Orr Family Bible Commentary

Built on Sound Doctrine

A family's walk through all sixty-six books of Scripture: Christ-centered, Reformed, and held to a written standard the way good software is held to its tests.

ESV · Reformed Tradition · For personal & family study

A personal note

This site is a personal exercise by Glenn Orr. It began as a study guide, a way to gather what I have and what I am still learning. I'm a software developer, and I've used AI to help me compile and organize it.

It has been a joy to work on, and I intend to keep developing and adding to it. If you benefit from it, then praise God: literally, praise God.

I

What we're building

An open, growing commentary on the whole Bible: a study for every book with chapter-by-chapter summaries, and the people, tribes, and nations woven through the story. Alongside the books sit topical guides: the prayers of Scripture, the divisions of the canon, a timeline, a genealogy from Adam to Christ, and an honest look at where Judaism and Islam part from Him.

The Law is complete (Genesis through Deuteronomy, chapter by chapter) and the rest of the canon is being written in over time. Every page is drawn from the ESV and aims at one thing: to help a family read the Bible and see Jesus in it.

  • Book studies66 · Law complete
  • Prayers of the Bible37 gathered
  • Canon divisions7 overviews
  • Tribes of Israel12 + Levi
  • Peoples & nations22 profiles
  • Timeline & genealogyAdam to Christ
II

What we confess

The five solas: the heart of the Reformation, and the fixed points every page is written around.

i
Sola Scriptura

Scripture alone. God's inspired Word is the final authority for faith and life.

ii
Sola Fide

Faith alone. Sinners are justified through faith, not by works.

iii
Sola Gratia

Grace alone. Salvation is God's free gift, never earned or deserved.

iv
Solus Christus

Christ alone. Fully God and fully man, the only Mediator and Savior.

v
Soli Deo Gloria

To the glory of God alone. Creation, redemption, and this study, all of it for Him.

  • Christ-centered. All of Scripture testifies to Jesus; we follow the text to Him, not merely to a moral.
  • Read in context. The author's meaning first: then Scripture interprets Scripture, and the clear reads the unclear.
  • One story of redemption. Promise moving to fulfillment in Christ, through God's covenants.
  • Theology for worship. Sound doctrine is meant to produce awe, humility, and godly living.
III

Whose shoulders we stand on

Nothing here is invented. Every page is written inside a tradition, and where one leans on a teacher we name him and quote what he actually wrote: chapter and verse, or not at all.

  • The Reformers and their heirs. John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Charles Spurgeon: the sovereignty of God, justification by faith alone, and a Christ-exalting call to sinners.
  • The confessions. The Westminster Standards, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and the Heidelberg Catechism: faithful summaries of Scripture, and never a second authority beside it.
  • Teachers nearer our own day. J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, John Piper, D. A. Carson, Sinclair Ferguson, Timothy Keller, Michael Horton, Albert Mohler, and Carl Trueman.
  • Commentators at the desk. Matthew Henry, Keil and Delitzsch, Albert Barnes, the Pulpit Commentary and the Expositor's Greek Testament, and modern expositors such as J. Gary Millar, cited passage by passage.
  • And those we disagree with. Where a serious case is made against a position we hold, we state it in its strongest form and name who makes it, rather than answering an argument nobody advanced.

All of it is opinion about God's Word, and none of it is God's Word. The Bereans were called more noble than the Thessalonians because they “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so,” and the preacher they were checking was the apostle Paul. Check these men. Check us. Where a teacher never wrote on a passage, we say so instead of attaching his name to a plausible guess.

IV

Grounded like software

Sound doctrine is easy to affirm and easy to drift from. So we hold the writing to a standard the way engineers hold code (a spec, a test, and a review) before anything ships.

The Standard

The written spec  DOCTRINE.md

Our confession, our way of reading, and a list of red-flag teachings to never make: works-righteousness, the prosperity gospel, universalism, moralism. Everything is written to it.

The Check

An automated read  check_doctrine.py

A linter scans every finished page for language that drifts. It is negation-aware (it knows “you cannot earn your salvation” is the gospel, not a red flag) and it catches phrasing, never claiming to certify orthodoxy on its own.

The Review

A human reading

The final read against a fixed checklist: Is it Christ-centered? Grace, not works? True to the text in context? God-glorifying and honest about sin? This is where soundness is actually judged.

Imprimatur: current standing
  • The Standardwritten ✓
  • The Check1,933 pages · clean
  • The Reviewpassing ✓
  • Last updated31 July 2026
$ python site/check_doctrine.py
OK: Doctrine check clean - 1933 pages scanned, no red flags.
V

Scripture text and copyright

Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Where a passage is shown in full rather than linked, the text is drawn live from Crossway’s ESV API and is not stored by this site. This commentary is offered free of charge, carries no advertising and solicits no donations, which is the basis on which that API is licensed for non-commercial use. Everything else on these pages (the summaries, notes, and studies) is our own writing.

Soli Deo Gloria

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16–17 · ESV

Orr Family Bible Commentary · ESV · 2026