Allah Loves You Just For Trying

By Omar Suleiman

Shaytaan invites us to commit a sin in the first place, that then causes the distance between us and Allah.

Then Shaytaan invites us to feel too ashamed to turn back to Allah with Tawbah (repentance) and to call upon Him with duaa so that we can get back close to Him.

This is a very powerful connection that Allah makes in the Quran in surah Al-Baqarah:

Allah loves those who repent (inna Allaha yuhibbu at-tawwabeen) and Allah loves those who are engaged in purifying themselves (al-mutatahireen)

Now, some of the scholars said that this purification is physical purification, it’s referring to “wudu” and “tahara“, referring to the way that we clean ourselves up for prayer. But there are other scholars that said that this one actually has a spiritual implication.

I want to actually focus on this from the spiritual perspective. First of all, al-mutatahireen, those who are engaged in purifying themselves; so just as Allah loves those who are engaged in repentance, not necessarily those alladhina tawboo, those who repented in the past tense, and they no longer are committing sin… because we’re always committing sin and always repenting and always trying to get back close to Him; but those who are seeking to purify themselves, those who are engaged in a state of purification.

The power of that is that Allah does not expect you to reach some peak purification before you can be worthy of supplicating Him, but Allah loves you just for trying. Allah loves you just for the effort. And if you think about how beautiful and profound that is, then it actually helps you to repent and helps you to make duaa.

So there’s a very beautiful expression, there’s a very beautiful explanation for this verse from the spiritual perspective. And it comes from the way of Imam Hassan Al-Basri (R), as well as the great mufassir of the Quran, the great explainer of the Quran, Mujahid (R). They said that,

1. “inna Allaha yuhibbu at-tawwabeen” – that Allah loves those who repent. I.E. those who do not insist upon sin, okay.
2. Then “inna Allaha yuhibbu al-mutatahireen“, those who do not return to those same sins, okay.
So the first ones they said: those that don’t engage or those that don’t insist upon committing those particular sins. So they’re insisting upon returning to Allah. Even if they do commit those sins at times, they insist upon returning to Allah.

And then the second one, they said: they don’t return back to those exact same sins over and over and over again. Because that would show a disregard of Allah, that would show that you weren’t taking your repentance seriously. And that would show that you haven’t learned the lessons.

Now, there is something important to understand here. Allah loves you for trying. And Allah loves you for being engaged in the state of purification, and Allah loves you for repenting. But where is it that we actually fall short here?

Some of us will repent sincerely for a sin and then insist that we will not return to that sin, yet still return to it. That does not disqualify you from the love of Allah nor does it open up all the previous times that you committed that sin or nullify the repentance from those previous sins.

The type of insistence and returning to, that could cause you to fall out of the love of Allah (SWT), out of this journey of attaining the love of Allah, is when you insist upon those sins and disregard the sight of Allah and disregard the pursuit of allah, subhana wa ta’ala, and returning to those sins.

So that’s the difference between falling short again, getting weak again, after you sincerely repent and not being sincere in your repentance in the first place, hence not being sincere in your pursuit of purification in the first place as well.

So we ask Allah SWT to allow us to always be engaged in the effort of purification, to allow us to reach better states, and to always allow us to be in His state of love even as we fall short at times, just for being in the state of repentance and for being in the state of the effort of purification.

ALLAHUMMA AMEEN, JAZAKALLAHU KHAYRAN