How Complete is the Grace Commentary?

Is the Grace Commentary nearly complete? Halfway done or mostly done? Or is there still a long way to go?

Just for fun, I asked Grace Commentary readers to estimate how complete the Grace Commentary is. The responses from readers were astonishing. Answers ranged from 2 percent complete to 100 percent. That’s quite a range.

More than a third of readers said the TGC was at least three-quarters complete, and the average estimate was 62.5 percent.

On the whole, readers think the Grace Commentary is more complete than incomplete. Which is encouraging. But what is the truth? How will we know when the Grace Commentary is finished?

There is no easy answer to this question.

Consider: There are 7,957 verses in the New Testament. At the end of 2023, there were entries in the Grace Commentary for 3,367 verses. So you could say the commentary covers 42 percent of the total number of verses.

Which means we’re almost halfway.

Only we’re not, because we need to consider both the quality and quantity of the commentary.

Some entries in the Grace Commentary are little more than placeholders, while others are paragraphs long.

Ultimately, my aim is to write commentary that is of publishable quality. At the end of 2023, that goal had been 100% achieved for seven New Testament books: James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John and Jude. That’s a grand total of 410 verses.

Or 6 percent of the total.

We have a long way to go.

Writing an original Bible commentary is a big job. To put it in context, if you were to preach a sermon unpacking one verse each Sunday, it would take 153 years to cover just the New Testament.

If you were to preach six days a week, it would “only” take 25 years.

My weekly target is to write good commentary for 25 scriptures, but I don’t always hit that target. I spend as much time rewriting and expanding existing commentary as I do writing new commentary.

So where are we at?

I started the Grace Commentary in 2021 with the epistles of John, James, Jude and Peter. I am now charging through the epistles of Paul while also working on the parables of Jesus.

I expect 2024 will be our biggest and best year yet, and I will have some exciting news on that front in my next update.

Yes, it’s a big job, but trust you will agree that completing the Grace Commentary is a worthwhile endeavor. There’s nothing else like it.

Thank you for being part of the journey.

Paul

PS: We take requests. If you can’t find an entry for a particular New Testament scripture, particularly from the epistles, drop us a line and we’ll add it to the head of the queue.

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