Christianity Today's interesting question earlier this week ("Should Christians fast during Ramadan?") got me thinking about the identity of the god Muslims worship. Is he in some fashion the same deity as the God of the Bible?
Interestingly, Jesus encountered this question in His ministry, when the Pharisees questioned his bona fides in John 8:12-59. The text fairly sizzles, as supposedly "meek and mild" Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees, calling them sons of Satan and warning these Law-abiding Jews that they will die in their sins because they don't really know the Father.
Why? Because they didn't know Jesus.
“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus tells them. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” ... “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me."
The God of the Old Testament—the God of the Bible—is the God who revealed Himself as a Middle Eastern peasant about 2,000 years ago. He was rejected by most of His own tribe, killed by a corrupt religious establishment in league with a pagan Roman government. God raised Him from the dead.
If you can't swallow that, we don't worship the same God.
2 comments:
100% agreement.
"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)
"Do other religions know the true God? Here is the test: Do they reject Jesus as the only Savior for sinners who was crucified and reaised by God from the dead? If they do, they do not know God in a saving way." (Piper, Don't Waste Your Life)
How does believing different things about the same Being somehow split Him in two?
To know and to have knowledge of is the difference here.
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