Help! We’re being held captive, bound by a rusty 800-year-old device!

I’m talking about the chapter divisions of the Bible invented by Archbishop Stephen Langton in the early 1200s. While his system has benefited Bible students—helping us find and talk about specific parts of Scripture—it has also created separation, setting up fences that divide thought from thought. Some of these chapter divisions are sensible, others are awkward, and others limit our understanding of the biblical text.

This was bad enough when chapter headings on a printed page disrupted a reader’s flow. It’s even worse in digital formats where each chapter is a separate file and one has to toggle and scroll to reclaim any continuity.

Some publishers have addressed the problem by printing Bibles without chapter and verse divisions. Biblica has produced a chapter-less text called The Books of the Bible and is using that in a reading program called the Community Bible Experience. This allows people to read Scripture in longer stretches, as they might read a novel. They can take in a full story, or a complete argument, riding the express train rather than the local.

That’s a great idea, but of course there’s still value in a verse-by-verse study. I’m just saying that many chapter divisions keep us from connecting certain dots. We might not have to erase all those divisions, just teach through them.

Need a preaching series?

Here’s an idea. Preach or teach a series that focuses on chapter breaks. Show how the end of one chapter leads to the beginning of the next. Unpack that continuity in a few key places and train your people to look for similar connections in their own reading.

You might consider the following passages (but you might also start compiling a larger list from your own study).

Romans 4 and 5. All of Romans is sort of a chain-link fence, with its carefully constructed argument. Chapter 4 ends with a concise description of justification through Jesus, which forms the basis of Chapter 5’s discussion of what comes next.

Romans 11 and 12. Chapters 9-11 are a detour along the Romans Road, so it’s tempting to skip over that section. But it ends with a magnificent on-ramp to Chapter 12. Start in 11:33 for a benediction that is simultaneously about God’s glory and our own inability to fully comprehend his mercy. Romans 12 begins with a reference to that great mercy and quickly invites us to let God renew our minds. And the images of sacrifice and service (the word for “worship” in 12:1 is latreia, commonly used for the work of those who served in the Jerusalem temple) hark back to the discussion of Judaism in the previous section.

1 John 1-2. The first chapter of John’s first epistle ends with two-and-a-half couplets. The phrase “If we claim” in verses 6, 8, and 10 sets up a false approach to Christian faith. In each case the next verse shows a better way. But the last couplet is torn apart by the chapter break. Claiming we have not sinned (1:10) doesn’t work. The better way is provided by Jesus, our advocate, our atoning sacrifice (2:1-2).

Galatians 5-6. Perhaps you have felt uneasy with the idea in Galatians 6:1 that the “spiritual” members of the church would set a sinner right. And if you’re correcting the sinner, you already know it’s wrong, so why would you have to worry about being tempted by that sin? But the previous chapter might iron out these wrinkles. Galatians 5 describes in detail the lives of those who let the Spirit guide them and those who don’t. So the “spiritual” person of 6:1 is not some “holier than thou” person, but one who is trying to keep in step with God’s Spirit. The description of the Spirit-guided life, begun with the fruit of the Spirit (5:22-23) continues into chapter 6. This is how we help one another when the Spirit guides us. And the very last verse of Chapter 5 says, “We must not be proud or irritate one another or be jealous of one another” (GNT). These must be the temptations that 6:1 refers to—not that the helper would fall into the same sin, but that he or she would become proud or irritating.

The point is that we often start Bible studies or sermons at the beginnings of chapters and thus we miss an important through-line. Maybe we could intentionally ignore those chapter breaks sometimes, and find new meaning in the connected text.