The Love Letter

When I was in high school, a girl sent me a love letter. It was written in purple ink, and it was perfumed. But I was more interested in sports than I was in girls back then, so I put it in the back of my sock drawer and forgot about it.

A few years later, when I was in college, I came across that forgotten letter, and as I held it in my hand, I could still smell the perfume on it. I always wondered what happened to that girl in the love letter. I am reminded of a story of an Englishman who traveled frequently to India for business reasons.

His main business took place in the city of Calcutta. It was there, while shopping in an Indian bazaar, that he purchased a necklace for his little girl. He would often bring his eight-year-old daughter trinkets back from his travels.

On this particular trip to Calcutta, he bought his daughter a pretty little jade necklace at an inexpensive market bazaar. After she wore it a few days, the metal clasp broke, and this Englishman took it to a London jeweler to be repaired. The next week, the man returned to the jeweler to pick up the necklace for his little girl.

The jeweler emerged from a back room with the necklace, and with an excited look on his face, the jeweler asked, "'Ask you, sir, how much you paid for this jade necklace?' The man replied, "'I believe I paid twenty pounds for it, nothing more.' The jeweler smiled and said, "'Look into this magnifying glass. See the letters carved on the back of each piece of jade? It is French lettering. When you lay these seventy-eight pieces of jade side by side, they form a love letter written from Napoleon to Juliet.

This jade necklace is priceless, worth well over a half a million pounds.'" Way back yonder, friends, in the aeons of eternity, God sat down in heaven and took out his pen to write a love letter to fallen man, and he wrote the following words, "'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Then he handed that love letter to his dear son, and Christ took that letter to Calvary and signed it in his own blood. When the Son of God hung naked on that scandalous cross, as the Roman soldiers fastened him there by driving nails into his innocent hands and feet, every stroke of the Roman's hammer was an explanation point that God must punish sin, God must punish sin, God must punish sin. Bleeding and dying Christ up on Calvary, holding that love letter in his nail-pierced hand, herein is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Some time ago I read the story of how our Bibles came to have red lettering for the words of Christ Jesus. There was a man named Louis Clops, who was good friends with D.L. Moody. He was also the editor of the Christian Herald magazine.

When reading Jesus' words one day, this cup is the New Testament in my blood, or which is shed for you, he thought of printing all of Jesus' words in red, the color of his blood, to remind people of that sacrifice. So that is how we came to have our red-lettered Bibles. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a love letter from God to a fallen world of sinners, and that letter is signed in Christ's own blood.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Friend, will you spurn the love of Christ? Will you love your sins more? Come to Him, and believe on Him, and on Him as your Savior and Lord.