There are certain things in our society that automatically go together whenever you hear the words. When you hear, “peanut butter”, you almost always automatically think “jelly”. When I was a kid, I was in at least 3rd grade before I ever heard of having a peanut butter sandwich without jelly. This combination is so common that a certain peanut butter maker started selling peanut butter with the jelly already swirled in it. Another common go-together is “salt and pepper”. In fact, this go-together is even used for hair color denoting hair that is beginning to show signs of gray together with the darker original hair color. Psychologists play a game called “word associations”. They say a word and you say the first word that pops into your head, like “milk….cookies”, “sun….moon”, “dry….wet”, and so on.

In the Bible there are things that go together, like, life…death, sin…punishment, joy….sorrow. But there are verses that we say automatically, almost flippantly, but fail to continue to see what the total picture is, we don’t see what goes together with that verse.

Many of us use Romans 3:23 to convince a person that everyone has sinned. The verse says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” We emphasize the “all” in the verse but fail to see that verse 24 naturally follows 23. Verse 24 goes on to say “…and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” (italics added for emphasis). All have sinned and all are justified as a gift because of God’s grace, through Jesus Christ. That paints a completely different picture than just “all have sinned…” Verse 25 goes on to say even more…this justification is a gift to be received by faith.

Another verse that we tend to stop short on is Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” We stop there and use it to tell someone going through a trial that things are going to work out in the end. That’s not what it is saying. It goes on to say, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” (Italics again added for emphasis) So, things are going to work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose, and his purpose is that we be conformed to the image of his Son. All things are working together to make us conformed to the image of God’s Son. These things are working in our character to make us more like Christ. That’s the good that these things are working towards.

I know there are many more things we quote by heart and have at the tip of our tongue, but in all things let’s read on and find the hidden gems that God has for us if we dig a little deeper.