomy. It is the act of cutting a text out of its surrounding context to make it say what we want.¹ It is a violation of the fundamental rule of communication: The Law of Proximity.
The Law of Proximity states that the words immediately surrounding your verse are the most important witnesses to its meaning. While you can certainly grasp the basic idea of a verse on its own, your understanding is far richer—and safer—when you view it through the lens of the paragraph. The paragraph then is even clearer within the context of the entire book, and the book is often illuminated by the author's entire body of work (Like 1 John is informed by the Gospel of John).
If Lesson 1 was about respecting the Author, Lesson 2 is about respecting the Flow of his writing. We must stop reading the Bible as a collection of loose fortune cookies and start reading it as a constructed narrative.
Part 1: The Circle of Truth
The Concentric Circles of Context
How do we apply this principle to understand what a word means? Duvall and Hays in Grasping God’s Word provide a visual model that is essential for every Bible student:²
Imagine a target.
The Bullseye (The passage): This is the specific word or passage you are studying (e.g., "Flesh," "Faith," "Judge").
Ring 1 (The Immediate Sentence): How is the word functioning in this specific thought?
Ring 2 (The Paragraph): What is the main idea of the cluster of sentences surrounding it?
Ring 3 (The Book/Letter): What is the overall theme of the book and how would that word work within the larger book’s theme?
Ring 4 (The Author’s Larger body of work): How does this author use this word elsewhere? (e.g., How does John use "Light" in his Gospel vs. 1 John?)
Ring 5 ( The Whole Bible): How does this fit into the Grand Narrative?
The Priority of the Paragraph
In How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, Fee and Stuart argue that the greatest enemy of the Law of Proximity is often the Verse Number.³ Verse numbers were not in the original text; they were added in the 16th century. While helpful for finding our place, they chop the Bible into tiny fragments, tricking our brains into thinking each numbered sentence stands alone. The result is that it is easy to take verses out of context.
To counter this, Christian apologist Greg Koukl offers a piece of advice that sounds almost heretical at first glance: "Never read a Bible verse."
He doesn't mean we should ignore the Bible. He means that reading a single verse in isolation is the fastest way to misunderstand it. Over and over, on his radio program, he is asked hard questions about the Bible, and many times he doesn't know off the top of his head. His practice has been to open his Bible and read the passage before the one in question, and often the problem passage becomes clear just by reading the paragraph.
So, think paragraphs, not a verse. We must strive to never read a verse without scanning the paragraph it lives in. Why? Because the paragraph carries the flow of thought. For example,
If a verse starts with "Therefore," the meaning is anchored in the previous paragraph.
If a verse starts with "But," the meaning is a contrast to the previous paragraph.
If you ignore the paragraph, you are like a person who hears the word "Positive" and immediately starts celebrating. "Positive" can be great if its a pregnancy test for a couple who have longed for kids. But if you are at a cancer clinic, if the doctor says, "The test came back positive," that is devastating news. The surrounding situation determines whether the word means "great news" or "diagnosis of a disease."
Part 2: Case Study A — The "Prayer Meeting" Myth
Matthew 18:20
Let’s test the Law of Proximity on one of the most frequently quoted verses in the evangelical church. This is one I used to use one way until I started learning the law of proximity.
The Verse:
"For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matthew 18:20)
The Common Interpretation (Contextomy):
This verse is almost exclusively used to validate small prayer meetings. We say, "Lord, we are a small group tonight, just two or three of us, but we claim the promise of Matthew 18:20 that You are here."
The Implication: There is a special tier of God's presence that activates only when a quorum of believers (2-3) shows up.
The Problem: Is Jesus not with you when you pray alone? Did He not say, "I am with you always" (Matt 28:20) and "Go into your room and shut the door" (Matt 6:6)? If Matthew 18:20 is about prayer attendance, it contradicts the rest of the New Testament. But maybe Jesus means something different? We need to prioritize the immediate context.
The Law of Proximity:
Let’s look at the Immediate Paragraph (Ring 2).
Open your Bible to Matthew 18. The entire paragraph (v. 15–20) is instructions on Church Discipline and conflict resolution.
Go to him alone (v. 15).
If he refuses, take "one or two others" along (v. 16). Why? To establish evidence by witnesses (Deut 19:15).
If he refuses, tell it to the church (v. 17).
Then, Jesus gives the authority to bind and loose (v. 18).
The Re-Interpretation:
In verse 20, the "two or three" are not prayer partners. They are the witnesses from verse 16.
Jesus is dealing with a heavy judicial question: Does the church have the right to remove an unrepentant member?
Jesus answers: "Yes. When you follow this process, and the witnesses (two or three) gather to make this heartbreaking decision in My name, I am there. I ratify your decision. I stand behind your verdict."
The Result:
Contextomy: A sentimental verse about small prayer groups or larger groups (More Christians implies more of God’s presence).
Context: A weighty verse about the judicial authority of the church to protect its purity.
The Danger: When we use this for prayer meetings, we miss the actual instruction on how to handle sin in the church. We ignore the difficult work of discipline because we are too busy claiming a promise for our prayer night.⁴
Part 3: Case Study B — The "Evangelism" Myth
Revelation 3:20
Let’s look at another example to see the next circle: The Book/Audience Context (Ring 3).
The Verse:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20)
The Common Interpretation (Contextomy):
This is the classic "altar call" verse. We use it to preach to non-believers. We paint a picture of Jesus standing outside the heart of a sinner, knocking, asking to be let in for salvation.
The Law of Proximity:
Let’s look at Ring 3 (The Book).
Who is the book of Revelation written to? "To the seven churches" (Rev 1:4).
Who is this specific section written to? "To the angel of the church in Laodicea" (Rev 3:14).
The Immediate Paragraph (Ring 2):
Look at verse 15–16. These people are not atheists or pagans. They are "lukewarm" Christians. They are inside the church, thinking they are rich and need nothing (v. 17).
In verse 19, Jesus says, "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline." He is speaking to His own people!
The Re-Interpretation:
This is not a picture of Jesus asking a pagan to get saved. This is a picture of Jesus standing outside His own church.
The Laodiceans were so self-sufficient, so busy with their programs and wealth, that they had pushed Christ out of the fellowship. He is knocking on the door of the church, asking the believers to repent of their apathy and let Him back into the center of their fellowship (symbolized by "eating," which implies deep communion, not just initial salvation).
The Result:
Contextomy: A nice picture for evangelism, but it misses the text's point.
Context: A terrifying warning to the church. It is possible to have a church service with Jesus standing outside the building.
The Danger: By applying this only to lost people, we exempt ourselves. We sit in the pew thinking, "I hope my neighbor opens the door," while Jesus is knocking on our door, asking us to repent of our apathy.⁵
Part 4: Conclusion — The Safety Rope
Context is KING
Why does God make us work this hard? Why didn't He just write a list of bullet points?
Because truth is relational, and relationships happen in context.
The Law of Proximity is not a burden; it is a safety rope. When you read a verse that confuses you, the Context clarifies it.
D.A. Carson warns that "a text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext."⁷ That is a fancy way of saying: If you ignore the context, you can make the Bible say anything. But if you respect the Law of Proximity, you are no longer inventing truth; you are discovering it. You are walking through the rings of the circle, past the author, past the paragraph, straight into the mind of God.
References:
Carson, D. A. Exegetical Fallacies. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1996, p. 138 (Discussion on Contextomy).
Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020, p. 162.
Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas K. Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 4th ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014, p. 27.
Duvall and Hays, Grasping God’s Word, p. 165 (Discussion on Matt 18).
Platt, David. How to Read the Bible: A Simple Guide to Deeper Intimacy with God. Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2019, p. 55 (Discussion on Context/Audience).
Doriani, Daniel M. Getting the Message: A Plan for Interpreting and Applying the Bible. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 1996, p. 45.
Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, p. 138.