• His heart is also brimming with the delight of knowing his Lord—of recognizing His perfection, the perfection of His beneficence, and the vast expanse of His bounty and grace—and with the sweetness of loving Him and turning back to Him, a sweetness that springs from knowing His attributes and witnessing His favors and gifts.
Hence the believer moves about amid the varied pleasures and sweetnesses of faith; for that reason faith consoles him in calamities, makes acts of obedience feel light, and shields him from falling into disobedience. It molds the servant’s will and desires so that they follow whatever Allah loves and approves, just as the Prophet ﷺ said: “None of you truly believes until his desires conform to what I have brought.” (1)

• Among its fruits, too, is that faith is the sole motive that enables a person to reach the very summit of the religion: jihad with one’s body, wealth, and speech—fighting the disbelievers with sword and spear, and contending with disbelievers, hypocrites, and deviants in the fundamentals and the details of the religion through wisdom, proof, and clear argument.
The stronger a servant’s faith grows—in knowledge, insight, will, and resolve—the stronger his jihad becomes, and he fulfills whatever he can according to his circumstances and station, thereby attaining the lofty degree and elevated rank. But when faith weakens, the servant neglects the verbal jihad within his ability—through knowledge, evidence, counsel, and enjoining right and forbidding wrong—and his physical jihad falters because he lacks the impulse to undertake it. For this reason the Most High said: “The believers are only those who have believed in Allah and His Messenger, then have never doubted, and who strive with their wealth and their lives in the path of Allah; it is they who are the truthful.” (15) [Quran, 49:15].
Thus, the sincerity of his faith drives the truthful believer to undertake this rank, the rank of the two loftiest classes after the Prophets: