How to Be Right with God, Yourself, and Others — a study guide to Wiersbe’s devotional commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, Be Right

Even through the wary months of COVID, my church conducted in-home small-group Bibles studies once per month, working slowly over the course of a year-and-a-half through the difficult book of Romans, using Wiersbe’s study book as their guide. My family joined the Home Bible Studies about halfway through, so although we missed a large chunk of the study, we got a small dose of Pauline theology, and an even larger dose of Warren Wiersbe.

It’s hard to tell how all the other groups felt about this book, but I can say from the sentiments of our own group that this book felt more like a study of Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on Romans than it did a study of Romans itself. While many of the questions direct participants to read through and underline portions of the Romans text, the vast majority of discussion questions were less about the Bible and more about Wiersbe’s interpretation of the Bible and how this ought to affect our lives.

I trust I don’t need to explain how off-putting this is, especially in the context of a Bible study!

Does the book contain some probing, thought-proving queries? Of course. David C. Cook wouldn’t have published the thing if it had been overtly human-centered. Still, I found the imbalance of Wiersbe over the Word disheartening, and I don’t think I’ll be looking for such study helps again.

I have enjoyed Warren Wiersbe for years, and his devotional commentaries are already thought-proving and spiritually intrusive. I don’t think a study-guide companion-book would ever be necessary for any of his publications. Leave them be, I say!

We were happy to have finally finished this study a few weeks ago, and while I wish I could say that our church people have increased in their understanding of Romans after all this, I simply can’t. This book just wasn’t made to educate, only to prod our opinions and to challenge our thinking. That’s a noble goal, certainly, but countless other means exist for accomplishing it. At least that’s how I feel about it.

©2021 E.T.

Read More from Warren Wiersbe:

• Be God’s Guest: The Feasts of Leviticus 23 by Warren Wiersbe (1982)
• Preaching and Teaching with Imagination by Warren Wiersbe (1994)
• The Wiersbe Bible Study Series: Romans by Warren Wiersbe (2008)
• Be Free (Galatians) by Warren Wiersbe (2009)