﴿7-8﴾ “Know that the Messenger of Allah is among you. Were he to obey you in many matters, you would surely fall into hardship. But Allah has endeared faith to you and beautified it in your hearts, and has made disbelief, transgression, and disobedience hateful to you. It is they who are rightly guided—by Allah’s grace and favor. And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.”
That is: You should know that the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—is among you. He is the noble, righteous, rightly guided Messenger who desires good for you and counsels you sincerely, whereas you may desire for yourselves things involving evil and harm that the Messenger does not approve for you. Were he to obey you in many matters, it would burden you and cause you hardship. Rather, the Messenger guides you, and Allah Most High endears faith to you and beautifies it in your hearts: through the love and preference for truth that Allah has instilled within them; through the signs He establishes in support of the truth, the proofs demonstrating its soundness, and the receptiveness of hearts and innate dispositions to it; and through what He does for you by granting you success in turning back to Him. He also makes disbelief and transgression—that is, major sins—and disobedience, meaning sins lesser than those, hateful to you (1): through the aversion to evil and the unwillingness to commit it that He has instilled in your hearts; through the proofs and signs He has established demonstrating its corruptness, and the refusal of sound innate dispositions to accept it; and through the aversion to it that Allah places in people’s hearts (2).
“It is they”—those in whose hearts Allah has beautified faith, to whom He has endeared it, and to whom He has made disbelief, transgression, and disobedience hateful—“who are rightly guided.” That is, their knowledge and deeds are sound, and they remain steadfast upon the true religion and the straight path.
Their opposites are the wayward: those to whom disbelief, transgression, and disobedience have been made dear and to whom faith has been made hateful. The fault is their own: when they transgressed, Allah sealed their hearts; when “they deviated, Allah caused their hearts to deviate”; and when they did not believe in the truth when it first came to them, Allah turned their hearts away.
His words, “by Allah’s grace and favor,” mean that the good they attained came through Allah’s grace and benevolence toward them, not through any power or strength of their own.
“And Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.” That is, He knows who will be grateful for the blessing and therefore grants him success in attaining it, and who will not be grateful for it and is unworthy of it. He thus bestows His grace wherever His wisdom dictates.