The Jigsaw Bible

For some Christians reading the Bible is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle but without the picture. They find it hard to know which pieces fit together, and where they go. However, in his last letter Paul gave Timothy some advice:

 

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”(2 Timothy 2:15)

 

The Greek word for “correctly handles,” orthotomeo, occurs only here in the New Testament. It is a word that was common among tentmakers, which was Paul’s trade. When making a tent, they would cut many pieces of cloth that had to fit together perfectly when the final tent was constructed. If these pieces of cloth were not cut correctly, they would not fit together, a bit like incorrectly fitting the pieces of a jigsaw together. It was crucially important that the tent-makers “rightly divided” the cloth. If they did not, they would not fit together to make a good tent.

 

This is the word that Paul used here for “correctly handling” the word of truth. If we fail to rightly divide the Bible, it will not fit together as it should. So the question arises, “How do we rightly divide the Word of truth?”