Chris Tiegreen has spent decades helping believers engage deeply with God’s Word—not just reading it for information, but experiencing it as a powerful vision that transforms hearts and lives. As an author of more than 60 devotionals, Bible studies, and spiritual growth books, Tiegreen’s passion is clear: to awaken readers to the richness of Scripture and the spiritual realities it reveals. In this conversation, we talk with him about the roots of his love for the Bible, how his travels and journalism background have shaped his perspective, and why his latest project, The See Series, is about much more than commentary—it’s an invitation to see differently and, in doing so, live differently.

It is evident from your work that you have a deep love for Scripture. What informed your love of Scripture and what motivates you to encourage this love in others?

Whenever I engage with Scripture, I get the sense that even though I’m learning some new things or reinforcing what I already knew, there’s so much more I’m not seeing—a new paradigm, a different worldview, another dimension to life—and that’s right there, but I’m not quite fully grasping it. That sense of “there’s so much more” is compelling. The more we dive in, the more glimpses of it we get.
I’m motivated by the awareness that many people aren’t diving in as deeply as they could—not wrestling with big questions or big implications, not letting biblical truths get inside them and simmer for days or weeks or months at a time, and maybe not even aware that this Word unlocks or unveils a whole new reality that most of the world doesn’t see. Information and instructions are important, but I don’t want us to settle just for that when we read the Bible. I want us to have our eyes opened to an entirely different way of seeing.

What was the inciting event of your ministry as a Christian author?

I’d worked in several ministry positions straight out of seminary but hadn’t really flourished in any of them, so I spent a few years earning a living in media as I prayed for a ministry role that fit my gifts. My wife saw an ad on a church bulletin board for an editorial position at Walk Thru the Bible, so I applied for it, admitting in the interview that even though I’d written reams of news articles and opinion columns, I’d never written a devotional, which was what they were looking for. The editorial director gave me an opportunity to try, so I went home and wrote five that night. Their team liked them, they hired me as founding editor for a new devotional magazine, and I began writing daily devotionals that eventually became books, which has led to more books of varying types.

How have your travels impacted your faith and your writing?

When you spend all of your time in one culture, it’s easy to get locked into a limited set of perceptions, interests, values, and expectations for what life “should” be like. Things that seem like major issues or vital agendas, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, really aren’t as big as we think (like when people refer to “first world problems”). If we’re focusing all our concerns on our immediate context—personal, relational, cultural, political, or whatever—we don’t really grasp the wide range of human experience or the implications of God’s big-picture mission in this world. We get really insulated in our own way of thinking.

Going places and spending time with people who have a different perspective stretches me. I’ve met faithful, God-honoring Christians who see things very differently than I do. I’ve developed a greater appreciation for the vastness of God’s work. I have to remind myself sometimes that I’m writing not only for people who are similar to me in culture and outlook but also to people from other parts of the world. And because I’ve been to many of those parts, I know a bit about their experiences and needs and can broaden my writing to include them.

After writing 60 books, Bible studies, and discussion guides, what inspired you to start a commentary series for the first time?

For a long time, I’ve had a desire to go through the Bible passage by passage to explore how these words in their historical and cultural contexts translate to our lives today. I know there are plenty of commentaries that aim to do that, but I have my own sense of “a-ha” moments—how we interact with the text and its contexts devotionally—and of how to make room for them in our reading of Scripture. So when people began asking me to recommend a commentary for particular books of the Bible, and I couldn’t think of any that fit what I knew they were looking for, I saw a need and sensed a nudge.

What makes this commentary series different from other commentaries?

As “devotional commentaries,” they blend background information with a lot of prompts for contemplation. Some of these prompts and insights are drawn specifically from the text, and some are more tangential—a feature that I think is rare even for the hybrid category of devotional commentaries. I want readers to envision lots of possibilities as they engage with Scripture—for the Spirit to inspire deeper thoughts, different applications, broader understanding, and so on. The “commentary” side of this sets the stage for that; the “devotional” side explores many of the ways biblical truths might fit into every aspect of our lives.

Toward that end, there’s a major emphasis in these commentaries on envisioning—seeing things differently, whether God, ourselves, other believers, nonbelievers, or the world in general. My informal premise as I write is, “New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being,” and I’m convinced that’s true. No matter how much propositional/informational truth we learn or absorb, we’re inwardly driven by whatever visions we have in our hearts and minds. Our vision is our deepest, most powerful level of “knowing.” It’s the fuel that changes us and is very often where the Holy Spirit does his deepest work. So these devotionals are aimed there, to aid this envisioning process.

Did you have a specific reader in mind as you wrote these commentaries? Who are you writing for?

A lot of people looking for a commentary want accessibility without superficiality. In other words, they want it to give a relevant and insightful background to the text without getting too academic about it, and they want to know how to apply biblical truth without reducing it to mere behavior modification, as in a “step by step” or “just do this” approach. Most people, at least the ones who ask me for recommendations, are really looking for big-picture understanding but with some deep and specific insights, so I’m writing with them in mind.

How can Christians move from reading the Word to applying it in their lives?

My experience with discipleship models is that they usually involve two steps: learning truth and applying it, or “knowing” and “doing.” Knowing and doing are good, obviously, but if that’s all that is involved, we risk turning Christianity into a matter of willpower. We learn to act like Christians without being Christians. We try to reform the old nature rather than living from a new one. This is where vision comes in. If we learn to see differently, we’ll naturally live differently.

I think vision is powerful and shapes every area of our lives, even in very subtle ways. God wired us to work this way—you’ll noticed that he didn’t give us an instruction manual or a textbook on systematic theology but a Word full of captivating stories, profound parables, prophetic images, three-dimensional characters, and powerful scenes of ultimate reality and things to come. Reading the text is vital, but it shouldn’t be a matter of just absorbing information. God wants us to enter into it—to see the sights, hear the sounds, feel the sensations, and step into the visions as a full-on experience. The more we immerse ourselves in the experience of Scripture (which is really the point of movies about Jesus and other biblical characters, right?), the more it shapes our Spirit-led vision, which in turn shapes our lives—not as a matter of rigorous discipline but of natural growth.

Why should Christians take the time to read commentaries?

Every believer already reads the Bible with thoughts, ideas, questions, Holy Spirit prompts, and other internal dialogue about the text. Commentaries expand that dialogue considerably. They raise questions we might not have otherwise asked, suggest angles and insights that might not have otherwise occurred to us, and ground us in context we might have otherwise missed. They serve as a guide to Scripture—not in place of the Holy Spirit but as one of his many tools to immerse us more fully into it.

How has writing this series impacted the way that you read the Bible?

In addition to all the thoughts, ideas, and questions we bring to the Bible, we also read it through certain lenses—different ones at different times, for most of us—and writing this series has made me put on the “envisioning lens” consistently. I read with several questions in mind: What vision of God, himself, other people, or the world did this writer see in his mind as he wrote these words? How does this reflect God’s view of things? How did he see differently from the common vision of his culture, his fellow believers, or non-Christian philosophies and worldviews? How might this vision apply in the context of today? After all, we live out our entire belief system in the context of competing worldviews. Understanding biblical worldviews and how they translate into our world today, at both big-picture and daily life levels, seems to me to be a very worthwhile approach to the revelation we’ve been given.

The See Series emphasizes envisioning as a tool for spiritual transformation. What strategies do you use to help readers practice the art of envisioning?

Vision is highly suggestive, so both the “devotional” and “commentary” sides of this series suggest a lot of scenes and images. This isn’t so much to dictate to the reader what “envisioning” he or she ought to do as it is to provoke new ways of thinking about biblical passages.

So I try to set the stage visually for each section of Scripture. What was it like to be a citizen of Philippi, for example? How did they see their society and culture, “eastern” religions like Judaism and this new Jesus sect, and people like Paul and his entourage? What challenges did they face, and how did those challenges look at ground level? This completely colors how they would have read and engaged with Paul’s words. And seeing that context, we can then translate their issues into our experiences today and see how we would engage with Paul’s words. This is the methodology used throughout the series—getting our heads around the vision of biblical writers and then recasting that vision into today’s circumstances, relationships, issues, challenges, desires, and really all of life.

Your series takes the lead of Jesus, who used highly visual language in his teaching. Is there a specific parable or teaching that has especially inspired your work?

Yes, Jesus used visual language profusely—tons of word pictures, metaphors, and parables to get his disciples to see things differently. I love all the times he said, “The Kingdom of heaven is like…,” because he was basically telling them that words and descriptions aren’t enough—that “you won’t get it unless you see it.”
He also talked a lot about vision itself. For example, we can’t “see” the Kingdom of God unless we’re born again (John 3:3); he only did what he “saw” the Father doing (John 5:19); and “anyone who has seen [him] has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He also talked about people who look but don’t really see, then blessed his disciples’ eyes “because they see” (Matt. 13:13-16). All of this implies a spiritual vision that’s beyond the view of natural eyes. I get a lot of inspiration from that—spiritual vision as a key to understanding the gospel and even getting it in the first place. The fact that it’s such a vital aspect of his Kingdom tells me it should be a major emphasis in our discipleship.

You began your career as a photojournalist. What place does photography have in your life today? How does your interest in vision and perspective shape the way you study the Bible?

I actually began in journalism purely on the writing side, but when you work for small media outlets that can’t always afford to send both a writer and photographer to cover the same event, writers who know how to use a camera become valued assets. I loved that part of my journalistic work—pictures are a huge part of telling the story, sometimes even the most important one, as they convey emotions and context that words can’t always express—and I learned quickly to appreciate the interplay between words and images. Words can be very visual, and images can be very descriptive, but neither can accomplish what the other one does entirely.

I don’t do much photography today, but I’m still shaped by the ways it cultivated my sense of vision. “Seeing” biblical scenes as you read about them adds so much to the experience. It brings characters to life, reveals layers and nuances in the text, and provokes insights you might not otherwise have had. If I just read the Bible, it brings me into a world of words, which does have the power to shape me to a degree. But if I envision it as I read, it’s like entering into the original setting as an observer and even a participant, which shapes me much more profoundly. It more fully engages our hearts and minds. It’s like the difference between reading a biography about someone and being that person’s friend. One is information, the other a life experience that’s full of color and complexity, and depth. I get so much more out of “seeing” the biblical world than merely reading about it.