He did indeed die

by Gordon Nickel

It must come as a surprise to many Western Christians accustomed to the modern European belief that Jesus certainly died but was not raised from the dead to learn that about a billion people, in a broad human swath from Morocco to the Moluccas, believe that Jesus was raised but certainly did not die.

That striking contrast is one of the great mysteries of inter-religious study. It demonstrates a number of fascinating themes in the relationship of the gospel to the world religions. It also hints at the wealth of insight into their own faith which Christians can gain from grappling deeply with other beliefs.

Even more than that, the contrast draws the attention of the church to the many people who live in ignorance of the truth which can set them free. It challenges us to examine our role in making that truth known.

The Muslim faith, which dominates that broad human swath from Morocco to the Moluccas, emerged in the 7th century AD, some 600 years after the writing of the New Testament. Islam is the one major post-Christian religion, and it contains in its scriptures and its doctrines deliberate denials of some key Christian beliefs.

The Islamic denial of the death of Jesus seems to trace back to a single verse in the fourth sura of the Qur'an, the scripture of Muslims. The verse is part of a list of reasons why the Jewish people deserve punishment from God. Jews are punishable, according to the Qur'an, "for their saying, ‘we slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the Messenger of God’ yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them they slew him not of a certainty no indeed; God raised him up to Him" (4:157, Arberry translation).

Not all Muslim commentators have been united in their interpretation of this verse. The original Arabic wording contains some notorious ambiguities. And some recent Christian writers have argued on the basis of other Quranic verses that the main point of 4:157 is to deny the Jewish role in the crucifixion.

But the overall effect has been that today most Muslims understand that Jesus did not die on the cross. As Kenneth Cragg concludes in Jesus and the Muslim, "Christianity lives by the confession of Jesus, veritably crucified and risen; Islam lives in the conviction that Jesus did not really die but was mysteriously received up into heaven."

The Muslim denial of the death of Jesus is not simply a belief about what happened. Behind the question of history are questions about human nature and the character of God. Muslims are agreed, writes Cragg, not only that Jesus did not die historically, but also that Jesus did not need to die redemptively, and should not have died morally.

According to Muslim doctrine, humankind is not in such a desperate state that it would require the kind of salvation proclaimed in the gospel. Jewish scholar Hava Lazarus-Yafeh suggests that the Christian concept of Jesus as Redeemer somehow didn't make it through into Islam: "It seems that Islam felt no need for redemption, and therefore did not develop this notion."

The Muslim denial of the death of Jesus is also based in ideas about the character of God and the nature of God's mission in the world. In the Quranic understanding of prophets, God sends His messengers, and the people generally oppose them. But before the people can harm the messengers, God destroys the people and saves the messengers. This is in general terms the story of the life of the Prophet of Islam (Muhammad) as set out in Muslim biographies. According to this pattern, it would be inappropriate for God to let Jesus die a painful and humiliating death at the hands of His enemies. The Quranic verse denying the crucifixion asserts that God has frustrated the evil plans of humans against God's messenger.

God should not allow Jesus to die, according to Muslim thought. Thus, Cragg says, Muslims were predisposed to deny the crucifixion of Jesus because of their beliefs about who God is.

What is the gospel response to these influential denials? Christians have always taken the historical dimension of the death of Jesus very seriously. On the day the Christian church was born, the apostle Peter preached publicly in Jerusalem that Jesus "was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross" (Acts 2:23). There was no dispute among Romans, Jews and the followers of Jesus about the death of Jesus, though there was disagreement over whether Jesus had been raised from the dead. The disciples affirmed both, and Peter announced, "We are all witnesses of the fact" (Acts 2:32).

Some two decades later, Paul wrote, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures", noting that the church had been making this confident confession already prior to his ministry. Paul is careful to leave no doubt about Christ's death. He includes in his list of the elements of the gospel in I Corinthians 15:3-5, "He was buried."

Is human nature in such a needy state that it requires the redemptive death of Jesus? What is the depth of human evil? Perhaps the situation can best be seen through a medical metaphor: If the diagnosis of the human condition does not take into account the full measure of human evil, of course the prescription will not be adequate.

But does an honest look at the human condition permit us to be optimistic regarding sin? Human beings are unable in their own strength to keep God's law perfectly. All people sin, they fail to meet God's standard of holiness, and the punishment for sin is death. Not only that, but all people live in the grip of sin and require a deliberate act of God to pull them out of sin's force field. Humanity is "powerless", writes Paul in Romans 5:6, apart from the redemptive death of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament thus offers a sophisticated diagnosis of human evil and then gives the prescription which is equal to the disease. Jesus died for our sins. Only the death of God's own Son on the cross was able to fully atone for the sins of humankind and set humanity free from the power of sin and death.

Expresses the heart of God

When the first Christians confessed that Jesus died according to the Scriptures, they acknowledged that the death of Jesus was part of God's plan. Jesus had explained to His disciples "that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life" (Matthew 16:21). When Peter had objected to the plan, Jesus had recognized that objection as human thinking which was in fact a stumbling block from Satan: "You do not have in mind the things of God" (Matthew 16:23).

The "things of God" were God's great plan from the beginning of time to make a way of salvation for humanity through the death of His Son. Jesus understood that plan in the Garden of Gethsemane and "became obedient to death—even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:8).

The death of Jesus is appropriate to God's character. Hebrews makes this point beautifully: "It was fitting that God should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by His death he might destroy him who holds the power of death that is, the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (2:10,14,15).

The death of Jesus displays the suffering love of God. When we look at Jesus willingly giving up His life on the cross, we see deeply into the heart of God.

Jesus did indeed die. God acted in history to reconcile the world to Himself. When Christians share this fact with people who haven't heard, they pass on much more than just a dusty detail. They proclaim a message of hope that human evil has been fully taken care of. They proclaim to the world that the Creator—the one God of the universe has revealed His true character in the words of forgiveness from the cross.

What is the Christian church doing to share this great message with Muslims who have been taught another gospel? Is the level of our efforts in keeping with the greatness of the sacrifice which Jesus made for humanity? May God make us worthy of the Good News with which we have been entrusted.

Gordon Nickel is a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies at the University of Calgary and a resource missionary for Muslim ministries with MBMS International.

Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985).

Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, "Is there a Concept of Redemption in Islam?", Some Religious Aspects of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981, pp. 48-57).

Gordon Nickel, "Islam and Salvation: Some on-site observations", Direction, 23/1 (1994), pp. 3-16.

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