5 Differences Between Salvation in Jesus and Salvation through Islam

The unique phrases and words of Scripture offer another way Christians can surmount the language problems we sometimes face with Muslims when describing conversion. For example, the phrase “born again” succinctly captures what Christians mean when we discuss conversion and sets that experience off radically from anything Islam describes. Though Muslims and Christians use such common terms as repentance and faith, biblical phrases like “born again,” “united to Christ,” and “a new creation” communicate the very real differences between Islamic and Christian understandings of conversion. So when we share the gospel, we should attempt to explain these differences in five areas.

We Are Born Again

First, we should explain that to be a Christian is to be reborn. Jesus says in John 3:3, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” As one writer puts it, “What happens in the new birth is not getting new religion but getting new life.”[1]

Born of God

Second, we should explain that to be a Christian is to be born of God. Jesus elaborates on what it means to be born again when He says, “You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:7–8). In conversion, the sinner is born again by the sovereign work and power of God the Holy Spirit, who blows wherever He pleases. This differs radically from anything Islam teaches in its view of conversion. Such a conversion is not a human achievement. The Bible teaches, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12–13, italics added). God does the work of producing new birth in the lives of people dead in sin.

So radical is God’s work of conversion or regeneration, it can only be likened to death and resurrection.

Raised to Life

Third, we should explain that to be a Christian is to be raised from death to life. Romans 6:1–5 describes the resurrected life of conversion.

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

So radical is God’s work of conversion or regeneration, it can only be likened to death and resurrection, dying to sin and living a new life for God.”

United to Christ

Fourth, we should explain that to be a Christian is to be spiritually united to Christ. This is another biblical truth that helps to set Christian conversion apart from Islamic ideas of conversion. The Bible teaches that in conversion God unites the Christian to Himself through His Son. We have been “united with him” (Rom. 6:5). The apostle Paul described the Christian experience when he wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The Christian’s life “is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). This is the renewed life that we need and must have if we are ever to enter the kingdom of heaven.

A New Creation

Finally, we should explain that to be a Christian is to be a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Cor. 5:17–18a).

The change of conversion is radical, and using the radical language of the Bible is best for demonstrating the difference to our Muslim friends.

[1] John Piper, Finally Alive (Minneapolis: Christian Focus and Desir- ing God Ministries, 2009), 28.