The Deity of Jesus and Islamic Objections

Islam elevates Jesus to a very high degree, even calling him "righteous" when Mohammed is not called righteous. Yet, Islam does not accept the deity of Jesus. This sermon explores the common objections to the biblical claim about the divinity of Jesus.

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All right. Good morning, good evening, wherever you are. So today we're going to do the deity of Jesus Christ versus Islamic objections. I've divided this into three parts. We will look first at what does the Quran say about Jesus. Then we will look at what Jesus says about himself. And then we will look at Muslim objections and the responses to those objections. So first let's look at what the what does the Quran say about Jesus? The Quran says a lot about Jesus. It says that Jesus is a great prophet, born of a virgin, performing miracles, but critically that he's not divine and there and not crucified. So what I did is because I'm a very visual learner, I want to see charts and I learn better when it's more when it's drawn out. So I made a chart of the different places in the Quran where Jesus is mentioned. Let me just take this out for just a second. The Quran says that Jesus is the Son of Mary, the Quran says that he's the Messiah, he's a messenger of God, he's a prophet, he's a word of God, he's a spirit from God, he's the sign for humanity, he's a servant of God, he's a blessed one, he's honorable, he's an example of righteous, an example of the pattern of mercy. And in fact, it says that anyone who believes that Jesus is divine will go to hell. So in in Surah 572, this is what it says certainly they disbelieve who say, Surely Allah, He is the Messiah, son of Mariam. And the Messiah said, O children of Israel, serve Allah, my Lord, and your Lord. Whoever associates others with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden, and his abode is the fire, and there shall be no helpers for the unjust. So obviously, this is a major point of difference. Obviously, there is there are similarities between Islam and Christianity because of the monotheism part, but this is a major point of difference because the Christian faith says that if you want to be a Christian, you need to believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And the Muslim faith says the exact opposite. So, second, let's look at what Jesus says about himself. What did Jesus say about himself? Did he see himself as more than just a human being and more than a prophet? So again, I've made another chart to see what Jesus says about himself. And all throughout the Gospels, he considers himself able to forgive sins. He's worthy of worship. He has the authority to heal. He demands the honor that is due to God. He hears and answers prayers made in made in his name. He has ransomed, ransoms people through death. He has he's pre-existent. He's acknowledged as God. He's a king of another realm. He's of a heavenly origin. He's the judge on the day of judgment. He is the king of an eternal kingdom. He's he's a judge of mankind. He grants salvation. He has elected those who will be saved. He's a returning master. He's the heir of God's throne, as we shall see later. And he is identified as a son of man in Daniel chapter 7. So there's a lot of things that Jesus says about himself that is more than just a prophet. Now, what we haven't looked at is what the Bible says about Jesus. We didn't look at that yet. We are just looking at what Jesus thinks about himself. And he thinks of himself as a divine being, something that the Quran does not believe. There is actually a very high Christology very early on, and we will look at the evidence of that here in a few minutes. So we looked at what the Quran says about Jesus, and we looked at what Jesus says about himself in the Gospels. And third, where we'll spend most of our time, we will look at the Muslim objections. And so I've divided the Muslim objections into three parts. First, we will look at the fact that the claim that the Bible does not claim the deity of Jesus, then the Bible denies the deity of Jesus. And thirdly, Jesus does not claim to be God. Jesus does not claim to be God. So first let's look at the Bible does not claim the deity of Jesus. Now the Quran says that Jesus never claimed to be divine, and that it was after his ascension that people made him God. So in Ra 516 and 17, it says, And beware the day when Allah will say, O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah? He will say, Exalted are you. It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said, you would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within yourself. Indeed, it is you who is a knower of the unseen. I said not to them, except what you commanded me, to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. And I was a witness over them as long as I was among them. But when you took me up, you were the observer over them, and you are over all things witness. So the view in Islam is that Jesus himself did not claim to be God, but that later events caused that to happen. And the three big events that they point to is number one, they point to Roman paganism, where the gods had their sons who were demigods. And that cultural phenomenon, they say, contributed to this idea that Jesus was God and the Son of God. And then they blame the Council of Nicaea as being responsible for endorsing Jesus as God. But the person that they blame the most for making Jesus God when he did not claim to be God is the Apostle Paul. And for this reason, Muslims do not like Paul because they say that Jesus did not claim to be God, and it was Paul who came afterward who made Jesus into a God through his epistles. Alright, so what is the response to that objection? The response is that the New Testament does teach that Jesus is God. I'm just gonna run through some examples. There are so many examples. Let me give you two. In 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter says, Our God and Savior Jesus Christ. In Titus chapter 2, verse 13, it says, Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. And so then there'll be I'm sorry. Then there'll be another objection, and the objection will be the Quran agrees that the Bible or the that the angel, the gospel, was revealed as the word of God. And they claim that the gospels do not claim that Jesus is God. Okay, so this is a very interesting point that the Quran accepts the revelation of the Gospels and the Torah as the Word of God. And let me give you some verses 3, 3 to 4. I'm not gonna read it. 544 and 546 all say that the gospel and the Torah is acceptable as the revealed word of God. Now, this is extremely problematic for Muslims, because if you fully follow the Quran, it means that you've also got to follow the Gospels because the Quran endorses the Gospels. And if you follow the Gospels, it's obviously there that Jesus is God and the Gospel writers indicate that he is God. So if you follow the Quran, you have got to follow the Gospels, which then refutes the Quran. But if you reject the Gospels, then you're rejecting the Quran. So this is a fantastic point that we can make with our Muslim friends, where we can say, since your Quran has acknowledged that the Gospels are the revealed word of God, why don't you read the gospel? Here is the gospel of John for you. Here's the gospel of whatever, Mark or whatever for you, so that you can read. That's interesting because if I were preaching a religion, if I was, it's interesting that Muhammad did this when he was trying to counter the Christian faith with another religion. If I were preaching a new religion that was against the Christian faith, I would not start by saying that the gospels are true. That was the one portion of scripture I would not agree on. I would pick something else in the Bible. Some tiny book like Obadiayam or something where you know it's not a direct thing, but you pick the Gospels, and now you are, you've got to contend with what the Gospel says. The Quran says the objection is that in the Gospel there is no mention of Jesus as a deity. Let's give some, let's give some responses. The Gospel of John claims the deity of Jesus. And just to make it easy, I made a chart where all the times that the Gospel of John says that Jesus is God. It's so clear. John chapter 1 again, John chapter 3, chapter 5, chapter 8 twice, chapter 10, chapter 11, chapter 14, three times, chapter 17, chapter 18, chapter 20, and the whole gospel from beginning to end presents Jesus as fully divine, equal with the Father in name, glory, authority, and works. The Gospel of John clearly shows that Jesus is divine. So in your discussion with the Muslim, you can point to a couple of verses from the Quran that acknowledges the validity of the Gospels of the Injo, and then give them the verses from the Gospel of John. But then they may have another objection. And that objection is John was written 60 years after the events. And Jesus is not God in the earlier writings. This was a claim. So Bart Ehrman is a staunch opponent of the Christian faith. He was a theologian who became a strong opponent of the Christian faith. And he says that Jesus is not God in the earlier writings. So here are some responses if that becomes the objection. I'll give you four responses. First is that there's a major problem if you deny the message of John, because there are too many verses that are explicit in their claims of the divinity of Jesus. In fact, the main purpose of the book at the last verse of John chapter 20 says that the purpose of the book is to show Jesus as the Son of God. And so if you reject that, if you reject the Gospel of John, you're rejecting a major portion. But the other problem, if Muslims deny the message of John, as we shall see later, some of the objections that they bring against the deity of Christ is from the Gospel of John. So you cannot bring an objection from the Gospel of John and ignore all the other claims of deity that is in the Gospel of John. But let's do a second response. The earliest Gospel is Mark, is the deity of Christ seen in Mark. Not only does Mark present Jesus as divine, but the whole point of Mark from beginning to end is to show that Jesus in the New Testament is Yahweh from the Old Testament. I've pulled up some references, Mark chapter 1, Mark chapter 2, Jesus forgives a paralyzed man's sins, and that is reflective of Yahweh in the Old Testament, where God or Yahweh is the one that forgives all our iniquities. In Mark chapter 2, Jesus claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath, and every Jew can remember the story from Exodus chapter 20 of how the people of Israel were shuddering before the smoking mountain and they could not come close, and how Moses went up and met the Lord for 40 days and came down and received the Ten Commandments. And here is Jesus claiming to be the Lord of the Sabbath, showing his authority over the Ten Commandments. In Mark chapter 4, Jesus comes a storm, doing what the Psalms say that Yahweh does in Psalm 107. And in Mark chapter 6, Jesus walks on the sea, and in Job, God, Yahweh is the one who has control over the waves. And then we come to the main, to the climax of Mark's gospel. And in the ending of Mark's gospel, we see the trial of Jesus. Now, if you were to ask a church member who's been a Christian for a while, a church member, what is the legal reason why Jesus was sentenced to death? What would you hear? From the Jewish perspective. He blasphemed. In Mark chapter 14, 55. Witnesses come, as we know, the high priest asked the identity of Jesus, and Jesus speaks. And after Jesus speaks, the high priest condemned him for death by blasphemy. What did Jesus say? He said, He was asked, Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And obviously, it is more powerful for somebody who knows the context, like the high priest did, and his reaction reflected what he understood about what Jesus said. Because Jesus referenced two Old Testament passages. The first is Daniel chapter 7. I'm not going to read it. And it says that the Son of Man was given dominion and a glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, languages should serve him. So he is going to be the king of an everlasting kingdom. And the second one is that in Psalm 110, verse 1, where the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until my I make an enemy your footstool. So God, Jesus says that he is sharing sovereignty with God, and he makes this twofold reference, claiming the privileges and position of Yahweh, and that explains the reaction of the high priest. So Mark in the entire gospel shows the deity of Jesus. But is there something earlier than Mark? Yes, if we look at the writings of Paul, we see the divinity of Jesus. Now much of the writings of Paul came before the book of Mark. And so I've got a chart to show the datings of each book. Obviously, there are early and late proposals, and that's because of it depends on whether I think that the New Testament texts refer to the temple's destruction in AD 70. And so I made this chart just to show you that I didn't make up these dates. I made this chart using these four books. Okay. And let me come back to the chart. So Mark is here. It's obviously a little down here because I took the average of the common dates. Okay, but at least we know that Corinthians and Romans were written before Mark. Because I'm gonna give you two verses from Pauline writing that show that show the deity of Jesus. So the deity of Jesus was taught by Christians, by Paul, before the gospel of Mark. The first one is Romans chapter 9, verse 5. And it says, To him, to them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all. And then I want to look at another verse, which is an absolutely fascinating verse because what Paul does with this is stunning. In 1 Corinthians chapter 8, verses 4 through 6, and the context of the verse has nothing to do with the deity of Jesus. And yet Paul just slides this fact about the deity of Jesus. The context is about food sacrificed to idols. And he says, We know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. But although there may be gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods, many lords, yes, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Now, the Jewish proclamation of the Shahad, of the Shema, that God is one, is like the Islamic proclamation of the Shahada, saying that Allah is one and Muhammad is his prophet, is his messenger. Now, what Paul does here, he takes the Jewish Shema, which is understood to be that there is no God but one, he sticks on to that and yet he splits it into two. He takes the Jewish Seimah of one God and he casts it as two persons, as God the Father and Jesus Christ, in that one verse. How about is there any evidence of the deity of Jesus before Pauline writings? Now, the most important text to study this is in Philippians chapter 2. I'm not going to read the whole text, and that is that is Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 to 6. And this text has the highest Christology. It talks about the pre-existence of Jesus as God. It talks about his decision making prior to the incarnation, where he laid aside his glory. It talks about his choice in the incarnation. It talks about the future when his lordship will be acknowledged. And so the lordship of Jesus Christ is similar to the wording here of a monotheistic Old Testament passage. And that passage is in Isaiah chapter 45, where it says, To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance, and that me is Yahweh. So even in the earliest passages, and this passage is one of the earliest passages. Paul didn't write this, he merely copied this. When you look at the grammar and the vocabulary, it is not from Paul. There are words in this hymn that is not there in any of the rest of the Greek New Testament. And the vocabulary is so different than anything else in the Greek New Testament. And the scholarly consensus is that this passage is dated in the mid-30s AD, which makes it five years, within five years of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So we can safely and comprehensively quell the accusation that the Bible does not claim the deity of Jesus. Second, let's look at the accusation that the Bible denies the deity of Jesus. And Muslims or Islam says this in two ways. It says that Jesus is inferior to the Father. And there are several verses that they use from the Bible to show that Jesus is inferior to the Father. And that is in John chapter 17, verse 3 says that Jesus was sent by the Father. And the idea is that if Jesus is sent, the one who is Sent is inferior and separate than the one sending. And this verse sounds like the Islamic Shahada, which says, uh, it says about the one God and the messenger. They also point to John chapter 14, verse 28, which says, where Jesus said, The Father is greater than I. How can Jesus be God if the Father is greater? And it shows that Jesus is both separate and inferior to the Father. Now you notice that now, as I said earlier, some of the objections that are brought to a studied Muslim is from the Gospel of John. And this is what I was talking about earlier. If you're going to bring objections from the Gospel of John, then you need to accept the rest of the stuff that the Gospel of John says, especially the deity part of it. They also claim this verse, John, about the fact that God is good, where Jesus says, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone, to the rich young ruler. So, how do we respond to this accusation? We respond by saying that we need to examine biblical verses through the Christian worldview. And the Christian worldview is a monotheistic Trinitarian concept of God with multiple persons. The problem is when you interpret the Bible, the biblical verses, through the Islamic worldview, which doesn't have a Trinitarian concept. And when you do that, of course, it does look like Jesus is inferior and a separate being than the Father. But if you look at it through the Christian worldview, it makes sense. The Christian model is a monotheistic model with multiple persons. In this model, the father is greater than Jesus, and Jesus doesn't do anything other than the will of the Father, and yet both Jesus and the Father are one. So there's a difference between office and essence. A fantastic illustration that I read, I'm going to share, is by Nabil Kureshi, where he distinguished between the office and essence. And he said, compare a regular citizen to the president. In terms of the office, the president is greater than the regular citizen. But in terms of essence, the president and the regular citizen are both humans, so they are both the same. That's how it is with God. In terms of office, the father has a different role, a higher office than Jesus, but that does not mean the father is greater in essence. They are both equal in essence. They are both God. Another accusation that's made to show that the Bible denies the deity of Jesus is to say that Jesus is has is has inability and dependence on God. Let me just read a bunch of verses that are usually used to make this accusation. Mark chapter 1, verse 35, it says that Jesus prayed. Mark chapter 4, 10, it says that people should worship only God. In Mark 14, 36, Jesus pleads with the Father to have the cup removed. In John 5, 19, Jesus can do nothing apart from God. Mark 6, 5, Jesus could not do miracles in Nazareth. And Mark 13, 32, Jesus did not know when he would return. So it shows the inability of Jesus and his dependence on the Father, and therefore the claim is he can't be God. How do we respond to this? We respond by saying that the Christian doctrine of the person of Christ includes the hypostatic union, where Jesus had a divine nature and he was fully God, and he had a human nature, and he was fully man. In line with his human nature, he was restricted by his humanness. And when the gospel writer writes the restrictive aspects, like he could not do miracles in Nazareth, or he did not know when he was going to come back, he was talking about the human part of Jesus, not about the divine part of Jesus. And so, because of his humanness, he could grow in wisdom and stature. Obviously, the divine, the fully divine Jesus does not need to grow in wisdom and stature. So we looked at the claim that the Bible does not claim the deity of Jesus. We looked at the claim that the Bible denies the deity of Jesus. And third, let's look at the claim that Jesus does not directly claim to be God. And this is the argument that's given. In Isaiah chapter 45, verse 5, in the Old Testament, God the Father claims to be God multiple times, as in this verse where he says, I am the Lord. But we don't see that in the New Testament, where Jesus says, I am the Lord, or I am Yahweh, or I am the Messiah, or those repetitive statements that are seen in the Old Testament. So the Muslim claim is that Jesus did not directly claim to be God. If Jesus is the same God as the Old Testament, why doesn't he just make the same overt claims? In fact, there was an occasion where Jesus could have made the claim, is the accusation, but he didn't. In John chapter 10, they accuse him of saying that he is a son of God. And this was a good example or good occasion, they claim that Jesus could have said, Yes, I am the Son of God. Instead, what Jesus does is that he corrects them and explains that many people are called gods in the Old Testament. And so there's nothing wrong when he calls himself God's son. And so the accusation is if he were God, why just why didn't he just claim to be God and just state it? When, especially when he had the opportunity. Adam has been called son of God, David was called son of God, Solomon was called son of God, in the angels were called sons of God, in Genesis 2, and in the New Testament, we say we are told that we can become children of God. So son of God is a generic phrase, and Jesus was just a generic son of God. And they also point to his humanity and his preferred title of son of man, where he ate, he wept, he slept, he hungered, he thirsted, he was tired, and all that shows his humanness, and his preferred title as son of man shows that Jesus was just a human and not God. So I'm gonna respond, I'm gonna give five responses to this, and then we'll be done with this section of our session. How do we respond to the claim that Jesus does not directly claim to be divine? Five responses. One is the issue of the messianic secret. Jesus wanted to keep his identity secret for a while. When it wasn't secret, the crowds got excited and he could not go to certain towns because he wasn't, the crowds were too overwhelming. And when it wasn't kept a secret, the the religious leaders and the elite wanted to kill him. They were plotting to kill them. So Jesus did not want to die before the appointed time, and he knew exactly what would happen, and he did not want to die earlier than he had to. And when it was time, as in Luke chapter 9, verse 51, it says that he set his face toward Jerusalem. So from that point on, he knew it was time, and he was not trying to hide his messiahship. So first is the messianic secret, second is the unique son of God. So yes, there is a generic son of God, but Jesus is not that generic son of God. In 1 John chapter 4, verses 9 and 10, it says, Jesus, the Son is sent as a manifestation of God's love and as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And no other son has this role. If you read John's Gospel in the Hebrews, the Son is worshipped, identified as creator, addressed as God, and that goes beyond just metaphorical sonship. Third response is the third person text narrative. The third person text narrative. Yes, Jesus did not say directly that he is God, but in the third person, it is indicated that Jesus is God throughout the Gospels. Let me give you just some references from the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is identified as the Son of God in chapter 1. God declares Jesus as a son, a demon says Jesus is the son, and then so on. There is a third person declaration of the deity of Jesus. Now to go a little bit on the offense rather than just playing defense, is to ask a Muslim, do you think that Jesus is the Messiah? And of course they're gonna say yes, Jesus is the Messiah. They have to because the Quran says it. So I've got some verses to show you where the Quran says it in Quran 345, 4157, 4171, and 572. It all says that Jesus is the Messiah. So if you ask a Muslim, is Jesus the Messiah? They will say yes. And they have to because the Quran says so. Is there a direct quote in the Quran where Jesus says, I am the Messiah? No, there is no direct quote. So even without a direct quote, they are willing to believe that Jesus is the Messiah from a third person narrative. So you don't need a direct quote, you just need a reliable third-person narrative to believe something. A fourth response is the trial of Jesus. We have looked at this already, so we're not going to look at it. It's at the trial of Jesus that Jesus mentions that he is the Messiah and the Son of God. And the fifth one is that one time is good enough. Both Muslims and Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But where did Jesus claim to be the Messiah? He claimed it during his trial. He claimed it one time publicly. That's the only time publicly that he did. Of course, when he talked about it with the Samaritan woman, that was private. So it was not a public declaration. When he talked about it with the disciples at Peter's confession of Christ at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus told him this was not revealed by man, but this was revealed by God. So this was the only public announcement where Jesus says that he is the Messiah. And yet, even though there's only one time publicly that Jesus said it, Muslims are willing to believe that Jesus is the Messiah based on one time. There's one time, at the same time, at the trial of Jesus, Jesus also said that he was God. He showed through the Daniel chapter 7, Son of Man, he showed that he is God. If one time is good enough for you to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, one time is also good enough for you to believe that Jesus is God. Jesus as God in the Bible is in the Bible from beginning to end. And for a true Muslim seeker, the evidence should be clear.