How Does the God of Christianity Differ from Other Religions?

Question: How does God differ from other religions’ gods, such as Muslims, Hindus, and others?

Answer: This is not an easy question. There are aspects of Allah (the Muslim name for God) that are very much like the true God, but Muhammad (the man who wrote the Qur’an, Islam’s Bible) also represents Allah in ways that differ from the Bible. The God of Islam is not triune, for example, but a unitary personality. It seems his laws do not spring from his nature but are created for us (whereas the God we worship is the ground of all righteousness). From our perspective this means that right and wrong is not arbitrary but inherently right or wrong in nature.

God according to the Hindus is variously explained. There are some Hindus who view God as a personal being who wants a personal relationship with us (on the basis of how well we perform or failing that, on forgiveness he offers apart from sacrifice). Others view God as the impersonal force that underlies the universe and is manifested in thousands of avatars (incarnations or personifications of God). There is no uniform view among Hindus.

The God faithful Jews worship is the one who identified Himself as Yahweh (His personal name) to Israel and the One who sent Jesus to be our savior. But they do not recognize Jesus as God’s sent one, and with the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 and the absence of the sacrificial system, they have resorted to viewing relationship to God as dependent on performance and sacrificeless forgiveness. Only Christianity, among all the religions of the earth, bases a relationship with God (the triune God) on faith that accepts a free gift of forgiveness purchased at the cost of the Son’s own life. We are not dependent on our performance to win God’s approval. We have His approval in Christ (Romans 8:1) and now live for Him by the power of His Spirit in gratitude for what He has done for us.