Red Letters
“Don’t stray too far from the red letters,” is a piece of advice often given to new preachers. It means, stay close to the teachings of Jesus and you can’t go wrong. It sounds good, but it’s actually bad advice. Everything Jesus said was good and wonderful, but not everything he said was meant for you. Read the red letters of your Bible and you will find stories of unprecedented grace and merciless declarations of law. Mix these messages and you will end up confused and double-minded.
The solution is not to balance law and grace – you can’t – but to filter everything you read through the finished work of the cross. Jesus was born under law, circumcised by law, and presented in the temple according to the law. Every Jewish person that Jesus met was also born under law. We need to keep this in mind when we read the red letters of Jesus.
To those under the law, Jesus preached the pure and unadulterated law. Why did Jesus preach the law? Jesus esteemed the law and the purpose for which it was given. The law was given to silence every mouth and hold the whole world accountable (Romans 3:19). The purpose of the law is to make us conscious of sin and reveal our need for a Savior.
"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become [1] guilty before God." - Romans 3:19 [2]
Jesus was the greatest law preacher of all time. As the prophet Isaiah had foretold, he made the law magnificent. He lifted up what others had knocked down and raised the standard to glorious levels of perfection.
Preaching the red letters of Jesus is a bit like drinking whatever you find in the laundry. If you’re not paying attention – if you fail to distinguish his life-giving words of grace from His death-dealing words of law – then you could really do some damage.