Love covers a multitude of sins ...

Submitted by Oliver (United States), Jul 11, 2007 at 23:45

Syed, in my version of the quran I can only find 39 instances of the word ‘love', while I can find 276 of the word ‘fear'. In the Christian NT I find 224 instances of the word ‘love', while I can find only find 47 of the word ‘fear'. The ratios are 1:7 love to fear in the quran and 4.5:1 love to fear in the NT. It appears that there is a bit more than a little ‘fear' in islam and somewhat less than a whole lot of ‘love'.

Compare:

Q 2:2 the pious and righteous persons who fear Allâh much (abstaining from all kinds of sins and evil deeds) … and love Allâh much (performing all kinds of good deeds)

Q 2:165 But those who believe, love Allâh more (than anything else). If only, those who do wrong could see, when they will see the torment … that Allâh is Severe in punishment.

Q 3:31 If you (really) love Allâh then … Allâh will love you and forgive you of your sins.

With:

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

In islam, ‘salvation' (the forgiveness of sins) is attained through the performance of good deeds which in turn proves to allah that you love him and then he will love you in return.

In Christianity, ‘salvation' (the forgiveness of sins) is attained through believing in the finished work (good deed) that Jesus (God's Son, the Christ, the Messiah) performed on our behalf. God proved His love for us first, by paying the just penalty for our sins (death) so that we could escape condemnation and freely love Him in return.

Syed, can you not ‘see' that these two approaches to ‘salvation' are practically exact opposites and are therefore mutually exclusive of one another. Simply put, the message of the Gospel is not compatible with the message of islam.

May the true and living God – the LORD Jesus Christ enlighten you.

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