Mark 2: Bible Storying for Muslims: Dr. Cashin Lecture
Dr. David Cashin delivered a series of lectures on chronological Bible Storying for Muslims during a CIU course. Here, Cashin presents the sixth lesson on chronological bible storying of Mark 2 with Muslims.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. David Cashin Lecture:
Greetings and welcome to our next lesson in chronological Bible storying for Muslims. You’ll notice that we’re calling this lesson Lesson 6. Now, in actual fact, we’re at lesson 13 because we’ve been, covering a number of other things, but this is the 6th study, that you’ll be doing in the Bible as you share with your Muslim friends. And we have, in our first, five lessons, looked at the, 5 areas in the Old Testament. We looked at creation and the purpose of God for creating us, that is for intimacy and relationship with himself.
We looked at the problem of sin, and then we looked, in 3 lessons at God’s way of dealing with sin, ending with Isaiah chapter 53, which talks and predicts about the coming coming suffering servant, who would pay the price for our sin. Today, we want to begin looking at the New Testament and, this is the second half of the 10, lesson series in chronological Bible storying and here at lesson 6 we begin with the New Testament. And our study today will be, in Mark chapter 2 verses 1 to 12. And at the outset, I will mention 2 main points, that you will be trying to communicate to your Muslim friend. We’re really asking the question about who is Jesus and what kind of authority does he have?
And Mark chapter 2, shows the authority of Jesus to forgive sins, which is a very powerful thing. In Islam, no one has authority to forgive sins except God alone. That was also true in Judaism, of course, and still is. And so, really, this particular passage gives us a a fantastic introduction to how Jesus presents himself to the people of his time. Now, the context is that Jesus is in Capernaum and he’s preaching and it’s really at the start of his ministry.
He goes down to this town, and is preaching there and it says in the passage that he is preaching the word. Now, the word, in Arabic is kalam, which is similar to the Greek word logos of God, but it is not a book that he’s preaching. It’s not a tanzil kitab as Muslims would put it. Tanzil literally means to be let down. A let down book brought down from God above or a revealed book.
Muslims see God’s salvific activity in reaching out to humankind in that way. He is quite distant. He’s in heaven. He doesn’t come down himself. He doesn’t bring the message down himself.
He simply gives a book to the angel Gabriel and Gabriel brings that book down to humanity. So kalam, in this case, is a very interesting idea. What what is this kalam that Jesus is preaching? And this is one of the questions we want you to be asking your Muslim friend as he studies that passage. What is, what our conclusion is going to be as we go through the study is that the kalam that Jesus is preaching is primarily himself.
Who he is, and what authority, he is. Now, the reason why this is a very interesting idea is because if you go into the Quran, Surah chapter 4 verse 171, it states there that Isa Masih is the Kalimatullah. He is the word of God. What does that mean? What does it mean that Jesus is a word, of God?
Well, simply that he is the Tanzil kitab. He is the book that was let down and sent down for our salvation. This is one of the ways in which Islam actually unintentionally reaffirms aspects of who Jesus is and he reveals his authority as this sent down word of God in two ways. First, he forgives sins and, I’ve used a picture here that’s a clip art so it’s allowed to be in a presentation like this. First, he forgives sins and, you know, you know the story. Mark 2
The 4 young friends come with a fellow who’s paralytic and they tear the roof off the house because they can’t get at Jesus through the door cause there’s so many people there, and they let the fellow down through the roof in front of Jesus. And, the first thing that Jesus says, seeing the faith of these friends to this paralytic is, My son, your sins are forgiven. And a couple of questions you can ask about this. What is the greatest priority, sin or sickness? Well, it’s clear that although this fellow is sick and unable to walk, from Jesus’ perspective, his greatest problem is his sin problem.
It is sin which binds us in an eternal sense and Jesus begins by setting this fellow free from his sin problem, not his paralysis problem. Well, the immediate question that the Jewish leaders raise is who can forgive sins but God alone? And this of course creates a tremendous debate and it leads to Jesus demonstrating his authority, not only over sin, but over physical sickness by healing, the paralytic. And, Jesus basically says, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, and then he turns to the paralytic and says, I say to you, arise, take up your pallet, and walk. Now, once again, we can bring in the question of what does forgiveness really mean?
What does it mean that Jesus forgives and, his authority to do so? And remember, our question always comes back to what is the nature of forgiveness and we’ve talked about this several times before. Forgiveness always means taking the consequences of the sinner’s actions upon oneself. So, ultimately, when Jesus has authority to forgive sins, it’s an authority that he will, verify and make perfect through the cross as he bears in his own body the reality of people’s sins. As I’ve said many times in the penitentiary when I share the gospel with people, if you take a $100 from me, steal a $100 from me, I have three courses of action: repayment, punishment, or forgiveness.
If I forgive you, that means I neither get repayment nor satisfaction in punishment. So who loses the $100 then? I do. I have taken the consequences on myself. That’s the key nature of forgiveness. Mark 2
So, when Jesus forgives sins, he not not only is appropriating to himself the authority that only God has, but at the same time, he is putting himself in the position of the suffering servant that we talked about in Isaiah 53, that he will bear the sins of the nations in his own body as part of the way he gives forgiveness. So, Jesus’ authority, well, Jesus claims authority to forgive sins, and by the way, this authority was the primary reason why the Jewish leaders rejected him. In John 9:33, they say to him, you being a man, make yourself out to be God. Of course, Jesus then demonstrates his authority by healing the paralytic. Now, let’s just, recoup and look at some, thoughts that we can ponder about this concerning this particular passage in scriptures.
Number 1. Question that you can put to your Muslim friend. Jesus’s authority to forgive sins. What does this show us about him? And, the one thing that Muslims will ultimately have to grapple with is if Jesus forgives sins, then Jesus is God.
He is the Son of God on earth sent to save us. He is the Tanjil Kitab, the Kalimatullah sent to save us from sin. 2nd question, why was Jesus rejected by most of the Jews? This is a way of of pointing out that when Jesus said that he had authority to forgive sins, the Jews understood what that meant, and that wasn’t something that made him popular. Quite the opposite.
It made him someone hated and then eventually someone who was indeed crucified. So, when Jesus says that today to Muslims or anybody else, it’s controversial and people either have to accept or reject and people often do reject. But Jesus was willing to take that, willing to make that kind of a challenge, because he recognized that apart from recognizing him for who he is, you cannot receive salvation. That’s why in the book of Acts, it states so very, very clearly, there is salvation found in no other name, for there is no name given under heaven by which we must be saved. Thirdly, what does forgiveness mean to the one who forgives? Mark 2
We’ve talked about this many times. This a point that needs to be brought home again and again and again. Jesus is the atonement for our sins. He is the kafara as Muslims would say. What does it mean to you that Jesus has the power to heal?
This is another point that Muslims are very aware of because the Quran talks about Jesus as a healer. That he healed the sick, that he gave sight to the blind, that he healed paralytics, that he raised people from the dead. Muslims are very aware of this because the Quran teaches it and sometimes power encounter will touch a Muslim in this particular way. We have seen cases in Bangladesh, as well as in Kazan, Russia where I have worked, where people have experienced healing and through that healing have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So my encouragement to you is whenever you have a Muslim friend who is sick, do not fail to visit that Muslim friend.
Do not fail to pray for that Muslim friend in Jesus’ name for healing, because God in many times, in many cases, will intervene at that point and do a wonderful work in that Muslim’s life that will bring him to himself. And then, the final question, what did Jesus teach us about who he is? If he has authority to forgive sins, then he is not a mere man, but he is God’s Kalimatullah, he is God’s kafara sent to save us from the power of sin. And we’ll stop at this point. Mark 2