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You bought the notebook. Maybe a nice pen, too. You sat down with a Bible, typed “how to study the Bible for beginners” into your phone, and got back a wall of methods with acronyms, color-coded highlighter systems, and charts of Hebrew words. Twenty minutes later you had read about studying the Bible for longer than you had actually read the Bible.
Here is a simpler door, and it is one most study guides walk right past: do not start by studying a book. Start by following a person. Specifically, follow the one person in the Gospels who was as new at this as you are, and who got it wrong in public more than once. His name was Simon, and Jesus called him Peter.
Why a Person Is Easier to Study Than a Book
When you open a Bible cold, you face a hard question on every page: what am I supposed to be looking for? A person answers that question for you. You are looking for them. Where did they show up? What did they say? What did Jesus do next?
That is still real study. You are comparing passages, noticing change over time, and asking why. You are just doing it with a story you can follow instead of a system you have to memorize. And a story is how most of the Gospels are written in the first place.
Peter makes an unusually good guide for a beginner for three plain reasons. He shows up in all four Gospels, so you can trace him through the whole life of Jesus. He tends to speak first and think second, so his mistakes are right there on the page. And he does not stay a beginner. By the book of Acts he is a different man, which means you get to watch the “after” happen.
If you have not picked where to begin reading yet, this guide to the one Gospel written for a beginner pairs well with what follows.
The Peter Page: The Only Method You Need This Week
Open your notebook to a clean page and write one word at the top: Peter. That is your study tool.
Each time you read a passage where Peter appears, write two short lines:
- What Peter said or did. In your own words, one sentence.
- What Jesus did next. One sentence again.
That is it. No highlighter code. No cross-reference chart. Just two lines per scene. After a week, you will have a page that reads like a short biography of a man learning Jesus, and without trying, you will have learned a great deal about Jesus Himself, because the second line is always about Him.
Here are seven stops to start with, in order:
- Luke 5:1-11: the empty nets and the first call
- Matthew 14:22-33: walking on the water, then sinking
- Matthew 16:13-23: the right answer, then the wrong one, in the same conversation
- Luke 22:31-62: the promise, the courtyard, the rooster
- Mark 16:1-8: the empty tomb, and one small detail
- John 21:1-19: breakfast on the beach
- Acts 4:1-13: Peter and John standing before the leaders
What You Will Notice on Your Page
The first stop sets the pattern. Peter has fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus tells him to go back out. Peter answers, “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5). That word nevertheless is a whole beginner’s faith in one word. He is tired, he knows fishing better than this teacher does, and he goes anyway.
Then the nets fill, and his reaction is not celebration. He falls at Jesus’ knees and says, “Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Write down what Jesus did next. Jesus does not leave. He tells Peter not to be afraid and gives him a new kind of work.
At the second stop, Peter steps out onto the water, sees the wind, and starts to sink. He cries, “Lord, save me.” The very next line says, “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him” (Matthew 14:30-31). Put the word immediately on your page. It is going to keep showing up in different forms.
By the fourth stop, your two-line page starts to feel heavy. Peter promises loyalty, then denies knowing Jesus three times in one night. If you were writing this story to make Peter look good, you would cut this part. The Gospels keep it in.
The Detail Most Readers Skip
This is the stop that turns the Peter Page from an exercise into something that can change how you feel about your own mistakes.
At the empty tomb in Mark, a messenger tells the women: “But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you” (Mark 16:7).
And Peter. Peter was one of the disciples. He did not need to be named separately. He was named anyway, days after the courtyard, at a moment when he had every reason to wonder whether he was still welcome.
There is one more layer. An early church leader named Papias, quoted by the historian Eusebius, said that Mark had served as Peter’s interpreter and wrote down what Peter remembered. Scholars still debate how much weight to give that tradition. But if it holds even partly, then the Gospel that carries those two small words, and Peter, may be the one shaped by Peter’s own memory. It is the kind of detail a man would never forget hearing.
That is the gold of studying a person instead of a book. A three-word phrase you would have read straight past becomes the most important line on your page.
What Changes When You Study This Way
By the sixth stop, Jesus is cooking breakfast on a beach and asking Peter the same question three times. Peter’s answer is honest and small: “Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee” (John 21:17). No big speech this time. Just the truth.
And at the last stop, in Acts, the leaders watching Peter and John are puzzled. The verse says they “perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).
Read that slowly, because it is the answer to the question you searched. The people in the room could tell these two men had no formal training. What set them apart was not a study method. It was time spent with Jesus.
That is what happens to you, too, with a page like this. The Bible stops feeling like a test you might fail. You start opening it the way you would open a letter from someone you are getting to know. Mornings feel less like homework. And the fear of doing it wrong fades, because you have just watched the most famous disciple do it wrong over and over, and seen what Jesus did next every single time. For a deeper look at why reading alone often does not stick, see why reading isn’t the same as studying.
From One Page to a Daily Rhythm
The Peter Page will carry you for a week or two. After that, the natural next step is to widen the lens from one follower of Jesus to Jesus Himself, walking through His life one day at a time instead of jumping around.
That is exactly what 30 Days Walking with Jesus was built for. It is a beginner-friendly reading plan through the Gospels that takes under 10 minutes a day. Each day comes with a short devotional video (under 60 seconds), a full-chapter audio reading if you would rather listen, and a PDF study guide with journal prompts, so you are never staring at a blank notebook wondering what to write. There are also 5 quick-reference scripture guides for the days you want to look something up.
And it is free. No payment, no card, no upsell, and it is yours forever on any device. The words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall. You can start Day 1 today, and still keep your Peter Page going right alongside it. If the pages themselves still feel confusing, this walk-through of the numbers and headings will help.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: How do I study the Bible as a complete beginner?
A: A simple way to start studying the Bible as a beginner is to follow one person through the Gospels instead of trying to master a whole book or method. Peter works well because he appears in all four Gospels and his mistakes are recorded openly. Each time he appears, write one line about what he said or did and one line about what Jesus did next. Over a week or two, that page teaches you a lot about Jesus.
Q: What is the easiest Bible study method for beginners?
A: One of the easiest Bible study methods for beginners is a character study: pick one person, find the passages where they appear, and take short notes on each scene. It needs only a Bible and a notebook, it follows the story shape the Gospels are already written in, and it builds real study habits like comparing passages and noticing change over time.
Q: Where should a beginner start when studying the Bible?
A: Most beginners do best starting in the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), because they tell the life of Jesus as a story. A good first passage is Luke 5:1-11, where Peter meets Jesus after a night of catching nothing. From there, you can follow Peter through the other Gospels and into the book of Acts.
Q: How long should a beginner spend studying the Bible each day?
A: There is no required amount of time, and short, steady sessions usually last longer than long, occasional ones. Reading one scene and writing two short lines about it can take ten minutes or less. The free 30 Days Walking with Jesus plan is designed to take under 10 minutes a day as it walks through the life of Jesus.
Q: Do I need a study Bible or special tools to study the Bible as a beginner?
A: No. Any readable Bible and a notebook are enough to begin. Study Bibles, commentaries and apps can help later, but a beginner learns a great deal simply by reading one passage carefully, writing down what happened, and noticing what Jesus did in response.
