As you might know if you’ve read the footer of any of my emails … I am a Christian, who believes that Jesus of Nazareth was God come as a man, and that there is no salvation in any other name.
From time to time people ask me where they should start if they’re interested in learning about Christianity.
Rather than some trite presentation of the gospel in its Americanised form — “God loves you unconditionally, and if you believe in Jesus, you can live in heaven forever!” — I believe that Christianity starts from knowing who Jesus is, and what he said and did. After all, how can you truly believe in him if you don’t even know him?
Accordingly, my recommendation for people new to Christianity — and interested in learning about it — is the following books, in the following order.
(Note, NONE of these links are affiliate links. Yes, as a copywriter I will sell my products for profit with all my heart; but when it comes to the gospel, freely I have received and freely I give 😉)
1. The Action Bible
Let me stop you right there:
Yes, it’s a comic book.
Yes, it’s aimed at kids.
And yes … I am dead serious that this is the first book I would read if I were new to Christianity and wanted to know what it was all about.
Now, there are many purists who would argue that the first thing a person new to Christianity ought to read is the Bible itself. I get where they’re coming from. But also, sometimes it’s hard for us as Christians to understand just how FOREIGN all this Christianity stuff can be to someone who wasn’t raised in it. You believe there’s an invisible guy in the sky? Who made the world a few thousand years ago? And he came as a man called Jesus? And you believe this guy was God? And I’m supposed to believe in him too?!? Now hand someone like this a Bible — sixty-six books in only approximately chronological order, written in cultures FAR removed from our own, requiring massive context and explanation to understand — and it’s often just too overwhelming.
The Action Bible solves this problem.
It’s basically a comic book adaptation of a few hundred stories from the Bible, simplified (and admittedly, slightly sanitised of the sex/gore/violence) for younger readers, and put together in chronological order from start to end. Accordingly, it’s extremely easy to read and understand … everything makes sense since (unlike the Bible) it’s all in order … and to boot … who doesn’t like reading comics?!?
I first came across this book as an adult — and immediately wished my child self could have had something like this. I instantly bought more than a dozen copies which I proceeded to hand out to friends, family members, and my own kids. Everyone who’s read it — including people who have been Christians for many years — has admitted it’s been hugely helpful in helping them make sense of the Bible and what it’s all about.
Accordingly, I think it’s an excellent starting-off point for someone brand new to Christianity.
Still, it is ultimately just a comic book.
Which is why, if you’ve read this one and it’s piqued your interest, I would next recommend…
2. God With Us: The Biography of Jesus
Long story short, the story of Jesus is told in the Bible in four “gospels” — by followers of Jesus named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John respectively — which each tell overlapping, but different, accounts of Jesus’ teachings and deeds.
In times past I used to recommend people new to the Bible to start with one of these, either Mark or Luke. But God With Us does something (in my view) even better — it synthesises all four gospels together into a single, comprehensive narrative, and puts everything into chronological order.
Of course, there are some trade-offs with this approach. It’s a little odd sometimes to have the speaker changing, for example. There are good reasons God chose to have his story told by four authors and not one. But for what it is — a simple, unified narrative of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, in order, with nothing missing — it’s hard to go past this one.
Accordingly, it’s the first book I recommend once someone wants to get a proper introduction to (a portion of) the actual text of the Bible.
Available on Amazon here (that’s NOT an affiliate link), or you can Google it (God With Us by James Barlow) and find it at your preferred bookstore.
If you read that, and want to go even deeper…
3. Immerse: Messiah. The Reading Bible
I am a big fan of the Immerse series, which basically takes the New Living Translation of the Bible and splits it up into six paperbacks, formatted just like novels, and arranges the books in an easier-to-follow order than the Bible itself.
This one — Messiah — is the New Testament portion of the Bible. Basically, that’s the second ‘half’ of the Bible, which is about the life and teachings of Jesus, and of the apostles he chose to spread his message after his death and resurrection.
Soooo … how is that different from God With Us, the item above?
Well, God With Us takes FOUR books of the New Testament — the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — and mashes them together into one unified narrative.
But the New Testament contains a total of 23 books & letters other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And Messiah contains all of these books too — and it doesn’t edit anything. It simply puts them in a slightly different order to the regular Bible, for ease of reading.
If this confuses you, don’t worry. This book actually has a little intro that explains what the Bible is, how it works, and how they got THIS book out of it, all in more detail and clarity than I can manage here. The point is, this is basically the REAL Bible (well, the “Jesus” part of the Bible), just put in an order that makes a little more sense to read through, as you’ll see if you read it.
And if you read this and you want to go even DEEPER, I recommend…
4. NLT Chronological Life Application Study Bible
This is probably my single favourite Bible study tool ever.
But what is it?
Well, for all intents and purposes, it is technically the Bible … with a twist.
The thing is, like I said above, the regular Bible can be super confusing for someone new to Christianity. It’s made up of 66 diverse books of different genres, by different authors, written thousands of years apart in some cases … they don’t have any introductions or background context … and they’re not even in chronological order. It’s a recipe for total confusion if you’ve never read it before.
Enter the Chronological Life Application Study Bible — or “CLASB”, as my 7-year-old son likes to call it (I bought him one and it’s his favourite book right now).
The CLASB takes the regular Bible … and rearranges the entire thing into chronological order, so you can read it from start to finish, and you will have ALL the context you need. What’s more, it adds copious notes, maps, commentaries, introductions, and summaries to everything, so that — unlike a regular Bible — you won’t get stuck asking “what’s going on here?” or “where are we?” or “who’s that guy again?”.
You might point out that that’s what I said the FIRST book in this list — the Action Bible — did too. Well, yes. But I also remind you that that was a comic book, and ultimately, an interpretation of the Bible’s stories. The CLASB, on the other hand, is the real deal — the full Bible, just in a slightly different order.
Again, I wish I had had this a decade ago. It would have helped me so much. But at least now I have been buying these for family members and watching them profit immensely from it.
And in fact, if comics aren’t really your thing, and you’re really keen on understanding Christianity — you could just jump straight into this one and skip the other three. After all, it technically contains the previous two, since they are just subsets of the Bible. But for many people, it might be a little overwhelming to go straight to a full-sized Bible — and if you read in chronological order, it could be a long time before you encounter Jesus, who is really the main star of the show. So for that reason, I’d probably recommend getting into God With Us and Messiah first, before this one.
Either way, I’ll be honest:
If you get to this one — and get through this one — you will no longer be ‘new to Christianity’, and in fact, you will have read more of the Bible than (sadly) most Christians seem to have.
But in case you want a couple more recommendations:
5. The Kingstone Bible Trilogy (Comics)
This is like The Action Bible above, but on steroids:
It is basically a comic book adaptation of the WHOLE Bible (unlike The Action Bible, which summarises and skips a lot by necessity, since the Bible is long!) — and unlike The Action Bible, it does NOT sanitise out all of the sex/gore/violence for younger readers. (No, it’s not explicit, but TAB has a habit of sanitising things a little TOO much for my liking.)
The main reason I didn’t recommend this one first is that some people might admittedly baulk at the idea of paying this much for some Bible comics when they just want to get an idea of what it’s all about. And if that’s the case, The Action Bible is a cheaper, simpler, one-volume solution. (Also, the storytelling in this one can be a little less clear if you don’t know what’s going on, and that’s another gripe that stops me from making this my first recommendation.)
But for Christians who want to go deeper, I think this is a GREAT resource.
And of course, I still haven’t recommended a single, actual BIBLE yet (well, there was the CLASB, but even that one is all cut up and rearranged and it’s no replacement for a PROPER Bible).
In which case, here is my recommendation for your first:
6. The NLT Life Application Study Bible
I’ve bought this Bible (well, the genuine leather version) for several of my brothers, as well as my mother, and they all love it.
Ultimately, tools like comic Bibles and chronological Bibles are great for helping you understand the ‘big picture’ of the Bible … but you should eventually be reading it as it was meant to be read, book-by-book, without any editing or summarising to make it easier for you.
(Note, the Immerse series — of which Messiah above was a part — is another great option. But unlike the NLT Life Application Study Bible, it goes the opposite direction and gives you NO notes or study helps, instead encouraging you to focus JUST on the text. Both approaches are valuable, but as a beginner you may want the extra guidance a study Bible gives.)
As for why I recommend the NLT (New Living Translation) over any other translation … that’s a long and convoluted discussion. Personally I read and love the old-school King James Version best. (And since I always get “scholars” emailing me with their opinions on this topic and conspiracy theories about “mistranslations” from the “originals”, I also read those same originals in Koine Greek and Hebrew, and I’m quite comfortable with my choices, thank you.) But my considered view is that for a newbie, the NLT is the most accessible translation to start with. Later on I would recommend the ESV (English Standard Version) since it’s more literal and closer to the actual text. (I’m too pragmatic to even encourage people to try for the KJV, as much as I would love the church to move back to it as a whole.)
But in the beginning, don’t worry about any of this. The recommendations I’ve given you above come from a LOT of prayerful consideration, thought, searching, studying, and time spent actually reading all these books.
These are the very same books, in the very same order, I give to my friends and loved ones when they express an interest in Christianity; and I now commend them to you.
May God bless you in your studies with a full knowledge of who he is.
Daniel Throssell
2nd August 2024