For the Arab

Friday I had a conversation with an Arab cab driver. I gave him a Gospel tract while we were filling up our gas tanks. He asked what it was about, and I told him it was about Jesus. He said they recognize Jesus as a prophet, and I asked him Would a prophet would claim to be God? He said, No. Jesus did.

He went down the road of objecting to the hypostatic union. To them, God cannot become a man, or be three in one for that matter.

The Arabs have a long history before Islam. I thought it would be helpful to go back to that history and show him the original plan God has had for the Arab people for a long time.

I tried to find those spots in Genesis. I got him to take a Bible to read more himself later. I also gave him my card which has a Gospel presentation on the back and a link to my online version.

We could have also gone down the road of how Galatians 4 explains that Hagar is a metaphor for Mount Sinai and being slaves under the law. Paul had just explained that “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (3:24).

Paul's writing to the Church in Rome fills in more:

For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect, because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.

Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, So shall your descendants be.

(If you're ever looking for a succinct description of God—who He is and what He does—Romans 4:17 has it: “God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” That's one of my all-time favorite lines from the Bible.)

The place in the new Jerusalem for the Jew or the Arab or anyone from any other nation is by faith.