Imagine: you head to the store to purchase an inexpensive piece of furniture for your office or den. The box says: “Some assembly required.” But you can put two and two together, so you buy your desk or bookshelf without fear. When you get home you open it up, and pour the pieces out on the floor: wood panels, screws, plastic fittings, pop rivets, ball bearings, and allen wrenches. You ask yourself: Who in the world made this? How is it all supposed to fit together?

People might look at the Bible in just that way, with all of its books and passages, recorded at different times by various writers in different situations. How is this all supposed to fit together? What am I not seeing?

Some sit on the floor surrounded by parts of a pressboard entertainment center and think: it will never work! If it seems too confusing, some people give up. When it comes to things built by man, parts might be missing, or ill-fitted to each other; the directions might be poorly written, or even contradictory.

Not so the Bible: “For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). The Bible contains no errors. The Bible has no missing pieces and no part fails to conform to all the rest. In fact, God’s Word is beautifully crafted with the greatest of care and of the finest stuff. The Word of God is all one: with one Author, one Point, and one Hero. Persisting in unbelief, people say: “The Bible contradicts itself!” They act like a person who assembles and arranges parts and pieces with no regard for the directions. Or sadly, in their confusion, people surrender hope of ever knowing and confessing the truth.

Don’t despair! Everything fits together perfectly in Scripture. It does not need our assembly—it assembles itself! Or, perhaps it is better said: The Author, God the Holy Spirit, opens the Word to us and causes it all to fall together for us. If something doesn’t seem to fit, we back up and take it in context. If something is difficult to understand, we examine it in light of other passages which are so direct and clear that there is no way to get it wrong unless we do so deliberately. All our questions find answers, either in time and from the pages of Scripture itself, or finally in heaven when we will know, no longer in part Meanwhile, the big things in the Bible are clear and constant—Law and Gospel. These two themes intertwine throughout all Scripture: in the Fall and Promise (Adam and Eve); in the history of Judgment and Deliverance (like the Flood); Wrath and Mercy (Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s rescue); Slavery and Redemption (the Exodus).

As the sum and substance of it all, the Holy Spirit gives us the life of the Lord Jesus, His death and rising again. Altogether it tells us: your sin places you under God’s wrath, but God’s mercy in His Son rests you in His good graces, and finally seats you in heaven.

This is the reason for Christ’s coming in flesh: for us and for our salvation. To serve that saving purpose God brings the cross into our life, that is, Jesus comes to us in Word and Sacrament with His Real Presence. God has given us life, and this life is in His crucified and risen Son. All the books of the Bible, with all their passages written by all the different writers, proclaim the same message: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). This is what the Author Himself says about His work.

Aaron Hamilton is pastor of Hope Lutheran Church in West Jordan, Utah.