Jews, Christians, and Muslim religions all teach a Messiah. Christians and Muslims both teach and believe in Jesus. All three also teach some form of tithing, that is unless you rightly divide, but that is about as far as it goes.
Christians who think the gospel for today is simply following Jesus are beginning to realize that they are not much different from Muslims who also study about their prophet Jesus. It’s called Chrislam.
Chrislam is the idea that Islam and Christianity are compatible since they both follow Jesus’ teachings.
The Koran and Jesus as the Son of God
To find out if a Islam is compatible with Biblical Christianity, I went to the source and pulled up my digital copy of the Koran. It seemed to me that there was a reason for the millennia long separation. Otherwise, the original Muslims in the 7th century would have just stayed with the local Catholic church.
Not to my surprise I found in Surah 5:72-73 of the Koran:
“They do blaspheme who say: ‘God is Christ the son of Mary.’ But said Christ: ‘O Children of Israel! worship God, my Lord and your Lord.’ Whoever joins other gods with God, – God will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode.”
That’s interesting, because the Bible teaches Jesus being God and Christ.
“For in [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” – Col 2:9
Furthermore, it is even required in 1 John 4:15 to believe Jesus is the Son of God to enter the kingdom with God in Israel’s prophecy program:
“Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” – 1 John 4:15
Meanwhile, the Koran mentions that God does not have a son:
“They say: ‘(God) Most Gracious has begotten a son!’ Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous!” – Surah 19:88-92
For compromising Christianity identifying Jesus as God’s son is a semantic battle. After all, “are we not all sons of God?” For those who believe the gospel is being a Jesus-follower then why not join hands with other Jesus-followers? But the gospel is not being a Jesus-follower.
The Koran and the Gospel
The gospel concerns the mystery of Christ about his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection for the free justification of all that believe.
This is where it really gets problematic since Muslims do not believe that Jesus was ever crucified let alone resurrected for free justification (Surah 4:157).
Inevitably, these parts of the Koran or the Bible are ignored or explained away as less important. It is impossible to be a Chrislamist without denying the inerrancy of God’s word.
The Failure to Rightly Divide
When Chrislam was invented in Nigeria in the 1980s, the Muslim teachers saw similarities of each religion in studying Matthew-John. Yet, Matthew-John does not reveal the preaching of the cross which is the core of Biblical salvation. The mystery of Christ was first revealed to the apostle Paul.
Christians who don’t rightly divide the narratives from Paul’s epistles fall into the same error.
It is not enough to teach or believe in Jesus. What matters is how Jesus is taught (2 Cor 11:4). The Bible instructs us to teach Jesus according to the revelation of the mystery (Rom 16:25). This teaching is irreconcilable with the Koran.
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