The Qur\u2019an repeats the same words five times in Jesus\u2019 mouth: \u201cAllah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him\u201d (Al-Imran 3:51, Al-Maida 5:72, 5:117, Maryam 19:36, Al-Zukhruf 43:64). For many Muslim readers, these verses settle the matter. If Jesus had a Lord, He cannot be Lord. If He told people to worship God, He cannot be God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phrase deserves a closer look. Why does Jesus not simply say \u201cour Lord\u201d? Some will say it is ordinary speech, and the same wording appears on the lips of Moses (Ghafir 40:27, Al-Dukhan 44:20) and Hud (Hud 11:56). Meanwhile, Muhammad is told to say, \u201cour Lord and your Lord\u201d (Al-Baqara 2:139, Al-Shura 42:15), and in Al-Maida 5:114 Jesus Himself prays, \u201cO Allah, our Lord.\u201d That is true, but the question does not stop there, because the Qur\u2019an itself tells us where to go when we want to understand Jesus more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Qur\u2019an tells Muhammad that if he is in doubt about what has been revealed, he should \u201cask those who read the Scripture before you\u201d (Yunus 10:94). It also tells the Christians of Muhammad\u2019s own day to \u201cjudge by what Allah has revealed\u201d in the Gospel (Al-Maida 5:47). That command only makes sense if the Gospel (Injil) those Christians held was available, readable, and trustworthy enough to judge by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know what that Gospel said. Manuscripts of John\u2019s Gospel long predate Islam. Papyrus 66 and Papyrus 75 date to around AD 200, and the great codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus to the fourth century. All of them contain the passage we are about to read. So, if we follow the Qur\u2019an\u2019s advice and ask the people of the Book, this is the answer they would have given in the seventh century, and the answer they give today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy Father and Your Father, My God and Your God\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the morning of His resurrection, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him, and to go to his brothers with this message: \u201cI am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God\u201d (John 20:17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here is the same pattern the Qur\u2019an records: \u201cmy\u201d and \u201cyour.\u201d But notice what Jesus does not say. He never says \u201cour Father\u201d in a way that places Himself alongside His disciples as one more child of God. Even the Lord\u2019s Prayer is introduced with \u201cWhen you pray, say: Our Father\u201d (Luke 11:2; Matthew 6:9). Jesus gives the prayer to His followers; He does not pray it with them as an equal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The early Church noticed this. Augustine, commenting on this verse around AD 400, observed that Jesus deliberately avoided saying \u201cour Father.\u201d God is His Father in one way and ours in another: His by nature, ours by grace. And God is \u201cmy God\u201d to Jesus because Jesus truly became man, while God is \u201cyour God\u201d to us as the One with whom Jesus mediates on our behalf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the New Testament explains the difference. Jesus is the \u201conly begotten\u201d (monogen\u0113s) Son, who is \u201cin the bosom of the Father\u201d (John 1:18). We, by contrast, receive \u201cthe right to become children of God\u201d (John 1:12). We are adopted (Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:4\u20137). His sonship is eternal and natural; ours is given and received. So when Jesus says, \u201cmy Father and your Father,\u201d He is not erasing the difference between Himself and us. He announces it and, at the same moment, invites us into a family we could never enter on our own. That is why, in the same breath, He calls the disciples \u201cmy brothers\u201d (compare Hebrews 2:11).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why \u201cMy God\u201d Is Not a Problem for Christians<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A Muslim friend may reply: \u201cBut Jesus said \u2018my God.\u2019 How can God have a God?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This question assumes Christians believe something they do not. Christian faith does not teach that Jesus is only God, or that His humanity was a costume. It teaches that the eternal Son became fully human (John 1:14; Philippians 2:6\u20138). A real human being prays, obeys, worships, and calls upon God. The Gospels show Jesus doing all of these, and Hebrews says He offered up prayers \u201cwith loud cries and tears\u201d (Hebrews 5:7).<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, when Jesus, in His humanity, calls the Father \u201cmy God,\u201d He is doing exactly what the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation expects. Gregory of Nazianzus made this point in the fourth century: expressions of dependence on God belong to Christ\u2019s human nature, while expressions of equality with God belong to His divine nature. The Qur\u2019an\u2019s \u201cmy Lord and your Lord\u201d does not contradict the Christian creed. The creed already contains it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One, Yet Distinct<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why John 20:17 must be read together with John 10:30: \u201cI and the Father are one.\u201d In Greek, the word for \u201cone\u201d (hen<\/em>) is neuter, not masculine. Jesus is not saying He and the Father are one person; John 20:17 plainly shows two persons, one speaking about the other. He is saying they are one in being. His hearers understood the claim, which is why they picked up stones, \u201cbecause you, being a man, make yourself God\u201d (John 10:33).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Distinction without division, unity without confusion: that is the biblical picture. The Father is not the Son, yet the Son shares the Father\u2019s nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eleven Verses Later<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The most striking answer to the question sits in the same chapter. Only eleven verses after Jesus says \u201cmy God and your God,\u201d Thomas sees the risen Jesus, touches His wounds, and cries out: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The phrase \u201cmy Lord\u201d comes back, but now it is addressed to Jesus. And Jesus does not rebuke Thomas. He does not say, \u201cWorship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.\u201d Instead, He blesses those who will believe the same thing without seeing (John 20:29). John then tells us the whole purpose of his book: that we may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in His name (John 20:31).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A prophet who was only a prophet would have corrected Thomas immediately, as angels and apostles do elsewhere in Scripture when people try to worship them (Acts 14:14\u201315; Revelation 22:8\u20139). Jesus accepts it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What the Qur\u2019an Rejects and What Christians Believe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Al-Maida 5:72 condemns those who say \u201cAllah is the Messiah, son of Mary.\u201d It is worth saying clearly: Christians do not confess that sentence in the sense it seems to reject. The Church does not teach that God is only the Messiah, as though the Father ceased to exist when the Son became man. That idea, known as modalism, was condemned by the Church itself. Likewise, Al-Maida 5:116 describes a trinity including Mary, which no Christian creed has ever taught. The Qur\u2019an\u2019s criticism targets beliefs the Church also rejects, while the actual Christian teaching, as John 20 lays it out, remains untouched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Straight Path<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In every one of these qur\u2019anic verses, Jesus ends with the same words: \u201cThis is the Straight Path.\u201d In the Gospel the Qur\u2019an commends, Jesus names that path Himself: \u201cI am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me\u201d (John 14:6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy Father and your Father\u201d is not a sentence of separation. It is the announcement of a door. The one who is Son by nature has come so that we might become sons and daughters by grace. If we follow the Qur\u2019an\u2019s own advice and ask the people of the Book, this is the answer we will hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Answering the Objections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A careful Muslim reader will not be persuaded simply by quoting John 20. He will raise serious objections, and they deserve serious answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 1: \u201cJesus said \u2018my God.\u2019 Whoever has a God is not God.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the heart of the matter, and the answer lies in what Christians mean by the Incarnation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christian claim is not that a man was promoted to divinity, nor that God merely appeared to be human. It is that the eternal Word, who \u201cwas God\u201d (John 1:1), \u201cbecame flesh\u201d (John 1:14). He did not stop being God, and He did not pretend to be human. He took to Himself a complete human nature, with a human body, a human mind, and a human will. From that moment, the one person of the Son has two natures: divine and human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once this is understood, the question changes. It is no longer \u201cCan God have a God?\u201d but \u201cDoes a real human being relate to God as his God?\u201d And the answer is obviously yes. A true man prays, trusts, obeys, and worships. If Jesus had never called the Father \u201cmy God,\u201d that would be a problem for Christianity, because it would suggest His humanity was not real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The New Testament is full of statements that belong to Christ\u2019s humanity. He grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52). He was tired and sat by a well (John 4:6). He wept (John 11:35). He \u201clearned obedience\u201d through suffering (Hebrews 5:8). On the cross He cried, \u201cMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d (Matthew 27:46), praying the words of Psalm 22 as every faithful Israelite could. Paul calls Him \u201cthe man Christ Jesus,\u201d the mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5), and a mediator must truly stand on the human side of that relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the same Gospels place alongside these statements claims that no mere man could make. \u201cBefore Abraham was, I am\u201d (John 8:58). \u201cWhoever has seen me has seen the Father\u201d (John 14:9). He forgives sins in his own name (Mark 2:5\u20137) and receives worship (Matthew 14:33; John 20:28).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The key point is that the New Testament authors themselves hold both together, sometimes in a single sentence. The clearest example is Hebrews 1:8\u20139, quoting Psalm 45. The Father addresses the Son: \u201cYour throne, O God, is forever and ever.\u201d Then the very next line says: \u201cTherefore God, your God, has anointed you.\u201d The Son is called God and is said to have a God in the same passage. The author did not see a contradiction, because he understood what John 20:17 also shows: the Son is God by nature, and as the anointed man, the Messiah, He has a God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul gives the pattern its fullest expression in Philippians 2:6\u20138. Christ was \u201cin the form of God\u201d and equal with God, yet He \u201ctook the form of a servant\u201d and became \u201cobedient to the point of death.\u201d A servant has a master; an obedient man has a God to obey. Paul does not say Christ ceased to be in the form of God. He says Christ added the form of a servant. \u201cMy God\u201d is the language of the servant form, spoken by the one who never lost the divine form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This also explains the timing of John 20:17. Jesus says \u201cmy God\u201d after the resurrection. That is not evidence against His divinity; it is evidence that the Incarnation is permanent. The risen Christ is still truly human, and a human being still speaks of God as \u201cmy God.\u201d That is precisely why, eleven verses later, Thomas can touch that risen human body and confess to the person within it, \u201cMy Lord and my God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The early Church read the verse exactly this way. Gregory of Nazianzus, in the fourth century, gave a simple rule: statements of lowliness and dependence belong to Christ\u2019s humanity, statements of glory and equality to his divinity, and both are true of the one Christ. Leo the Great, whose letter the Council of Chalcedon affirmed in AD 451, wrote that each nature does what is proper to it, in communion with the other. This was not a later invention to escape a Muslim objection. It was the Church\u2019s reading of John 20:17 centuries before Islam existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 2: \u201cThis is a convenient trick. Every awkward verse gets assigned to the human nature.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The charge would be fair if Christians invented the two natures to rescue difficult texts. But the two natures are not an escape hatch; they are the conclusion forced by the texts themselves. The New Testament presents one person who is tired and upholds the universe (Hebrews 1:3), who is born and existed before Abraham, who prays and receives prayer. Any reading that keeps only one set of verses must explain away the other. The two-natures doctrine is the only view that takes all of them seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is also important to be clear that Christians do not split Jesus into two persons, one human and one divine, who take turns speaking. There is one person, the eternal Son. Everything Jesus says, he says as that one person. When He says, \u201cmy God,\u201d it is truly the Son who speaks, speaking according to the human nature He has made His own. When He says, \u201cbefore Abraham was, I am,\u201d it is the same Son, speaking according to the nature He has always had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 3: \u201cMoses and Hud also say \u2018my Lord and your Lord,\u2019 so the phrase proves nothing unique.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Agreed, and this article does not claim otherwise. On its own, the qur\u2019anic phrase shows only that Jesus worshipped God, something Christians gladly affirm about Jesus in His humanity. The question is not whether Jesus called God \u201cmy Lord,\u201d but who Jesus was when He said it. For that, the Qur\u2019an itself directs us to the Gospel, and the Gospel shows that the One who said \u201cmy God\u201d also accepted \u201cmy God\u201d from Thomas. Moses never accepted worship, and Hud never said, \u201cbefore Abraham was, I am.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 4: \u201cSon of God is used of Israel and the righteous. \u2018My Father and your Father\u2019 means nothing special.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is true that Israel is called God\u2019s son (Exodus 4:22) and that believers are called children of God. But that is exactly the contrast John draws. Believers become children of God (John 1:12); Jesus is the only begotten Son (John 1:18, 3:16). If Jesus were one son among many, His avoidance of \u201cour Father\u201d would make no sense, and His hearers would not have tried to stone Him for \u201cmaking himself equal with God\u201d by calling God His own Father (John 5:18). Ordinary sonship does not provoke a charge of blasphemy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 5: \u201cThe Gospel was corrupted, and the Qur\u2019an only affirms the original Injil given to Jesus.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This brings us back to the Qur\u2019an\u2019s own words. Al-Maida 5:47 tells the Christians of Muhammad\u2019s time to judge by what God revealed in the Gospel. That instruction assumes they had it. Al-Maida 5:48 calls the Qur\u2019an a guardian (muhaymin<\/em>) over the earlier scriptures, and Al-Anaam 6:115 insists that no one can change God\u2019s words. If the Gospel had been lost or corrupted before the seventh century, the command to judge by it would be meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The manuscript evidence makes the point concrete. The text of John 20 in Papyrus 66, copied around AD 200, is the same text Christians read today. No manuscript, early or late, reads differently on the points this article depends on. And there is no manuscript anywhere of a different \u201coriginal Injil\u201d in which Jesus teaches Islamic doctrine. If the Gospel was corrupted, it happened before AD 200, which would mean the Qur\u2019an commanded Christians to judge by a book that had already been corrupted for four centuries. This is often called the \u201cIslamic dilemma\u201d: either the Gospel was reliable in Muhammad\u2019s time, in which case it is reliable now, or it was not, in which case the Qur\u2019an\u2019s command makes no sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Objection 6: \u201cYunus 10:94 is hypothetical. Muhammad never actually doubted.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many classical commentators do read it that way, and the argument here does not depend on Muhammad having had doubts. The point is simpler: the verse treats the people of the Book as a reliable reference point for testing revelation. Whether the doubt is real or hypothetical, the Qur\u2019an assumes their Scripture can answer the question. We are simply taking that assumption at its word.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Qur\u2019an repeats the same words five times in Jesus\u2019 mouth: \u201cAllah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him\u201d (Al-Imran 3:51, Al-Maida 5:72, 5:117, Maryam 19:36, Al-Zukhruf 43:64). For many Muslim readers, these verses settle the matter. If Jesus had a Lord, He cannot be Lord. If He told people to worship God,“\u201cMy Lord and Your Lord\u201d What Jesus Meant”<\/span> \u067e\u0691\u06be\u0646\u0627 \u062c\u0627\u0631\u06cc \u0631\u06a9\u06be\u06cc\u06ba<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":236231845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peSSf1-pv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/236231845"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-haqiqa.com\/ur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"\u0688\u0628\u0644\u06cc\u0648 \u067e\u06cc","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}