Red Letter, Black Letter

You may have seen Bibles with red letters in them to differentiate the words that Jesus spoke from the rest of the Bible. In fact, if you have a Bible it probably does have red letters since it's so common.

Red-letter Bibles were first conceived of by Louis Klopsch, editor of Christian Herald magazine back in the late 1800s. The idea to print Jesus' words in red came to him when he read Luke 22:20, the verse where Jesus says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (NIV). Thus, the first red-letter New Testament came out in 1899, followed two years later by the first full-length red-letter Bible.¹

He had good intentions, of course. But eventually this idea led to the establishment of an oddly political and theologically questionable group called "Red-Letter Christians." I say "theologically questionable" because Tony Campolo, the leader of the group, happily advertises the blog of Brian McLaren, one of the leaders of the heretical Emerging Church movement.

Red-Letter Christians are basically what they sound like: they focus on the words of Jesus more than anything else. Now, the intention is certainly a good one, but chew on this for a moment.

Jesus is God, yes? And the Bible, the whole Bible, black and red letters, is the word of God, right? Which means Gos spoke all of the words, not just the red ones. So the black letters of the Bible, the God-breathed words written by Paul, Peter, Jude, Matthew, Mark, Luke, James, and John, are just as important as the red words Jesus spoke Himself.

You cannot have true, Biblical Christianity without the whole Bible. There are things Paul and Peter and John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that Jesus never said. Where would we be without the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13? What about Ephesians 5, which gives us the best and most meaningful marriage instruction on earth? The fact that Jesus didn't say those words during His time on earth is of no consequence; the entire Bible is the word of God, meaning all of it is equally authoritative, important, and relevant.

Footnotes

¹ Crossway Staff. "Origin of Red-Letter Bibles." Crossway Blog. Published March 23, 2006. Accessed March 9, 2012. http://www.crossway.org/blog/2006/03/red-letter-origin/