Who cares what others believe.
1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:
3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:
5. The third day he rose again from the dead:
6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
7. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead:
8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:
9. I believe in the Holy Catholic church: the Communion of Saints:
10. The forgiveness of sins:
1l. The resurrection of the body:
12. And the life everlasting. Amen.
Why would anyone besides a muslim even MENTION The Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of The Holy Trinity; and any part of islam, in the same sentence?
Admittedly, I only skimmed this because of its length.
Considering his background and worldview, the author did some decent research to know that Jesus is the new Adam and has only one Father... God. However, the basic thrust of the article is an incomplete understanding of Christ’s sacrifice.
Yes, He died for us. He died to redeem us. However, God is not put into a box. The Old Testament expectations of the Christ were of one who would provide temporal relief for Israel. But God did something new and entirely unexpected with Jesus...
The story begins with an understanding of the meaning of “covenant.” Many see Jesus on the Cross and think in juridical terms (condemned by our sins) or even contractual terms (He paid the price), and these are true... but insufficient. He is the sacrificial offering of the New Covenant. Covenant differs from contract as much as marriage differs from prostitution. One is family-making, the other is a business arrangement.
Since our fall in the Garden of Eden, God has been rebuilding His Family... following the same model as our Creation. In the Creation account, He worked by days fixing the conditions of this new reality (it was taho wabahu— without form and void). He started by providing first the form and second the inhabitants. In the first three days, He separated light from dark (day one), separated the waters above and below (day two) and gave us dry land with vegetation (day three). He then filled these realms; sun and moon (day four), birds and fish (day five), and animals and man (day six). He rested on the seventh day not out of fatigue but to mark his creation with a covenant... the number seven is a covenantal number. We broke this covenant through disobedience. While some see Original Sin as a stain passed down, it may be better understood as something we lost and could not regain ourselves. We lost our covenantal relationship with God... our kinship. So God set out to start again...
After the flood, the Earth had form and it wasn’t void. God was rebuilding our covenantal relationship this time. God made His first starting-over covenant with Noah and his family with the seven colors of the rainbow. God then made His family-rebuilding covenant with Abraham in the form of a three-fold promise... the land, a nation and all men blessed through him. God affirmed His covenant with Isaac (because Abraham had another son, Ishmael). God confirmed His covenant again with Jacob (because Isaac thought to pass his blessing through Esau). In these promises, the unbroken bloodline matters in fulfilling God’s promise, but it is God, not the Earthly succession Who confirmed the line His promise would follow. God then began to fulfill these promises... the land through Moses on Sinai, the royal dynasty of David, and all people through Christ on the Cross. Seven covenants just like the seven days of creation.
In each successive covenant, God is growing his family... from the family of Noah to the tribe of Jacob to the Nation under Moses to the Kingdom of David and then all nations under Christ. What was Christ doing on the Cross? He was the sacrificial offering of the New Covenant where man could be rejoined to God’s family. Just as the neighbor kids can’t become part of my family on their own—I have to adopt them—so we couldn’t make ourselves part of God’s family. The New Covenant is a return to our participation in the family life of God! We are given many examples in the Old Testament of family covenants through marriages, adoptions and others. In each, there is a sacrificial offering and sign of the covenant.
Just as we don’t delight in the accomplishments of the neighbor kids, so God did not delight in our vain offerings before our redemption. Now, through Christ, God does delight and reward our efforts. In so many places in the New Testament we find that God will reward us for our deeds. That is because Christ has merited for us the ability to merit from God.
Christ on the Cross was at once Priest offering a sacrifice, the sacrificial Lamb of the New Covenant, and the Bridegroom to His Church. Now, in order to be part of His Family, we are commanded to ‘believe.’ However, ‘believe’ is an action word. It doesn’t mean that we have an intellectual understanding or a feeling... just as my kids believe that school is important for them but it doesn’t do them any good until they actually go to school and participate. If we BELIEVE that Jesus is Christ, then we are to DO the Will of His Father... which begins our life in God’s Family through baptism in His Holy Name.
Christ on the Cross isn’t the end from which there is no more to be done, it is the beginning from which all else is possible. It is more than paying the price for sinners, it is restoring lost family members to the Holy Family of God.
This was far too long to actually read I can only tell you that I worship Jesus Christ as my Savior and am therefore Heaven bound.
I don’t know where muslims are going, that is up to God.
In our suffering we can, if we join it with His Passion and offer it up for the salvation of souls, share in the suffering of Jesus Christ and save countless souls.
Pretty good article, but I don’t think I would use this approach when witnessing to a Muslim audience.
Let’s look at the strengths and weaknesses of Muslims in regards to His Word.
First, they do recognize a supreme God exists. They are on the right track there, but if they stray from that by attributing positions which are unScriptural or not from His Plan, then they may quickly find themselves worshipping a false god or even the Adversary.
Next let’s look at a major weakness of Islam. Fundamentally, Islam has a problem with justice. That problem really is a major point as an intermediate objective in how we describe doctrine to them.
They are correct to say God is free to forgive. What is incorrect is to assume God is able to forgive in an unjust or unrighteous fashion, which would corrupt His Holiness.
One facet the article failed to mention is the doctrine of Imputation. It is significant to understand how God provides a Plan of Salvation for all mankind in a righteous and just fashion, without violating His Holiness.
In His magnificent Plan, Jesus Christ, as the Son of God and the Son of Man, was uniquely qualified to have all of the personal sins of mankind imputed to Him on the Cross. The Cross was then All Judgment (not forgiveness).
Once all sin was judged on the Cross, we still are in a state of condemnation, UNTIL we place faith in Him, and He now being free to righteously and justly recognize us when we face Him and confess our sins,...now He is free to forgive those sins. Once forgiven, He also is free to immediately create our new man, our human spirit now being regenerated in us to form the new man in us.
We are never converted to Christianity by another human, but only by the divine act of God the Holy Spirit creating that human spirit in us. By His volition, also known as His Sovereignty, He is also free to indwell that perfect human spirit as His new dwelling place or temple.
That conversion is a Divine act, not a human act. We don;t have the ability to do it ourselves. We have the ability to believe in Him and place faith in Him, but only He is able to give us eternal life. That life is IMPUTED upon us, just as all the sins of mankind were IMPUTED upon Christ at the Cross.
If God forgives sins WITHOUT that imputation, then He may be righteously accused of unjustly forgiving whom He will.
Remember the Ark of the Covenant with the Mercy Seat in the Tabernacle. 2 Cherubim sat upon it representing His Perfect Holiness. One of the them represented His Perfect Justice, while the other represented His Perfect Righteousness,...together forming His Perfect Holiness.
Whatever was placed on the Mercy Seat between them, His Perfect Justice demanded Perfect Righteousness in Judgment and likewise His Perfect Righteousness demaned Perfect Justice in judgment of what was before them.
If the item was not corrupt it passed judgment, but that which was corrupt was burnt up.
Our Corrupt Sin Nature is likewise handled by the solution in Christ.
Redemption, Atonement, Propitiation, and Reconciliation all must be addressed when dealing with any human missing the mark when living life by His Plan (i.e. missing the target is sin).
The God of Islam, Allah, might be mercifully forgiving, but without God being Propitiated for a wrong done to Him, not by anything He had done or provided, or by anybody with Perfect Holiness able to Redeem humans from our corrupt thinking, or atoning for our sin sacrificially, or reconciling man back to a perfectly righteous and just God,...any such mercifully forgiving god outside those issues is NOT a just or righteous god, hence not the Perfectly Holy God.
The only real question then becomes, do we have faith in Christ as being the one whom God has provided to us so that He might provide us salvation from eternal condemnation with our corrupt nature? The answer is also provided by God to us, simple by a smidgeon more faith than no faith whatsoever in Christ and what He provided us on the Cross.
Warmfights....I say this with respect but this writing sounds like your’re attempting to use the Koran to convert Muslims to Christianity.....several times mentioning a muslim’s belief but then correcting him with what the Koran really states...as if teaching them the Koran to round about bring them to the Christ of Christianity...but correcting them for not knowing what their Koran teaches. Why not simply use God’s word??
I mean no disrespect in saying this...just how it reads to me.
>> “HOW CAN ONE MAN PAY FOR THE SINS OF ANOTHER?” <<
.
Simple: He has to be sinless himself.
No human but Christ has been sinless.
Great post.
“””HOW CAN ONE MAN PAY FOR THE SINS OF ANOTHER?”””
There are many professing Christians who deny original sin. “How can I be held accountable for the sin of one man?” they will ask.
Yet they are willing to accept the righteousness of one man. Or perhaps they really don’t get the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.