Faith is in a Person

Can you picture the great Christian saint of old who, in the late hours of the night, penned this prayer to God while the rest of the city slept?

My God and Lord: eyes are at rest, the stars are setting, hushed are the movements of birds in their nests, of monsters in the deep. And you are the Just who knows no change, the Equity that does not swerve, the Everlasting that never passes away. The doors of kings are locked and guarded by their henchmen, but your door is open to those who call upon you. My Lord, each lover is now alone with his beloved. And I am alone with you.

Any ideas who this could be? Actually, it wasn’t written by a Christian at all. These words were written by a Muslim woman named Rabi’a. More precisely, Rabi’a was a Sufi.

In college, I took an entire course my senior year on Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. These spiritual seekers seek to reconnect with God by deep mediation, ritual twirling, and other disciplines. If you’ve ever heard of the Whirling Dervishes, these are Sufi mystics who are trying to experience communion with God through an extended, self-imposed dizzy spell. As I read their writings that semester, I was struck – and even perplexed – by how “almost-Christian” it all sounded. More-so than traditional Muslims, the Sufis constantly marveled at the love of God, yearned for communion with a personal God, and even confessed that God’s grace was the only means by which they could be reconnected to God. After all, wasn’t it the Apostle Paul who yearned for his life to end simply so that he could be fully united to Christ in heaven? (Phil 1:23-24) Could it be that these Sufis might even claim that one is saved “by grace alone, through faith alone” as the Protestant reformers taught?

Well first, let’s affirm that these men and women truly have a zeal for God. God in His grace has certainly revealed some of His divine attributes to mankind, and these Sufis seem to have certainly understood that for rebellious humans to go on living under the careful watch of a perfectly Holy God, He must be merciful, gracious and loving. Christians can even be challenged by their writings to seek a deeper devotion and love for God as is displayed by them. But while zeal for God is necessary for true belief, it is not sufficient by itself. Love for God and reliance on grace are not the center of Christian faith: Jesus is.

Without Jesus, and His substitutionary death and resurrection, the entire salvation structure of the 3 Abrahamic faiths crumbles. Judaism looked forward to Christ’s death and resurrection and was therefore dependent upon it for fulfillment; and Islam simply denies Christ sacrificial death. But without this sufficient sacrifice for sinners, God must be found to be unjust for not giving humans what they deserve - death. Paul explains this in his letter to the Romans in 3:25-26. If God simply forgave sinners by His grace without a sacrifice, what would be of His promises to punish sin? God would be acting unjustly – graciously yes, but unjust nonetheless. Prison wardens who let convicted fellons walk out the door on the day they arrive aren’t just being gracious; they are being unjust.

God's grace is dependent on Jesus. So to, reconciliation with God is based on Jesus. In the death of Christ, God is found to be perfectly just in punishing sin, and gloriously gracious in saving sinners. On the Cross, Christ deals with man’s sin problem AND graciously saves sinners. Without the Cross, there is no justice and no grace. So God is both just and the justifier of sinners, only through Jesus Christ.

The Sufi faith is ultimately found lacking because God must be unjust to be gracious if there is no answer to the sin problem. Christian faith rests ultimately not in God’s grace as an ideal, but in the Person of Jesus Christ, the defeater of sin and death. Christians believe upon Jesus. Christians have faith in Jesus. We trust in the God-Man who overcame death and who promises to safely deliver all His people to the Father. This Savior says:
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”