Many of us have “Red Letter Edition” Bibles. These editions have all the words of Jesus printed in red. The idea is that, even though all of scripture is important, we need to pay particular attention to what Jesus had to say.
I think that it is more important than ever for us to reemphasize the words of Jesus in our Christian lives. He gave us pretty clear teaching on how we should live our lives — more about who we should be and what we should do than what we must believe. Most of the heavy doctrinal burdens and issues that we bear today did not originate with the Savior. They were added later by various church leaders.
I found two interesting blogs that focus on this perspective:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/
I plan to read through the gospels again, using my red letter edition Bible this time. I will also look at some of the accounts of Jesus’ sayings that were not accepted into our Bibles (the New Testament apocrypha) to see what they have to add. And finally, I plan to augment my reading with the Aramaic New Testament (see https://churchofourfathers.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/the-peshitta-aramaic-new-testament/). Since it is almost certain that Jesus spoke to his Jewish followers in Aramaic (not the Greek from which our English translations have been derived), this should provide an improved rendering of the words that Jesus actually said.
I have been reminded that we call ourselves Christians, not “Paulians” or “Peterians” or “Augustinians”. The teachings of Christ himself must certainly receive our primary attention.
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I also touch on some of these topics in my other blog at http://pathsofchristianity.com/.
Church of Our Fathers 