Why I Gave Away a Scholar-Grade Bible Study Suite for Free
I’ve been studying the Bible for most of my life, and I’ll be honest with you: for years, I was frustrated.
I wanted to dig into the original languages. I wanted to know what a word really meant in the Hebrew or the Greek, not just what my translation happened to print. But every time I tried to study at that level, I hit a wall. The serious tools were expensive. The free ones were clunky, shallow, or buried behind sign-ups and paywalls. It felt like deep Bible study was reserved for people with seminary budgets.
So I decided to build something.
I called it Christian Scholar. It’s a scholar-grade Bible study suite with the full King James Version text, Strong’s lexicon word study built right in, a personal library, journey tracking so you can mark your progress through Scripture, and even printable certificates. The kind of tools that make you feel like you’ve got a study room full of reference books — except it lives in your browser, all in one place.
Then came the question every builder faces: how much do I charge for it?
I thought about it for a while. And the longer I thought about it, the more convicted I got. The Word of God was given to us freely. The Gospel is free. Grace is free. Who am I to put a paywall between a believer and the deep things of God?
So I made the decision: Christian Scholar is free. Not “free trial.” Not “free with a catch.” Free forever.
No account required. No paywall. No catch. You just go to the site and start studying.
I built it for the pastor of a small church who can’t afford expensive software but wants to feed his flock the real meat of the Word. I built it for the homeschool mom teaching her kids the Bible and wanting to go deeper than the workbook. I built it for the truck driver studying on his breaks. I built it for you.
Here’s what I believe with all my heart: every believer has the right to study the Bible deeply. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need a budget. You just need a hunger for the Word and tools that don’t get in your way.
When you look up a word and see everywhere it appears across Scripture, when you trace a journey through a book of the Bible and watch your progress grow, when you build your own library of notes and reflections — something happens. The Bible stops feeling like a textbook and starts feeling like what it is: a living conversation with the living God.
I didn’t build Christian Scholar to get rich. I built it because I needed it, and I figured I’m probably not the only one. Getting to give it away has been the greatest blessing of all. Freely I received, and freely I give.
So if you’ve ever wanted to study the Bible like a scholar but felt like those tools were for other people — come on in. The water’s fine. The doors are open. And they’re never closing.
About the author: Bruce Garrison built Christian Scholar (https://christianscholar.org/), a free-forever Bible study suite for the whole church.













