Jesus’s Fourth Response to the Divine Question

In the previous verse, three responses from Jesus were recounted. In his fourth response, Jesus (a.s.) says that not only did he not invite people to polytheism (shirk), but he called them to monotheism (tawḥīd), and this invitation was also by divine command: “I did not say to them [anything] except what You had commanded me [to say].”

The divine command to Jesus was through revelation (waḥy), consequently the content of “I did not say to them…” becomes “I did not speak except what was revealed to me,” and this expression is similar to “Nor does he speak out of [his own] desire: it is just a revelation that is revealed [to him]”.(332) Every thought and idea, in the face of divine revelation, is desire (hawā). Jesus’s speech was not from the desire of the soul, but was the very divine revelation and in harmony with it, consequently no deviation found its way into it.

Jesus, in explaining his response, says: O God, You commanded me to say to them “worship God”: “Worship God” (an uʿbudū Allāh). Then he, in explaining and commenting on this sentence and in describing the object of worship (God), adds that God is both my Lord and your Lord: “my Lord and your Lord” (rabbī wa-rabbakum), and both [of us] must worship one Lord (rabb). Jesus did not say to the people “worship your Lord” (an uʿbudū rabbakum) lest there be doubt and they think that their Lord is other than his Lord; or that Jesus himself is their independent or non-independent Lord; or that Jesus is not at all under God’s lordship (rubūbiyya).

Jesus explicitly and absolutely says that God is the object of worship; then he mentions the reason for His being the object of worship, namely lordship (rubūbiyya); he also reminds [them] of the absoluteness of His lordship. Someone is the object of worship and deserving of human submission and humility who does something for humans and seats them at the table of His life-giving [bounty] and nurtures them, and He is only God who is the Lord (rabb), meaning the manager of all things, whose management is also accompanied by nurturing (tarbiya).