Pastor Peter Simpson was preaching the gospel in Slough High Street on October 3rd.
He began the preaching by quoting Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous, no, not one”. All have sinful hearts, and no one is capable of consistently doing any good which is pleasing to God. All without Christ are spiritually blind and ignorant, controlled by the lusts and passions of their fallen natures.
Whilst the minister was preaching, a young Muslim man approached him to ask some questions, including, How could Jesus possibly be God, if He Himself prayed to God during His earthly ministry? Pastor Simpson responded by saying that the Lord Jesus prayed to His Father in His humanity, having laid aside, to accomplish man’s salvation, some of the full attributes of His deity. Nevertheless, He was and is both fully God and fully man simultaneously. This is a deep mystery, but we must not try to make Almighty God conform to the limitations of our feeble human understandings.
The Muslim further stated that Christians and Muslims agree on most doctrines, and that Jesus is referred to more times in the Quran than in the Bible. The preacher denied that there was any such fundamental convergence of the two faiths, citing the reality that if a Muslim converts to Christ, he is then ostracised from his community and could even be in real physical danger. The young man then argued that it as impossible for Jesus to be God, because God would not engage in mundane human activities such as visiting the toilet. Pastor Simpsson replied that the Lord Jesus took upon Himself all the limitations of our humanity, precisely in order to save us from our sins.
The Muslim then asked How is it possible for one man to die for the sins of countless others. Each person is surely punished for his own sins. The minister explained to him that one man dying for many others is the principle of atonement, the principle behind all the Old Testament animal scarifies in the Temple : the sacrificial beast dies in the place of those offering the sacrifice, so as to demonstrate the principle of substitutionary atonement. If men were to pay for their own sins, they would inevitably remain in hell for ever and ever. They they need another to satisfy God’s justice upon their sins in their place. The holy God cannot bypass His justice in order to receive sinners : His justice upon their sin must first be satisfied in the person of a substitute who is without sin, and Jesus Christ is the only man who has ever lived who is without sin.
The conversation with the Muslim went on for half an hour or more. It was polite at all times. Pastor Simpson tried to personalise the discussion, in that he told the Muslim, God humbled Himself to become a man, and laid aside many of the privileges of His deity precisely because this is the only way that YOU as an individual can be saved from your sins.
May the Lord open this young man’s heart, and that of many other Muslims who have the gospel proclaimed to them in Slough each week.