Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,

Question # 1:

“Jesus died for your sins, why do you still try to do works to gain heaven when he has made the ultimate sacrifice for you?”

Answer:

This is often a question that missionaries and lay Christian alike post to the Muslim population. It’s quite the offer to resist. God has made a sacrifice for your eternal forgiveness, why would someone possibly forsake eternal forgiveness for eternal perdition? The Christian narrative would usually base the fault upon either Satan or the lack of having the Holy Spirit guide us.

However, this is not the case, we Muslims reject the sacrifice, or rather alleged sacrifice based upon a number of glaring theological loopholes that essentially render this “ultimate sacrifice” to be nothing more than a figment of romanticised pre-Monotheistic passion narratives. I’ll frame the answer to this question within two primary arguments:

(1) Historical Blunders.
(2) Theological Circular Reasoning.

Historical Blunders:

Early Christianity had to deal with the problem of Jesus being the ultimate sacrifice to justify the forgiveness of all their sins. What exactly does the object of sacrifice need to be to fulfill or warrant such a price as forgiveness? The answer is perfect. Jesus has to be perfect, that is without error, without flaw, without sin. However as John 1:1 and John 1:14 would indicate to us, Jesus was of the flesh and the flesh, whenever brought into this world, was sinful, that is, all born of women folk have inherited the sin of Adam. Some cite Genesis 3:16 and Psalms 51:5 as evidence for that.

In any case, the problem supposes itself. How can Jesus be the ultimate sacrifice if he has a sin on his record? That being the original [inherited] sin. The solution was to remove that sin from upon Jesus, by placing the onus on his mother, Mary. This is where the topic of the Immaculate Conception comes up. The Immaculate Conception refers to Mary and not Jesus. Essentially, Mary was specially chosen by God to deliver God on earth, and in doing so, God made her sinless. The problem here though, is that no Biblical evidence supports or promotes this belief. There is none. The only sources for this belief comes from the writings of men, who were attributing divinity to Mary, in almost the same light the Collyridians [Mary worshippers] were doing:

The salutation of the angel Gabriel — chaire kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.

she was created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures.

To St. Ephraem she was as innocent as Eve before her fall, a virgin most estranged from every stain of sin, more holy than the Seraphim, the sealed fountain of the Holy Ghost, the pure seed of God, ever in body and in mind intact and immaculate.[1]

These quotes speak for themselves. Really, these men were ascribing beliefs about Mary to justify their beliefs of God having to die for their errors. So, to summarize this point:

Jesus died for our sins.
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Because he was the perfect sacrifice.
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Perfect because his mother delivered him without the original sin.
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She didn’t deliver him with the original sin because God made her soul god-like in purity.
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He made her so, according to the writings not in scripture, but in those of men wondering why or how Jesus was born sinless.

Since their is no scriptural basis for the Immaculate Conception and the only source of such beliefs are from men ascribing god-like attributes to her, I am left to reject her god-like state, as she is not god-like in anyway, shape or form just as the earliest Christians condemned and rejected that same belief as held by the Collyridians.

As a side note, what makes this original sin even worse is the fact that babies get to burn in hell for simply, being born:

Theological Circular Thinking:

What is more frustrating is the apparent lack of reasoning that befalls this theological concept of someone having died, for all of my sins. To begin with, all humans are sinners and this is supported by the Biblical text Job 15:14. With that in mind, let us say I am a sinner. Jesus, according to Christian belief has suffered, been tortured, abused and died for me and my inequities. However Jesus’ death is redundant. This romanticized, sacrifice is useless in relation to my existence, to be extant, Jesus died for nothing.

Now, why would I say something so harsh? Well, I’d like you or rather, I’d like to invite you to reality. I don’t believe in the Christian concept of God, I don’t believe that God killed himself to rescue me from a punishment he created for me. So seeing as I don’t accept this sacrifice, his dying for me, is useless since I pretty much go to hell, even though he has already paid for my sins, see Mark 9:43 – 49.

One must understand, that since I am a disbeliever in his death (and as understood, the religion of Christianity) and you are sure he died for me, then quite clearly in your theological framework, he paid for sins and I am still going to be punished for them. So his death didn’t save me, his death did not benefit me in the least. So what exactly is my point?

My point is, if Jesus paid for my sins, why I am still going to be punished for them?

If the Christian concept of God, allows Jesus to be all knowing, then wouldn’t he have known I would not believe in Christianity and thus not died for me? Wasted blood, no?

wa Allaahu Alam.

[1] – https://1islam.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-quraans-claim-against-christianity-true/