What message does the Bible tell us to proclaim to Muslims?
(a) “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus [the Messiah] whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
(b) The “true God” [Allah, in Arabic] has revealed Himself as the One who Himself is “love” (1 John 4:8). But the word for love is agape, a different idea than we humans have and understand for love.
(c) Agape is the kind of love that loves our enemies and prays “for those who despitefully use us” (Matt. 5:45). That is the teaching of both the Old and New Testaments.
(d) We humans cannot understand it except as we see it revealed in Christ the Messiah, who “being in the form of God, counted not equality with God something to be grasped but emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a servant [a slave]; 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” (Phil. 2:5-8).
(e) That “death of the cross” involved His taking upon Himself all the evil and sins of the world and dying the death that is “the wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23), which is the real thing—“the second death” in which there is no hope of a resurrection (cf. Rev. 20:12-14). This is what it means that “He poured out His soul unto death” (Isa. 53:12). This is the true definition of the love (agape) which God says He “is.”
(f) The miracle that confirms the truth of the gospel is that this message of the cross when rightly presented converts selfish, cruel, worldly human hearts and people learn to be unselfish and to love others even as Jesus.
(g) The human heart is melted by the story of this truth of what Christ accomplished on His cross. As the second or “last Adam” He encompasses the whole human race in Himself; when He died, “we all” died with Him and in Him (2 Cor. 5:14); also, we were resurrected “in Him” and that says something to us—that love of Christ “henceforth” motivates us to live “not unto self, but unto Him who died for us and rose again” (vs. 15).
(h) God wants every person to be saved eternally who is willing to let God’s Holy Spirit enter his/her heart; by the Holy Spirit (1 Tim. 2:3-5). Christ is drawing every one to Himself. But we have been given freedom of choice; God refuses to compel anyone. He wants only free-willed disciples.
(i) If one does not resist that powerful grace that is unbounded, he will be drawn all the way in repentance and eternal salvation.
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