12
(Essay)
The Law Jesus , ʿalayhi as-salām, Lived
Jesus (ʿalayhi as-salām), James, Paul, and the authority to change a prophet’s teaching.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant
If I say that I follow a man, his instructions should have a claim on my life. His habits should matter. The God he worshipped should matter. When he tells people to obey a commandment, I should need a serious reason before teaching that obedience to it is no longer required.
That is where I begin with Jesus, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, ʿalayhi as-salām (peace be upon him).
I begin with the life he lived and the words the Gospels place in his mouth. Before asking what Paul taught about him, I want to know what he taught. Before accepting an explanation of why his followers need not practice parts of his religion, I want to understand that religion. Those are reasonable demands to make of a faith that asks us to follow him.
The Mosaic law is the body of commandments Scripture presents as given to Israel through Moses, whom we call Mūsā, ʿalayhi as-salām. Its legislation appears principally in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Ten Commandments belong to it, but its reach extends into worship, food, marriage, property, courts, work, and care for other people. Later Jewish tradition counts 613 commandments, although the ways of enumerating them differ. Some concern priests, some courts, some landowners, and some the sanctuary; they were never all duties every individual could perform.
Chabad.org, The 613 Commandments
That law forbids murder, theft, adultery, and false testimony. It establishes Sabbath rest. It regulates sacrifice and ritual purity, prohibits certain foods, and governs restitution. It also contains ancient institutions and penalties, including slavery and capital punishment. We should read the whole body of law honestly rather than selecting only the commands that feel familiar.
Within that same law are commands to pay workers promptly, judge fairly, leave part of the harvest for poor people and foreigners, refuse revenge, and love your neighbor. Mercy was already there. Love was already there. When Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, placed love at the center of religious life, he drew directly from the Torah.
Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, lived within this covenantal world. Luke records his circumcision on the eighth day and describes his family fulfilling the requirements of the law. His synagogue attendance on the Sabbath was customary. Matthew depicts him arranging to observe Passover with his disciples. These are concrete practices, written into the Christian account of his life.
Luke 2:21-24Luke 4:16Matthew 26:17-19
He was an Israelite. Israel was the whole house, the twelve tribes descended from Jacob, and the covenant at Sinai was made with all of them. The word Jew comes from Judah, the name of Jacob’s fourth son and of the single tribe descended from him. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, described his own mission as being to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and the Quran records him calling out to the Children of Israel. So I call his practice Israelite. Where I report what Paul, Acts, or later Jewish tradition say, their word stays. Where I describe his life and the community around him, I use the name of his people.
Genesis 32:28Genesis 49:28Exodus 19:3-6Online Etymology Dictionary, “Jew”Matthew 15:24Quran 61:6
After healing a man with a skin disease, Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, instructed him to present himself to the priest and make the offering Moses commanded. He directed someone else into a specific Mosaic obligation. This was an instruction about religious practice, including an offering that falls under what Christian theology calls ceremonial law.
Matthew 8:4Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 99
In Matthew 5:17, Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, says, “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” In the next verses, he speaks of the law’s enduring force and warns against breaking even the least commandments and teaching others to do the same. Obedience and teaching obedience receive his approval.
The word fulfill carries much of the later argument. One Christian reading holds that Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, brought the law to its intended completion, changing the believer’s obligations under the covenant. That reading deserves to be examined. It cannot simply be inserted as the definition of the word and then treated as though Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, had explicitly instructed his audience to discontinue the law. The surrounding sentences praise keeping commandments. Any interpretation of fulfillment must account for those sentences too.
Matthew V. Novenson, “Law in the New Testament,” section 5
The same pattern appears elsewhere. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, tells a man asking about eternal life to keep the commandments, then names several. He rebukes religious leaders for neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness while carefully tithing herbs, but adds that the other duties should not be neglected. His criticism requires deeper obedience. It gives no simple permission to discard the religious obligations around it.
I read these passages as strong evidence that Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, intended the people he taught to continue obeying God’s law. He expected it to shape their conduct. A teacher who warns against relaxing commandments cannot casually be enlisted as a spokesman for abandoning them. The texts do not settle every later question about which requirements apply to Gentiles, the nations outside Israel. They do make a blanket claim that Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, told people to leave Moses behind very difficult to sustain.
Other passages complicate this picture. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, disputes Sabbath interpretations and appeals to human need. He gives a stricter teaching on divorce than the Mosaic permission his questioners cite. In Mark 7, he locates moral defilement in what comes from the heart; the NIV and the ESV render the narrator’s explanation as declaring all foods clean. Christians reasonably bring these texts into the discussion. They show that the Gospels require interpretation and contain real questions about law and authority. They do not erase Matthew’s emphatic affirmation of obedience.
Mark 2:23-28Matthew 19:3-9Mark 7:1-23
Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, also warned his followers to examine religious authority. In Matthew 7 he warns about false prophets and tells his hearers to recognize them by their fruits. He then describes people appealing to their religious accomplishments in his name and still being rejected. Invoking his name does not, by itself, establish fidelity to him.
Paul’s own account gives us a serious reason to examine the transition in his life. He admits persecuting the church and trying to destroy it. Acts describes Saul, also known as Paul, approving Stephen’s execution and dragging men and women out of their homes into prison. In a later speech, Acts attributes to him an admission that he supported the deaths of believers and tried to force them to blaspheme.
Galatians 1:13-14Acts 8:1-3Acts 26:9-11
The precise charge is severe enough: Paul persecuted the followers of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, and by the account of Acts was complicit in their killing. These passages do not establish that he personally carried out executions. They establish his involvement in violence against the community he later claimed authority to teach.
Repentance remains possible. As a Muslim, I cannot deny that a person who has committed grave wrong can change. His earlier persecution alone cannot prove that every later statement was false. What requires examination is the authority he claimed after that change, and the relationship between his teaching and the teaching of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām.
Paul was not among the companions of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, during his earthly ministry. He did not base his commission on years spent listening to Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, teach. In Galatians, he insists that he received his gospel “by revelation from Jesus Christ” rather than through human instruction. He emphasizes that he did not immediately consult the earlier apostles. His claim begins with revelation.
Paul speaks of an appearance of the risen Christ, and Acts calls his encounter a heavenly vision, a waking experience on the road to Damascus. That is the claim a serious criticism has to answer.
1 Corinthians 15:3-9Acts 26:12-19
Paul offered more than a personal claim to revelation. He appealed to the communities formed through his work and to signs of apostleship. He reported that James, Peter, and John recognized his Gentile mission. Acts also presents Ananias as receiving a revelation concerning him. Christianity’s case for Paul draws on these claims together. Describing his entire authority as nothing more than an unsupported dream would give readers an incomplete account.
1 Corinthians 9:1-22 Corinthians 12:12Galatians 2:7-10Acts 9:10-19
Yet accepting that case remains a judgment about religious authority. A Christian who accepts Paul’s commission reads his teaching as authorized by the risen Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām. I understand that position. As a Muslim, I do not accept that commission as established revelation. The claim must be evaluated; it cannot serve as its own final proof. I believe revelation is real, so the mere fact that someone claims revelation is no argument against him. The question is what warrants accepting this particular claim and the changes taught under its authority.
Those changes are substantial. In Galatians 5, Paul warns his uncircumcised readers against receiving circumcision as a requirement for being right with God. He says that undertaking it obligates a person to the whole law, and that seeking justification through law separates them from Christ. In 1 Corinthians 7, he tells the uncircumcised not to seek circumcision, while telling the circumcised not to undo theirs. A practice that marked the covenantal life of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, is therefore unnecessary for these converts.
Galatians 5:2-61 Corinthians 7:17-20
Paul goes further than a single ruling about circumcision. Romans 7 describes believers as having died to the law and been released from it, now serving through the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 9, he describes accommodating those under the law while saying that he himself is not under it. These are substantial statements about the believer’s relationship to the Mosaic covenant.
Romans 7:1-61 Corinthians 9:19-23
Paul did not thereby tell people to murder, steal, or live without restraint. He calls the law holy, rejects using grace as permission to sin, and insists on love and moral conduct. He also says faith upholds the law. His position involves a redefinition of how believers stand in relation to it, especially in the Gentile mission. Reducing all of this to “Paul said there are no rules” would miss what he actually argued.
Romans 3:28-31Romans 6:14-15Romans 7:12Galatians 5:13-23
The question remains consequential even when stated carefully. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, practiced covenantal obligations and, in Matthew, explicitly taught obedience to the commandments. Paul taught that believers had a changed relationship to that covenant and that Gentiles should not take on circumcision as necessary for belonging. Christian theology explains this through fulfillment, resurrection, grace, and the distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Those explanations depend on accepting the authority through which the change is announced. A person outside that faith is entitled to ask whether the explanation follows from the teaching of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, or relies on a further revelation that person has not accepted.
James makes the history harder to flatten. Paul himself identifies him as “the Lord’s brother” and places him among the leading figures of the Jerusalem community. He belonged to the family of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, and became a leader at the movement’s earliest center. Paul’s relationship to the earthly life of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, was different. Kinship does not make a man infallible, but a community led by a member of the family of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, deserves attention when we ask how his earliest followers understood religious practice.
Galatians 1:18-19Galatians 2:9
Acts 21 places James and the elders at the center of a community with many Israelite believers who remained devoted to the law. They ask Paul to join a purification observance and support men completing vows, publicly demonstrating his observance. Paul complies. Their belief in Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, had plainly not made Mosaic practice obsolete. The community closest to Jerusalem’s origins continued to live within it.
That passage also limits the argument we can honestly make. It reports an accusation that Paul taught Jews to abandon Moses, then presents his participation as a way to disprove that accusation. We cannot take the allegation from the middle of the story and conceal what the story says about it. The powerful point is the continuing Torah observance of James’ community, and its concern to preserve that observance among Israelite believers.
In Acts 15, James supports admitting Gentile converts without imposing circumcision and the entire Mosaic law on them. The decision prescribes limited requirements concerning idolatry, blood, strangled animals, and sexual immorality. Acts presents it as the collective judgment of the apostles and elders. Paul’s own letter also says James, Peter, and John extended fellowship to his mission. James therefore cannot be turned into a simple witness that every Gentile must observe every obligation of the law of Moses or that Paul was rejected by all the original leaders.
James’ importance survives those qualifications. The earliest movement contained continuing Israelite observance alongside a different judgment about Gentile entry. That is a much more demanding history than the simple story in which Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, arrived, canceled the law, and left a community united around its disappearance. The observance continued. The argument concerned its scope and the authority to determine that scope.
As a Muslim, I see the life of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, through the continuity of the prophets. The Quran names Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, ʿalayhim as-salām (peace be upon them), within the same divine call to establish the religion. It describes Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, and the Gospel as confirming the Torah. It places on his lips the command to worship Allah, his Lord and ours. This is the conviction from which I write: the messenger’s life directs us toward obedience to the One who sent him.
Quran 42:13Quran 5:46Quran 5:72
That continuity has a bodily form. Matthew describes Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, falling on his face in prayer and submitting his will to God. In our prayer we bow and prostrate before our Creator. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, fasted and taught sincerity in fasting. The Quran prescribes fasting for us while explicitly connecting it to earlier communities. Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, taught sincere almsgiving; prayer and charity remain foundational duties in Muslim life.
Matthew 26:39Matthew 4:1-2Matthew 6:1-18Quran 22:77-78Quran 2:183
Luke records that Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, was circumcised, a practice that remains established in Islamic tradition. The Mosaic prohibition on pork has a clear counterpart in the Quran. That Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, avoided pork is a reasonable inference from his religious life as an Israelite, although the Gospels do not supply a complete record of his meals. These connections are concrete enough without inventing details or pretending that every later form of Muslim practice appears, unchanged, in the Gospel accounts.
Luke 2:21Sahih al-Bukhari 5889Leviticus 11:7-8Quran 2:173
Christians also pray, fast, give charity, and seek to obey God. Some Christian traditions practice prostration. I am making no claim that sincerity or discipline belongs exclusively to Muslims. I am asking readers to recognize how much of the religious life associated with Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, remains familiar and obligatory within Islam, including practices that Paul’s letters set aside for Gentile believers.
Continuity has limits. Muslims do not practice all 613 Mosaic commandments unchanged. We do not observe Israel’s Sabbath law or reproduce the ancient sanctuary system. The Quran itself recognizes different legal prescriptions for different communities. It even presents Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, as confirming the Torah while making some previously forbidden things lawful. My own scripture therefore prevents me from arguing that God could never authorize a change in law.
Quran 5:48Quran 3:50Quran 62:9-10
The question is authorized change. Christians accept the apostolic authority through which they understand their freedom from certain Mosaic obligations. Muslims accept the Quran as revelation confirming and judging what came before it. Both positions make claims that must be examined. A fair argument states its own foundation as openly as it examines someone else’s.
My foundation is that Allah sent the prophets to call human beings into submission to Him. In Islam, the believer remains accountable to divine commands that govern the body, appetite, money, relationships, and treatment of others. We have not abandoned that prophetic demand. We continue to pray, fast, give, restrain ourselves, and worship the God whom Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, worshipped. When I speak of fidelity to his path, that is the continuity I mean.
The order in which we listen matters. The lived obedience of Jesus, ʿalayhi as-salām, deserves attention before it is explained away. His commands deserve to be heard in full. James and the observant Jerusalem community deserve a place in the account. Paul’s transformation deserves examination, and his claim to revelation deserves the same scrutiny we would apply to any consequential claim of religious authority.
I cannot treat a later interpretation as permission to stop listening to the teacher it claims to explain. My love for ʿĪsā, ʿalayhi as-salām, requires me to take his obedience seriously. It asks something of my own conduct. I intend to answer that demand with the way I live.
Peace be upon ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, and upon the messengers who called us to worship and obey the One God.
By Mike Rashid King • Allah's Humble Servant