Thoughts On God's Forgiveness #4

Kasham asks, So, if I am forgiven by Jesus of all my sin then I can do anything I want and it won't matter, I'll still enter Paradise.

Some of the first Christians also were confused on this very matter and actually claimed what you say to be true. They were severely chastised and rebuked for this. In Romans 6:1-6 we read,

1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

"5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--

This is very simple for a Christian to understand. It is what our faith is built on. This why the New Testament declares of Jesus, "that there is no other name in heaven and on earth by which we must be saved."

A good, sincere and faithful Christian will, by their free choice, try to please God in all things....to be obedient to his commandments (especially the command to Love God and Love Neighbor)...and to avoid the things that might tempt them to turn astray.

Christians need not do this in order to enter Paradise....but because they have already received the promise of God that Jesus Christ has saved them from their sin. Christians live good lives out of gratitude for what God has already done for them.

This is why Christians are not "fatalists" (at least not as regards salvation). Christians are, or ought to be, optimists as regards to their eternal destination because, as the Bible tells us, our hope is "certain." Why? Because,

"God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" (Numbers 23:19)

Through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God has promised me eternal life. (John 3:16) I, for one, am happy to hold God to his Word!

Thoughts On God's Forgiveness #3

Ghazan,

The Muslim and Christian view of God/Allah is, in fact, very similar. The names of God as recited in your faith (a traditional list with commentary can be found here) are all acceptable to Jews and Christians as descriptive of God's nature.

Yes, of course God is a merciful and a forgiving God. But God is also a holy God; pure and spotless and perfect in righteousness. None of us come close to this. We all fall short of the glory of God. This is what Christians call sin...falling short of the holiness that we were created to enjoy.

Besides the nature and person of Jesus Christ, one of the biggest differences between Muslims and Christians is how we believe God deals with our sin.

You, Ghazan, and Kashan before you, have described the relationship between our sin and the attitude of our heart towards God. Christians agree with this, too. When we turn away from our sinful nature and set our eyes on loving, serving and pleasing God, this is what we call "repentence." For Christians, this is the first step a person takes in faith....it is a step that is necessary for a person to receive the assurance of God's forgiveness and salvation.

The difference between us is that you state that God can forgive who he pleases.... God declares that he will forgive the sins of a man or woman whose heart is inclined towards him......whose goodness and righteousness exceeds their sin.

Chrisitians also believe this. But we also recognize something more. Our sin may have been forgiven but we are still sinners. No matter how good and righteous we may be, we will still carry that sinful part of us into Paradise where we will, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, begin the fall of humanity all over again by sinning again.

This raises an interesting question: If Adam and Eve were righteous prophets and yet sinned against God, why did God expel them from his presence. Why did God not simply forgive them in the same way that you believe God will forgive you and let them back into the garden?

The reason is that, once back in the garden, they would have sinned again.....and again....and again....

Sin was imbedded in Adam and Eve in the same way it is embedded in us today....like a malignant tumor that eats at us and eventually brings death to us....even if 80-90% of the rest of our body is healthy and fit.....Yet because of the tumor, we will still die, just as a mostly righteous man will also die because of the sin that is in him. No matter how small the sin, it will still be enough to kill him.

Forgiveness was not enough. God's holiness and perfect righteousness requires that we also be holy and righteousness if we are to ever stand in his presence in Paradise. Holy and unholy, righteous and unrighteous cannot stand side by side.

This is why Christians believe that Jesus is the Savior of the World. At the time of his baptism, John the Baptist prophesied of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Note that Jesus does not just take away the sins of the world, the bad things that we do....John declares that Jesus takes away the SIN of the world....Sin itself is taken away.

Forgiving a sin is like treating a symptom of a disease. What Jesus did was to remove the disease itself. Jesus cured us of sin. He removed it from us. Where did the sin go? The Injil tells us that Jesus took our sin upon himself and died with it.

When, in resurrection, we stand before God in judgement, the risen Jesus will stand alongside us and declare us to be not only forgiven but cleansed and purified totally and completely so that in holiness and righteousness we can live with God forever.

You ask, If Jesus took our sin, then he died a sinner and therefore he was neither a prophet nor was he sinless. How can this be?

My answer: Being righteous and holy, Jesus was immune to sin. He could embrace it and take to himself but it could not infect him. When he died on the cross, the sin, along with his body, died and was buried with him in the tomb. When he arose from the dead, the sin remained in the tomb (so to speak) dead and buried forever.

How can Jesus be righteous and holy? No human being can be righteous, holy and good. Jesus himself said so. When someone once called him, "Good teacher," Jesus replied by saying, "Why do you call me 'good?' There is only One who is "good." (meaning God). It is important to note that nowhere in this teaching does Jesus tell the man that he was wrong to call Jesus "good." He just wanted the man to know what he had unwittingly done, he had declared Jesus to be holy, righteous and good as only God can be holy, righteous and good.

Either Jesus was a sinner like you and me, and therefore could not bear our sin on the cross (in which case we are not saved) or else he was holy, righteous and good as only God can be holy, righteous and good....in which case he is not only our Savior but is also our Lord. This is exactly what Jesus taught his followers when he said, "I and the Father are One." And again, "He who has seen me has seen the Father."

This is what every Christian confesses to believe when they claim Jesus to be their Lord and Savior.

Islam, however, does not offer a Savior.

God may indeed forgive your sins in the final judgement, Ghazan, but that forgiveness will not make you holy, righteous or spiritually clean. How do you think you can enter Paradise in the presence of God and take sin along with you? Is Paradise populated by millions of people who are "mostly good" but still doing "just a few" evil things against God and one another from time to time? How can a holy and righteous God tolerate such rebellion within his people. Surely they all will be cast out just like Adam and Eve were in the beginning.

Thoughts On the Doctrine of the Trinity

(On a more serious note, it seems that the concept of the Trinity is the major stumbling block between Christians, Jews and Muslims.)

Here is a thought about the concept of the Trinity. First of all we must dismiss the argument that the idea of the Trinity is absurd or illogical.

Pretend I am holding a dime in my hand. There is just one dime. Yet it also has a "heads" and a "tails" as well. One dime yet two surfaces. How can one dime be two different things? This would easily fit in with the Torah and Prophets who teach that God is present with us by the Holy Spirit. Clearly God cannot be present with us in his fullness lest be be destroyed, yet, by his Spirit, that which is truly God can indeed be "with us."

The coin is both heads and tails. But the coin has one more surface as well: its edge. How can one coin have three parts? Well, it is obvious that it does. If you remove any one of the parts you are left without a coin. The three parts are inseparable from the coin. As long as the coin has existed there have been these three parts. The "heads" is just as much the "coin" as is the "tails" and the "edge." Each part is fully and only composed of the unique essence of the coin.

Yet each of the three parts is unique and distinct from the other two parts.

This is what Christians mean when we say that we believe in One God in Three "Persons," Father, Son & Holy Spirit. The Father is God; the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. Yet each is distinct in their own right.

The prophets teach us that "God is not a man." This means that God is not to be thought of as we would think of a person. God is somehow more than singleness. Genesis tells us that God created Man in the image of God...not "Man" in the sense of one person, but in the combined sense of "Male and Female God created them."

The word often used for God in Hebrew is "el" which is singular. "One God." But the word is also used in its plural form, "elohim," to describe God. Not that there are more than one God but that the very nature and substance of God is somehow plural.

Islam denies this. Christianity affirms it. We also affirm that the eternal person of God that we call "the Son" entered this world in human flesh ("incarnate") and, in his human form, suffered and died for our sins and rose again to life to demonstrate God's power over sin and death, assuring us those who believe that we, too, shall experience resurrection and the gift (not earned, but given) of eternal life.

Folks are free to reject the idea that God is a Trinity of Persons but it would be a clear mistake to insist that the concept is illogical or absurd. It is, in fact, more illogical and absurd to require that God's nature be, of necessity, a singularity in some anthropomorphic sense. The very nature of God is shrouded in mystery. We can only glimpse God as God chooses to reveal himself to us. Everything else is guessing.

Aloha

PS I am not debating or trying to prove anything here...just explaining.

Thoughts On God's Forgiveness #2

Kashan says "it is not true" that Jesus took our sins because we must bear our own burdens.

In the Christian faith this is not true. And it is not because of Paul. Jesus himself says, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Here Jesus clearly tells us that when we are yoked with him he will bear the burden that we are not able to carry ourselves. This burden is, of course, sin.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied that a day would come when there would be one of whom it would be said,

"Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." Isaiah 53

The holiest day in Judaism is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, God commanded that the blood of a sacrificed goat be sprinkled on the people as a sign of the forgiveness of their sin (the goat symbolicaly suffered on the people's behalf for their sins.) On a second goat, by the laying on of hands, the sins of the people were symbolically laid upon the animal, which was then set loose to carry the sins away into the wilderness.

God teaches us clearly that we are not able to carry the burden of sins by ourselves. For our sins to be forgiven God requires "atonement" or the payment of a price by means of suffering or sacrifice. No mere animal is sufficient for this, of course, and no mere human can endure the suffering or, in righteousness, pay the price for the atonement of the sins of the world. God alone, who is Life and Light is able to bear that suffering and provide the righteousness needed to satisfy the forgiveness of sin.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ was without sin (something that God and his prophets have taught us is not possible for any mere human to accomplish) and took our sins upon himself on the cross so that we might be relieved of the unbearable burden of them.

Jesus himself "forgave sin" during his ministry....something that no "prophet" has ever done before or since. Only God can forgive sins that offend God.

Christians believe that in Jesus Christ, God revealed his very self to us. Jesus was, as the Injil itself tells us (again quoting from Isaiah), that Jesus was Immanuel...a title that means, "God with us."

When asked if he was the "Christ (Messiah), the Son of the Most High God," Jesus replied, "I AM." A response that not only affirms the answer to the question but also claims for himself the Divine name of God revealed to Moses.

I suppose the the prophets, the Injil and Jesus, himself, were completely wrong on this point...which would mean that they were not prophets at all. The alternative is that Jesus was who he was prophesied to be and that he was who he claimed to be.

If Jesus does not fulfill God's requirement for the atonement of our sins by a sinless "other" then who does? If there is no one to fulfill this requirement then we are still in our sins and as righteous as a bunch of "filthy rags" (Isaiah again).

That does not bode well for a final judgement.

This post is too long already. I'll add something on the Trinity shortly and separately.

Aloha

Thoughts On God & God's Forgiveness #1

I wrote the article that started this thread. I am a Christian Pastor in Hawaii. I have Muslim friends. I am part of the Hawaii Multi-Faith Leadership Forum that includes the President of the Hawaii Muslim Association/Mosque President and am friends with the Muslim School Headmaster who I have twice invited to share what Musllims believe with my adult Sunday School class (he as also proofed the Islam portion of my World Religions material and affirmed it as accurate). I correspond on matters related to Islam with a Muslim Professor at a Major American University. I have read the Qur'an twice(yes, I spell it Qur'an...sorry Noanchor...just like I spell Aqaba and Qatar properly) in two English translations and refer to it in study often. I do not believe that I have the integrity to speak about another person's faith unless I personally know it as well or better than most believers.

Having said that, I must express my personal belief that the God of Islam is distant, impersonal and unreachable. The God revealed to us in the Old Testament and more clearly in the Injil is near to us by his Holy Spirit, personal in his desire to love and be loved and reachable through the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascention of his eternal Son, Jesus Christ.

From this I conclude that either the Muslim concept of God is a regressive one (such as is found in American Unitarianism) or is simply a different God altogether from the God of Abraham, David and Jesus.

The Christian God is both perfectly merciful (in forgiving our sins) and perfectly holy and just (in requiring penalty for our sin).

The Muslim God can neither be perfectly merciful mor perfectly holy or just. For at judgment, Allah only forgives the sins of those whose righteousness exceeds their sin (refusing to extend mercy to those whose sins exceed their righteousness) and also fails to impose any penalty for the sins committed by those whose righteousness exceeds their sin.

This is as though a Judge in a court of law told a convicted child molester, "Well, you have done more good things than bad things in your life so I'm going to let you go free. Your sin? Forgetaboutit. No Penalty. Next case."Such a God may be merciful to some but, in so doing, makes a mockery of justice and permits the unchanged sinner into Paradise along with their sin.

For the sake of brevity, one final thought. If Islam is so willing, open and confident in its intellectual, historical and spiritual superiority, why are other faiths banned, restricted or persecuted in Muslim countries? What are they afraid of? If Islam is so "open" and "civilized" why does it impose the death penalty (shirk) on those who, of their own free will, desire to convert to another faith?

I find it ironic that this dialogue on the relative merits of Islam and Christianity are taking place in a forum and a country where the freedom to do so is grounded in the Christian principals of individual live, freedom and the pursuit of happiness and truth.

This dialogue could not even take place in a Muslim nation, especially one governed by Sharia.In this manner the superiority of Islam is demonstrated by its denial of the very rights that we are here enjoying.Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me.

He also said, You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

May it be so. Insha Allah. Salaam.