46. The fact that Jesus preached the same religion as that expounded earlier by Moses and the other Prophets is also borne out by the statements of the existing Gospels: According to Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount the Messiah categorically declared: 'Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them' (Matthew 5: 17). And when a Jewish lawyer enquired: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?', Jesus replied: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depends the law and the prophets' (ibid., 22: 37-40). He also instructed his disciples: The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practise and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practise' (ibid., 23: 2-3).
47. What Jesus wanted to impress upon them was that he would abolish the prohibitive innovations which had infiltrated the original Divine Law (Shari'ah}. These were the results of the superstitions of their ignorant commoners, the legal hair-splitting of their lawyers, the extremism of their world-renouncing pietists, and the ascendancy and predominance of non-Muslim peoples over them. In determining what is lawful and unlawful, Jesus would be guided by the injunctions of God and not by the inventions of human beings.
48. This shows that as with the other Prophets, the fundamental points of
Jesus' mission were the following:
(1) Man should acknowledge- the exclusive sovereignty of God which demands absolute
service and obedience to Him, and Him alone. This principle serves as the basis
for the entire structure of human morality and social behaviour.
(2) Man should obey the Prophets since they are the representatives of the true
Sovereign.
(3) The Law which should regulate man's conduct by elaborating what is right
and what is wrong should be none other than the Law of God. The laws devised
by others should be abrogated. There is, thus, no difference between the missions
of Jesus, Moses and Muhammad (peace be on them all). Those who think that the
missions of the Prophets differ from one another and who believe that their
objectives vary have fallen into serious error. Whoever is sent by the Lord
of the Universe to His creatures can have no other purpose than to dissuade
God's subjects from disobeying Him and assuming an attitude of vanity and disregard
towards Him, and to admonish them against associating anyone with God in His
divinity (that is, either holding anyone to be a partner with the Lord of the
Universe in His Sovereignty or recognizing others beside God as having a rightful
claim on part of man's loyalty, devotion and worship), and to invite them all
to be loyal to, and to serve, obey and worship God alone.
It is unfortunate that the Gospels in their present form do not offer as clear
a picture of the mission of Jesus as that presented by the Qur'an. Nevertheless,
we find scattered throughout the Gospels all the three fundamentals mentioned
above. The notion that man ought to submit himself totally to God is embodied
in the following statement:
'You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve' (Matthew
4: 10).
In addition, Jesus believed that the object of his efforts was that God's commands
relating to the moral realm should be obeyed in this world in the sphere of
human conduct just as His commands about the operation of the physical universe
are obeyed in the heavens: 'Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven' (ibid., 6: 10).
The fact that Jesus presented himself as a Prophet and a representative of the
Kingdom of Heaven, and that in this capacity he asked people to follow him is
borne out by several statements. When, for instance, he began his mission in
Nazareth and when his own kith, kin and compatriots turned against him, he remarked:
'A prophet is not without honour except in his own country . . .' (Matthew 13:
57; see also Luke 4: 24 and Mark 6: 4). And when conspiracies were hatched in
Jerusalem to put an end to his life, and people counselled him to go away, he
replied: 'Nevertheless I must go on my way . . . for it cannot be that a prophet
should perish away from Jerusalem' (Luke 13: 33). When Jesus entered Jerusalem
for the last time the disciples cried with a loud voice: 'Blessed be the King
who comes in the name of the Lord' (Luke 19: 38). This angered the Pharisees,
who asked Jesus to rebuke his disciples. But he replied: 'I tell you, if these
were silent the very stones would cry out' (ibid., 19: 40). On another occasion
he said: 'Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light' (Matthew
11: 28-30).
The fact that he invited people to obey the Laws of God rather than the laws
made by man is evident from his response (found in both Matthew and Mark) to
the objection raised by the Pharisees to the conduct of their disciples who
ate with defiled hands, that is, without washing.
'Well did Isiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honours me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'
And he said to them: 'You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God
in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, "Honour your father and your
mother", and "He who speaks evil of his father or mother, let him surely die",
but you say, "If a man tells his father or mother what you would have gained
from me is Corban (that is, given to God), and then you no longer permit him
to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God through
your tradition which you hand on"' (Mark 7: 6-13; see also Matthew 15: 2-9).