This blog is a continuation of Christianity and Islam: Jesus – Prophet, Messiah and Lord (1)
This is the seventh blog in my series which began with One Christian Looks at Islam Looking at Christianity; next was the two part Christianity and Islam: Of Prophecy and the Prophet; then the two part Christianity and Islam: Conflict over True Christianity. These blogs are my reaction to the claims of some Muslim missionary literature aimed at converting Christians to Islam.
Islam says the Jews lost their favored status with God when they rejected Jesus – that is when prophethood left Israel. The very things which the Jews accused Jesus of, and why they rejected Him according to John 5:18 is because they understood Jesus of making himself equal to God, of claiming that He and the Father are one. Read John 17 to get a sense of how Jesus Himself understood His relationship with God the Father. In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” So at least in the Christian Scriptures Jesus himself, His disciples and His opponents all seem to agree that Jesus saw Himself as in some manner one with God the Father and sharing the divine life of the Father. So the Islamic claim that Jesus never declared Himself to be God or divine or co-equal with the Father is true only if one ignores the Gospel tradition and relies solely on the Qur’an for reading the claims of Christ. The New Testament has a few explicit claims about the divinity of Jesus but many implicit claims.
There also is this in the Qur’an: “the Messiah, Isa son of Marium is only a messenger of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him” (Q 4:171). The Qur’an identifies Jesus as God’s messenger, Word and spirit. The notion of Jesus as God’s Word is most clearly spelled out in John 1, a text which also implies the divinity of God’s Word and in the context of John’s Gospel implies the divinity of Jesus.
Mark’s Gospel begins with the words: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” That is the Gospel’s thesis statement; the Gospel is what Mark offers as proof of his thesis. The Gospel is the living testimony and proof to Mark’s claim about who Jesus is. And in Mark’s Gospel God Himself speaks about who Jesus is. John in his Gospel’s conclusion in chapter 20 says that the events he reports to us are offered so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that believing we might have eternal life through Him. This is also the witness of Hebrews 1-2 in which it is clear that Jesus being the Son of God is exactly how the first Christians understood Him and His words. Notions of Jesus as God’s Son or as God the Son were not invented by later generations of Christians, but certainly can be found already suggested in the Gospel text. It is when dealing with the entirety of the revelation as contained in the New Testament that the notions of God as Trinity and Jesus as the incarnate Word of God became the obvious (literal!) reading of the Scriptures.
The Islamic literature referred several times to John 17:3 (“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”). This text was used to confirm that Jesus expresses an Islamic belief in one God. Yet the text implies that there is something incredibly unique about Jesus for eternal life is not simply knowing God but also requires knowing Jesus Christ. It contains no reference to the Qur’an or to Muhammad as being necessary for eternal life. The Muslim materials said John 17:3 is the equivalent of saying, “There is no deity except the one true God, and Jesus Christ is the Messenger of God.” While Christians are willing to say that Jesus is God’s messenger and a prophet, that would certainly be seen to be a weak interpretation of John 17:3. Christians say Jesus is the message not simply the messenger. This is a claim in line with Qur’an 4:171 which identifies Jesus as God’s Word.
The Christian experience of Jesus as God’s Word is why Christians do not interpret God’s message as nothing more than obedience to God. If sheer obedience is all that God wanted from humanity, it would be strange to give humans free will. God could have made automatons for that purpose. Christians would say that God wanted us freely to choose to do His will because God created us to love – to love Him and to love one another. Love is only possible where there is choice – freedom to love, and where good and bad are equally attractive to us so that we must choose between the two. In creating beings capable of love, God created beings who could also reject, rebel, disobey or choose badly. It is however His greatest wish for humankind that we would love – and this is exactly what Jesus lists as the greatest and second greatest commandments: love God and love neighbor. And the commandment to be obeyed is to love (John 15:12, but see also Mark 12:31, John 13:34, 14:15-21, 15:10-12. From the Torah see Deuteronomy 5:10, 7:9, 11:1,13).
The Muslim missionary literature says Jesus taught mostly obedience to God which they say is exemplified in John 14:15, 21, 15:14 where Jesus instructs His followers to obey Him. But it is these same passages in which Jesus says His command is to love. Jesus emphasized love, forgiveness of enemies more than obedience to the law. He says the law is about loving God and neighbor, obedience isn’t more important than love for love is the highest good. In Christ’s teaching we find that to love Him is to obey His commandments and His commandments are for us to love. Submission and obedience are not the goal but a means to attain the goal. Love is in the teachings of Jesus not a noun of emotion, but a verb of action. Love is how we are to choose to act toward others; it is not a mere reaction to others.
Because submission to God is what Islam teaches the main tenet of God’s Law, Islam emphasizes obedience to God’s commandments as the main message of the Old Testament and of Jesus (Matthew 5:17, 7:21, 19:16-17). God’s people are to hear God’s word and obey it (Luke 11:28). And in what was a rare quote from any New Testament material outside the Gospels, the Islamic materials pointed out that James 4:7 says to submit yourself to God. While Christianity does embrace these words of Jesus, it also keeps them in their Gospel context that His commandment is that we love. Obedience and submission is not what God mostly wants from us – we can keep the law without loving God. It is the love of God and neighbor which is God’s ultimate plan, hope and desire for us.
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'”
God does not just want us to obey Him under threat of punishment, according to Christianity, He wishes for us to choose to love Him and to love one another.
Fraternized 
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