Muslims claim to respect Jesus Christ as one of God's prophets, but the Jesus that Muslims believe and respect is a different Jesus from what The Christian Scriptures (The Bible) reveals. And it is the Jesus of the Christian Scriptures that all men will face on Judgment Day! The Muslims believe that Jesus was just a great and holy man, but not the uniquely divine Son of God who created all life and the universe as the Christian Scriptures teach. Jesus Christ Himself, in the Christian Scriptures, claims to be uniquely divine and the Son of God.
By Babu G. Ranganathan
This the Muslims will not accept. The Muslims sincerely believe they are honoring Jesus but they are sincerely wrong as long as they refuse to accept Jesus Christ as the Supreme Lord and Savior. Calling two different persons the same name doesn't make them the same. The Jesus of the Koran is not the Jesus of the Bible!
The Muslims claim that the Christian Bible has been changed, but all the evidence from hundreds of ancient manuscripts show that the message of the Bible has not been changed but, instead, remarkably and substantively preserved through centuries. The present Christian New Testament revelation of Jesus Christ is completely trustworthy. Muslims believe that God's original revelation to Jews was perverted and changed, which means Muslims are implying that God was incapable or unwilling to preserve His word.
Unlike the Koran, the Christian Scriptures were written over a span of thousands of years, and numerous ancient manuscripts of both Old and New Testaments show that the Christian Bible we have today is completely reliable, unchanged in any substantive way. God preserved the Judeo-Christian Scriptures remarkably in spite of all that time and human handling of His word.
The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ was uniquely the Son of God, both completely divine and completely human, that He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, and died a cruel death on a Roman Cross to pay the full penalty for the sins of men, and who bodily rose from the grave.
The Christian Scriptures teach that no human being can earn or merit salvation no matter how many good works are done, that all our righteousness is filthy rags in God's infinitely holy sight and falls infinitely short of the perfection in thoughts, words, and deeds that God requires from every life. The Christian Scriptures teach that only through faith in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can a person be freely forgiven by God of all his sins. The Christian will never be perfect in this life, but God Himself will dwell within the true Christian and cause the Christian to do good works out of genuine love for his God and his fellow man. God can be just in freely forgiving our sins when we come to Christ because His Son Jesus Christ paid the full price of all sins and iniquities.
How could Jesus take the guilt and blame for sins we have committed? The arrangement was made in eternity past between the Father and the Son for the Son to take the responsibility for the moral actions of all those whom the Father gave the Son from every nation and tribe in the world. God has a right to His own jurisprudence!
Just as a co-signer to a loan takes the responsibility to pay someone's else's debt should the loan go into default so too Christ took the legal and moral responsibility of debt for the sins of mankind and we are all sinners and we all have an infinite moral and spiritual debt before an infinitely holy God that we can never be able to fully pay through anything that we can do.
Even Muslims will accept the fact that the first man, Adam, took the moral responsibility for the whole human race in his act of disobeying God's command not to eat of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. So, why should not Jesus Christ be able to take the moral responsibility of those who will be saved through His perfect obedience to God the Father.
The Bible says, "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" (John 3:16, KJV).
I encourage all Muslims, and everyone, to read the Gospel of John in the New Testament.
Readers are encouraged to read the author's Internet article "Christ Was Begotten, Not Created."
The author, Babu G. Ranganathan, has his bachelor's degree with concentrations in theology and biology and has been recognized for his articles on religion and science in the 24th edition of Marquis "Who's Who in The East."