some of the early generations:

“David, peace be upon him, was better after repentance than he had been before his sin.”

Another said: “Had repentance not been the most beloved of things to Him, He would not have tested those of His creation most honored in His sight with sin.” The authentic hadith collections record the hadith on repentance:

“Allah rejoices more at His servant’s repentance than a man who stopped at a place,” and so on.

Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, Allah loves those who constantly repent and loves those who purify themselves.”

He also says:

“Except those who repent, believe, and do righteous deeds: Allah will replace their evil deeds with good deeds.”

An authentic collection also records the hadith about:

“The man whose minor sins Allah lays before him while concealing his major sins from him. He fears that his major sins will be revealed, but Allah says to him: ‘I have forgiven them for you and replaced every evil deed with a good deed.’ He then says: ‘My Lord, I have other evil deeds that I have not seen.’”

When he sees evil deeds being replaced with good deeds, he asks to see the major sins whose disclosure he had feared. Clearly, his state with this replacement is better than it would have been had neither the evil deeds nor their replacement occurred.

A number of the early generations, including Sa‘īd ibn Jubayr, said:

“A servant may do a good deed and enter Hell because of it, and a servant may commit an evil deed and enter Paradise because of it. He does a good deed, then becomes conceited and boasts about it until it leads him into Hell. He commits an evil deed, then continues to fear its consequences and repent of it until it leads him into Paradise.”

Allah Most High says:

“But man undertook it. Indeed, he was unjust and ignorant.”

“So that Allah may punish the hypocrite men and hypocrite women, and the polytheist men and polytheist women