The Way⤒🔗

These days almost everybody, whether familiar with the world of Islam or not, knows the word shari’ah. The shari’ah is Islamic law—the law that Muslims want to see established in countries where the majority of the population is Islamic. The Koran is the basis of the shari’ah, along with the words and the acts of the first generation of Muslims. The shari’ah covers every area of life. Just as in the Old Testament, the shari’ah contains religious, as well as social, instructions and rules.

In fact, shari’ah does not mean “law,” but “way.” Imagine a road in a desert which leads to water. If a traveller wants to survive in the desert, then he has to stay on that road. If he wanders, he will die. For this reason, keeping to the instructions in the shari’ah is of vital importance for a genuine Muslim.

In the Bible, “law” and “way” can also be synonyms. And the Bible also says that our lives depend upon it. In Deuteronomy 5 (in which Moses recalls the Ten Commandments), we read in verse 33: “walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live...” Thus, the Lord has commanded a way! We have to walk on this way in order to stay alive! Sin can be called “departing from the way” (Exodus 32:8). If you do not change your direction and go back to the way of life — if you do not repent — you meet your death.

The shari’ah is the Muslim’s way through the wilderness - the only way which is passable. In the Bible, God’s commandments are also called “ways,” but the difference between the ways of the Islamite and the Christian are enormous. The law, just like the genealogy of Abraham, ends with Christ. He is the “seed of Abraham” (Galatians 3:16) and “the end of the law” (Romans 10:4).

What does that mean? The law, according to Paul, apostle of Christ, was a “teacher” to bring us to Christ — a pedagogue (Galatians 3:24). The law was meant to drive people into the arms of Christ. This is one of the reasons why the law is still “strictly” preached, as the Heidelberg Catechism phrases it in Lord’s Day 44, so that we may seek “righteousness in Christ.” Through sin, the law brings no life in itself, but leads to death (Romans 8:3a, 7, 10). But, thank God, Christ became our shari’ah. He became our way made through the wilderness by God himself (Isaiah 55:19), because he “fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17) the law for us completely.

There is only one way to God, to his house. That is a way which is far above the understanding of mankind. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:9). This way is Jesus Christ.

Jesus points the way to God. He is “our chief Prophet and Teacher” (Lord’s Day 12). Jesus leads our way. He says, “I go and prepare a place for you” (John 14:3). Jesus prepares the way to God. In one of the Dutch hymns we sing, “Thus you cleared for us the way back to God” (Gereformeerd Kerkboek, Gezang 30 stanza 4). Jesus is the way himself. He is the only true ladder of Jacob, established by God in the night, in which his Word became “flesh” (John 1:14). He is the lift, into which we can step in order to go up to our Father’s house.

Jesus had to walk a difficult way to achieve this. Nobody could walk that way with him. Simon Peter had to realise this too. Even fanatic “mujahideen,” like him, fall on their faces (John 13:36-38). Nevertheless, it will not be easy for his disciples, either. The way to God is not an easy one. It is a narrow path (Matthew 7:14) which you follow by denying yourself, taking up your cross daily and following him (Luke 9:23).

In the Arabic Bible translation of John 14:6, there is no “shari’ah,” but “tariq.” The feminine form of this word, tariqah, is a familiar term in the Islamic world, too. It is used to signify a religious brotherhood, a mystical order. Taking part in this can be seen as a way to approach God, in which you can ultimately merge into him. This terminology originates from the thinking of the so-called Sufis.

Just like orthodox Muslims, we do not believe that you can merge into God. We believe in a unity with Jesus Christ, who became one of us. It is the unity that gave Christ’s disciples a way into the Father’s house. Together with him, because of your relationship with the Lord, you sometimes have to make painful choices. You sometimes have to cut up your own flesh to get into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12). But it will be worth it. Your Saviour has earned that for you.

The Truth←⤒🔗

Jesus also called himself “the Truth.” God – Allah - has 99 “wonderful names” in the Koran. One of these is “Al Haqq”: “the Truth.” This name means “God’s existence is obvious, God is truly there.” The whole creation owes its existence to him. He is to be seen everywhere and in everything. For Sufis this is a call to become submerged in God: the so-called “annihilation” in Allah.

You can make a Muslim furious by calling Jesus “the Truth.” By saying this, you are saying that he really is God. This reveals that you are someone who thinks that there are more gods than the One God, as high as he is, thus “having or inventing something [or somebody] instead of, or in addition to, the only true God, who has revealed himself in his Word” (Lord’s Day 34, Heidelberg Catechism). It is the same anger which Jesus experienced from the Jews. According to the stories, somebody recently ended up in prison in Pakistan, not because of insulting the Muslim prophet Mohammed, but because he called Jesus “the Way.”

The word “truth” appears often in the Bible. The word in the Old Testament does not have exactly the same meaning as in the New Testament. In the Old Testament it is the translation of a Hebrew word that is associated with the word “amen.” Muslims are very familiar with this word from the Arabic (also a Semitic language): “Al-Amin” was a surname of the young Mohammed. Just like many girls these days, his mother was called Amina. In this context, “truth” refers to “being steady” or, more briefly, “reliability.” The Greek word from the New Testament, on the other hand, means literally “what is not hidden,” or better, “what is revealed.” In our Lord, both meanings come together beautifully.

In Jesus Christ, God has shown his faithfulness in all its fullness. In him, according to the apostle Paul, is “the mystery of godliness” revealed, which was “manifested in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16). “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

All God’s promises “are Yes in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20). God revealed himself, at the time of his choice, in his Son, “born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). He embodied God’s goodness and faithfulness in his own Person. He is God’s true grace, because all God’s promises of reconciliation are fulfilled in him (Isaiah 53:5; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; 1 John 2:2, 4:10). God showed who he really was in him (John 1:8; Hebrews 1:1), more than half a millennium before Mohammed appeared on the scene.

The full truth about God was made known by the One about whom Moses prophesied:

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear. Deuteronomy 18:15

Moses was not pointing at Mohammed then, which is what the Muslims think. This was an early prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ who was to come (Acts 3:22; 7:37).

Jesus is the “faithful witness” (Revelation 1:5). “He has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption” (Lord’s Day 12, Heidelberg Catechism). Nothing more could be added to that. He declared THE Truth of God. He is God’s Truth in person. He must be worshipped “in truth” (John 4:24). He is God’s temple for all, for Samaritan and Jew (John 4:1-42), for Muslims and Christians today.

Thomas and the others in John 14 could not understand it all at that moment. After the ascension of their Lord, the “Spirit of truth” would come and “guide them into all truth” (John 16:13). According to Muslims, this again applies to the coming of Mohammed. As if Mohammed could “take from what is Mine and make it known” (John 16:14)!

The church is entrusted with the administration of the truth. It is stored in the Old and New Testament. In the Bible the church is referred to as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The church must not only maintain the truth, she needs to be a billboard which reveals the entire gospel. If she keeps the Truth for herself, she is damaging the truth. When she displays the Truth, the church serves the truth—serves him. And he deserves that!

The Life←⤒🔗

Finally, the Lord also refers to himself as “the life.” Muslims again hear one of Allah’s wonderful names: “Al-Hayy”: the Living One, the One who lives forever, the source of all life, the One who has the highest degree of life. He is the One to whom you must give yourself completely, according to the Sufis. Without recognising Jesus as “Al-Hayy,” Islamites do not know what they are worshipping (compare John 4:22).

Our shari’ah Jesus is the way of life. Of “the Word that became flesh” it is written: “In him was life” (John 1:4, 14). He is “the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). In him the life that this name can have “appeared” (1 John 1:2). The “uncreated Word” (a name Muslims give to the Koran) has “life in himself” (John 5:26).

The Holy Spirit is our tariqah. He makes me “by true faith share in Christ and all his benefits” (Lord’s Day 20, Heidelberg Catechism). He gives us what we have in Christ; see, for example, the Reformed Forms for Baptism. That is unity with him “in his death and resurrection” (Romans 6:5), in his exaltation, and finally in his glorious appearance (Colossians 3:1-4).

“Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This is what Jesus prayed just prior to his return to heaven. We read it in the so-called “high-priestly prayer” (John 17:3). With a variation on the shahadah, the Islamic confession of faith: “There is no God but the Father of Jesus Christ. And he was his envoy,” sent by God to make him known (John 1:18). Not just to make his will known, his law — that is not life — but to make himself known! He is the Lord with whom is the fountain of life (Psalm 36:9).

Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies” (John 11:25). The word “Muslim” literally means “one who has surrendered.” So a Christian “Muslim” is a believer who gives his fragile life into the hands of him who died and expects to receive a new, indestructible, everlasting life back from him who defeated death, and now lives. Long may he live! In glory.