I can still recite the Roman Road from memory. Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 5:8, Romans 10:9-10…the verses flow out of me like muscle memory, drilled into my brain from countless youth group sessions. For most of my evangelical upbringing, these four verses weren’t just scripture. They were the gospel itself.
The Apostle I Knew Better Than Christ
Growing up evangelical meant growing up in Paul’s world. Sunday sermons dissected Romans. Bible studies worked through Ephesians and Philippians. Youth camp talks centered on Paul’s conversion and missionary journeys. His systematic theology became our systematic theology. His occasional letters to specific first-century churches became our universal doctrines.
I could quote Paul’s definition of love from 1 Corinthians 13 backward and forward, yet I struggled to remember Jesus’ actual words about loving enemies. I could defend Paul’s complex arguments about justification by faith in my sleep, but I’d barely noticed that Jesus talked about money and possessions more than any other topic. The apostle who repeatedly insisted he was just a witness had somehow become more central to my understanding of Christianity than Christ himself.
This wasn’t intentional idol worship. It was structural, systematic, built into how evangelical Christianity operates. Our systematic theology organized Christian doctrine around Pauline themes. Our evangelism strategies relied on Paul’s formulas. Our understanding of salvation, church governance, gender roles, and moral theology all filtered through Paul’s epistles first. Jesus’ teachings served as supporting evidence for principles Paul had already established.
When Black Ink Overshadowed Red Letters
The turning point came when I started paying attention to what Jesus actually said. Not what Paul said about what Jesus meant, but the red letters themselves. I began noticing how often evangelical theology had to work around Jesus’ explicit teachings to maintain supposedly biblical positions. Jesus declared blessed are the poor, yet our prosperity theology insisted God wants you wealthy. He commanded us to love our enemies while our just war theology argued that sometimes we must kill them.
We’d developed elaborate hermeneutical gymnastics to explain away Jesus’ most challenging teachings. When Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom, we invented stories about Jerusalem gates. When Jesus told followers to turn the other cheek, we qualified it. When Jesus welcomed tax collectors and sinners, we added footnotes about repentance that Jesus himself never required.
Shane Claiborne puts it perfectly: “We clutter, explain away, jazz up, and water down the words of Jesus, as if they can’t stand on their own.” We’d taken Jesus’ clear, direct teachings and buried them under layers of Pauline theology and systematic frameworks that made them more palatable but less powerful.
The problem wasn’t that Paul was wrong. We’d made him the interpreter of Jesus rather than letting Jesus interpret Paul. We’d turned occasional letters written to specific churches facing particular problems into universal laws that trumped the direct teachings of the person we claimed to follow. Paul’s pastoral response to Corinthian head coverings became eternal principles about gender roles. His advice to Philemon about a runaway slave became divine endorsement of social hierarchies.
The Gospel According to Jesus
What would Christianity look like if we started with Jesus? What if we organized our faith around the Sermon on the Mount instead of the Roman Road? Jesus’ own words suggest a different kind of Christianity. One more concerned with feeding the hungry than defending doctrinal purity. More focused on welcoming strangers than maintaining boundaries. One that measures faithfulness by how we treat the least of these rather than how precisely we articulate the atonement.
The Jesus I discovered wasn’t the gentle Sunday school figure of my childhood. This Jesus was radical, confrontational, dangerous to the status quo. He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, touched lepers, honored women, blessed children, cursed fig trees, and cleansed temples. He told parables that upset social conventions and challenged economic systems. This Jesus didn’t need Paul to make him relevant or systematic. He was already both.
Reading Paul Through Jesus
Getting outside evangelicalism taught me to put Christ at the center and read everything else through that lens. When Paul’s words seem to conflict with Jesus’ example, we let Jesus have the final word. When Paul appears to exclude people that Jesus explicitly welcomed, we assume we’re misunderstanding Paul rather than that Jesus got it wrong.
Paul’s occasional restrictions on women don’t override Jesus’ consistent pattern of elevating and empowering women. His accommodation to first-century slavery doesn’t negate Jesus’ declaration that he came to set captives free. Paul himself would be horrified to discover his letters had become more authoritative than Jesus’ teachings. The apostle who insisted Christ was everything would be devastated to learn that evangelical Christianity quotes him more than Jesus.
Paul is not Jesus. Paul is not the gospel. Paul points to Christ…he doesn’t replace him.
Reading Paul through Jesus doesn’t diminish scripture. It honors scripture by recognizing that the gospels aren’t just four books among twenty-seven, but the heart of the New Testament that gives meaning to everything else.
Reclaiming the Red Letters
I still believe Paul’s letters are scripture. Romans remains one of the most important theological documents ever written. The difference is that I no longer let Paul’s occasional letters override Jesus’ consistent teachings. I no longer organize my faith around Pauline systematization instead of Christ’s example.
When I’m discerning God’s will, I start with what Jesus actually said and did. When wrestling with difficult ethical questions, I look first to Jesus’ teaching and example. This shift has changed not just my theology but my discipleship. Following Jesus looks different when you’re actually following Jesus instead of following Paul’s letters about Jesus.
The red letters call us to a more radical, more challenging, more beautiful way of life than systematic theology often allows. They invite us into the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed and embodied, not just the plan of salvation that Paul articulated. The Roman Road served its purpose in my young faith.
Now I prefer the way of Jesus…the red-letter path that leads not just to a moment of decision but to a lifetime of discipleship.
Let’s Talk
I’m curious about your experience: Can you quote more Paul or more Jesus?
When you think about your faith, whose words come to mind first? Have you noticed places where Paul’s letters get prioritized over Jesus’ teachings? Or maybe you’ve found ways to hold both in balance?
Drop a comment below. I’d love to hear where you’re at in your own journey with the red letters.
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Thank you Beau for being a voice in the wilderness of Christianity that dares to believe change is essential for a Christian.
You speak so eloquently on the hidden truth that we have been worshipping the created and not the creator for a very long time.
Your comment about how horrified Paul would feel struck me hard.
What would a letter from Paul to today's Christians look like?
Can it really be as simple as:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind."
The second is like unto the first
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
Jesus explained that these two commandments, when combined, summarize the entirety of the Law and the Prophets.
If we just tried to love, what would happen?
"We’d developed elaborate hermeneutical gymnastics to explain away Jesus’ most challenging teachings."
My observation is that, especially in Evangelical Protestant circles, the two sayings of Jesus most frequently "explained away" are the following:
"If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw **all** people to myself."
"This **is** My Body, this **is** My Blood."