If you’ve decided you want to read the Bible in order — start
at the beginning, finish at the end, no skipping around — you’ve already
made a good decision. But the moment you start searching for a plan, you
run into a word that muddies everything: chronological.
Some plans promise “the Bible in order,” others promise “the Bible in
chronological order,” and they are not the same thing.
When my husband Robert and I built DiviNav, this was
one of the first questions we had to answer honestly. So before you pick
a plan, let me save you the confusion — and then show you the simplest
way to actually read the whole Bible in order this year.
“In order” vs.
“chronological”: the real difference
These two phrases get used interchangeably, but they describe two
genuinely different reading experiences.
| Approach | What you actually read | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Canonical order (“in order”) | The 66 books in the order they appear in your Bible — Genesis 1 on Day 1, Revelation 22 on the last day |
People who want the Bible the way it’s actually printed and handed down |
| Chronological order | The same content resequenced by when scholars believe each event happened — so Job is dropped in near Genesis, the Psalms are scattered through the history books, and the Gospels are interleaved |
People who want to follow history as a timeline rather than as a library |
Here’s the honest part. When most people say “I want to read the Bible
in order,” they mean the first one — Genesis to Revelation, the
way it sits on the shelf. They’re not asking a scholar to reshuffle the
books for them; they just don’t want to bounce around at random.
Our Bible in Order plan is exactly that: canonical
order, front to back, one year. It is not a reshuffled
event-by-event chronological plan, and we’d rather tell you that plainly
than have you discover it in March. If a true historical-timeline
resequence is specifically what you want, that’s a different (and
perfectly good) thing — it’s just not what “in order” usually means, and
it’s not what we built.
Why reading it in canonical
order is worth it
The Bible wasn’t assembled in its order by accident. When you read
Genesis before Exodus before Leviticus, you’re inhabiting a story that
builds. The covenant in Genesis makes sense of the rescue in
Exodus, which makes sense of the law in Leviticus. By the time you reach
the prophets, you understand who they’re pleading with and why. And when
you finally arrive at the Gospels, you’ve walked the entire road that was
waiting for them.
Reading in order also takes one decision off your plate entirely:
what do I read next? You never have to choose. You open to where
you left off and keep going. That sounds small, but the next-decision is
exactly where most reading plans quietly die.
The part
nobody tells you: order isn’t the hard part
I’ll be straight with you, because I’ve lived it. The order you pick
is not what determines whether you finish. Consistency is. You
can have the most elegant chronological plan ever designed and still
stall out at Leviticus 11 like the rest of us.
I quit reading the Bible in a year twice before I figured out what
actually made it stick — and it had nothing to do with the sequence of
the books. (I
wrote that whole story here, if you want the honest version.) If
this is your first real attempt at reading it cover to cover, our
beginner’s guide walks through how to actually finish your first
time through.
So pick the order that makes you want to open it tomorrow.
For a lot of people, that’s simply “in order, the way it’s written” —
because it’s the least to think about.
How our Bible in Order plan
works
It’s the simplest possible version of the idea, on purpose:
- You start at Genesis 1 on Day 1 and finish
Revelation 22 on the last day of your year. - Each day gives you a readable portion — enough to make real progress,
short enough to keep before work or before bed. - It’s built on the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), a
modern, accurate, public-domain translation we chose specifically so it
would be free for our readers with no licensing strings. (Here’s why we
picked the BSB.) - It’s a journal, not just a checklist — room to write down what you
notice, so the reading turns into something you keep.
Bible in Order is one of three plans we offer — the other two break up
the Old and New Testaments so you’re not waiting nine months to reach the
Gospels. If you’re not sure canonical order is your fit, here’s a
plain-English comparison of all three.
Start this week — for free
You don’t have to commit to a year to find out whether reading in
order works for you. You can try
the first month free — real days, real readings, no card —
and see whether opening to “where I left off” is the rhythm that finally
keeps you in the Word.
If you already know this is the one, you can get
the full year here. Either way: start at Genesis 1, and let the story
build.