Today I want to take the role of a Muslim who is trying to debunk the idea of the deity of Christ. A hallmark teaching of Islam is that Allah hath no son, and Jesus is not God. One of the first things they will do is say, show me in the Bible where Jesus says He is God. This is a great opportunity to take them into the Scriptures.

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

We are not going to answer that today, except to say that there are five times in the Bible that Jesus communicates to the Jews that He is God. They thought that what He said was blasphemy and tried to kill Him for saying it.

I want to look at the arguments that Muslims are now learning to try and prove that Jesus was not God. The Muslim clerics are using their Bible to try and do so. Remember, I am playing the role of a Muslim today, I am not teaching that Jesus is not God, I am presenting their arguments.

God is a Spirit and Jesus had a body and not a Spirit.

Our Reply

Muslims are locked into a one dimensional God. They see Him in a simplistic form – a Spirit. However, a Triune God is complex in form. As both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit he is in Spirit form. As God the Son, he has a physical form with hands and feet.

God is not limited to my ability to understand, He transcends what the finite mind can comprehend.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9)

If God is omnipotent, He has the ability to do what He wants, including being a spirit and having a body of flesh. Perhaps this is why man was made in the image of God, so that God could inhabit flesh and dwell among us.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… (Genesis 1:26)

Christians don’t teach that Jesus is a man who became God, which would be blasphemy. We teach that God became a man and dwelt among us.

…they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:2)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

This is where Jesus took on flesh and became a man, all without losing His deity.

To illustrate that Muslims have a one dimensional view of God I usually use an ancient parable from India of three blind men examining an elephant.

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable”. So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said “This being is like a thick snake”. For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of leather leaf.

Muslims are correct that there is only one God, but if they examine the whole of Biblical teaching on God, they would see that He is more than just the one part that they have examined like the three blind men.

Jesus was subject to God and powerless without God….thus proving he was just a man.

Our Reply

“I can of my own self do nothing….”

As mentioned before, Jesus gave himself as a role model of a son giving submission to the role of the Father. This why he prayed. Read to the following passage to see what the Bible says about this.

Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

It is not beyond God’s omnipotence to do this, nor is God breaking any moral attributes. It is simply surrendering some of His abilities to the Father for the thirty-three years he lived on Earth. He is not God, it is simply saying that for His time on earth, He surrendered some of His rights as God in submission to His Father as a good Son.

I am going to stop here for today, but we will continue tomorrow.