(76) “Allah increases in guidance those who follow guidance, while the enduring righteous deeds are better in reward with your Lord and better in outcome.”
Having mentioned that He extends the wrongdoers further in their misguidance, Allah states that, out of His bounty and mercy toward them, He increases those who are guided in guidance. Guidance encompasses beneficial knowledge and righteous action. Thus, whenever anyone embarks upon a path of knowledge, faith, and righteous action, Allah grants him more of it, makes that path smooth and easy for him, and bestows upon him other things that lie beyond his own efforts. This proves that faith increases and decreases, as held by the righteous predecessors. This is also indicated by the words of Allah Most High: “And that those who believe may increase in faith,” and: “And when His verses are recited to them, they increase them in faith.”
Actual experience also demonstrates this, for faith consists of what the heart and tongue profess and what the heart, tongue, and limbs do. Believers differ enormously in all these respects.
He then says: “the enduring righteous deeds.” This means the deeds that remain: those that do not come to an end when all else comes to an end and do not fade away. They are righteous deeds such as prayer, obligatory charity, fasting, Hajj, umrah, Quran recitation, glorifying Allah, proclaiming His greatness, praising Him, affirming His oneness, showing kindness to created beings, and deeds of the heart and body.
These deeds are “better in reward with your Lord and better in outcome.” That is, their recompense and reward are better with Allah, and the benefit and return they bring to those who perform them are abundant. Here the comparative form is being used outside its usual comparative sense, for apart from the enduring righteous deeds, there is no deed that truly benefits, whose reward abides for its doer, or that proves fruitful.
The reason the enduring righteous deeds are mentioned here—and Allah knows best—is that, after mentioning how the wrongdoers regarded worldly circumstances such as wealth, children, a fine position, and the like as signs that their possessor was in a good state, Allah declares that matters are not as they claimed. Rather, the deed that is the hallmark of happiness and the charter of success is to act in accordance with what Allah loves and is pleased with.