Among them is that the qualities ascribed to the people of goodness indicate that Allah loves and is pleased with those qualities and that they are praiseworthy, while the qualities ascribed to the people of evil indicate that Allah hates them and that they are blameworthy.

Among them is the favorable praise among His servants with which Allah honors His allies; this is an immediate reward. Likewise, He humiliates His enemies through ignominious descriptions, which constitute an immediate punishment.

Among them is that this encourages people to emulate the people of goodness and vie with them, and spurs those who perform righteous deeds to action by identifying the allies of Allah who performed them. It also warns against the deeds of the people of evil and makes people detest the sins that brought such consequences upon those who committed them.

Among them is drawing lessons from the qualities of the people of goodness and evil, and recognizing that whoever acts as they did will meet the same fate as they did. The Exalted has urged people to draw lessons in more than one place in His Book. The essence of this is to pass from one thing to another and to compare a thing with its counterpart.

Among them is that when a servant sees (1) the deeds of the people of goodness and his own inability to live up to them, this causes him to belittle and humble himself. This is the very essence of his rectitude, just as viewing himself with self-admiration and arrogance is the very essence of his corruption. There are many other benefits besides these.

Among them is the mention of Allah’s attributes, names, and actions, and the declaration that He is exalted above all imperfections. This yields tremendous benefits:

Among them is that this knowledge—knowledge concerning Allah, Exalted is He—is absolutely the noblest and most sublime of all branches of knowledge. Devoting oneself to understanding and thoroughly investigating it is therefore devotion to the loftiest objective, and its attainment by a servant is among the noblest gifts.

Among them is that knowing Allah, Exalted is He, leads one to love Him, stand in awe of Him, fear Him, place one’s hope in Him, and devote one’s deeds sincerely to Him. This is the very essence of the servant’s felicity. There is no way to know Allah except by knowing His names and attributes and gaining a deep understanding of their meanings.

In this regard, the Quran contains what no other book contains: it details and clarifies these matters, through them Allah makes Himself known to His servants, and He acquaints them with Himself so that they may know Him.

Among them is that Allah created His creatures so that they might worship and know Him. This is the objective required of them. Devoting oneself to this is therefore devotion to the purpose for which the servant was created, while abandoning and neglecting it means disregarding that purpose. It is unseemly for a servant upon whom Allah’s blessings have never ceased to follow one another, and toward whom His grace is immense in every respect, to remain ignorant of his Lord and turn away from knowing Him.

Among them is that one of the pillars of faith—indeed, its foremost pillar and foundation—is faith in Allah. Faith does not consist merely in saying, “I believe in Allah,” without knowing one’s Lord.

Rather, the reality of faith is that one knows the Lord in whom one believes and exerts every effort to know His names and attributes until one attains the degree of certainty. A person’s faith is commensurate with his knowledge of his Lord: whenever his knowledge of his Lord increases, his faith increases, and whenever it decreases, his faith decreases.

The most direct path leading to this is to contemplate His attributes and names in the Quran.

The method is that whenever one encounters one of Allah’s names, one affirms (2) that meaning of Him in all its perfection and universality and declares Him exalted (3) above everything contrary to it.

Among them is that knowledge of Him, Exalted is He, is the foundation of all things. Indeed, one who truly knows Him uses what he knows of His attributes and actions to infer what He does and what rulings He prescribes, for He acts only as His names and attributes entail. Thus, all His acts revolve