1. It indicates that Allah loves those that hasten to repent when they have committed a sin.
2. It shows that for one to attain Allah’s pleasure and love, one should involve in a lot of TAWBAH (repentance to Allah). And this Tawbah has certain conditions for it to be fully accepted by Allaah.
The conditions are:
♦ The slave must realize and acknowledge he has committed a sin & this obviously
necessitate the slaves to stop the sin immediately.
Many people sin and they don’t even acknowledge that they are have committed a sin. So they don’t pray, they curse, murder and they see no problem in that. Will such a person make TAWBAH? Off course No.
This also explains why Shaitaan loves bid’a acts, for the one who does an act of bid’a, will not repent from this sin because he thinks he is doing something good. So the 1st stage of TAWBAH (you returning to Allah) is to acknowledge your sin as a sin.
♦ Having NADAM regret/remorse. Feeling ashamed of violating Allah’s commands. Having this remorse in your heart such that you rebuke yourself, asking yourself ‘Why did I do that sin? This shows you are really sincere to make tawbah Know! O slave of Allah! This feeling of remorse/regret it is something that Allah places in your heart. It is Allah who has turned to you again and because He has turned to you, you feel this sense of regret and remorse. For how many have no remorse for there sins. May Allah protect us and continue to turn to us with his infinite mercy Aameen. So after the slave recognizes his sin and has remorse over it, he now turns to Allah by asking Allah for forgiveness of that sin (even this is from the TAWFEEQ of Allah) and again Allah turns to him by forgiving him (i.e accepts his TAWBAH).
This should make us feel very humbled. For this, you shouldn’t feel proud of yourself, ‘I have made TAWBAH’, such that you feel that you are above others etc.. Allah guided you to it, it was through His TAWFEEQ, but rather, show gratitude to Allah.
♦ You have a firm resolve not to return to the sin. Repentance is not accepted for a sin that a person persists on committing. The greatest condition for acceptance of repentance is the determination to abandon it immediately. Now it could be you are weak and you may go back to that sin that you are asking Allah to forgive you. But at least, say to yourself, I intend not to go back to the sin to the best of my capability’ don’t be like those who Shaitaan has deceived them so they say, ‘ We know we will go back to that sin so why bother make Tawbah? No! Rather intend and try hard. Perhaps you have gone back to the sin 100 times but this time Allah will grant you TAWFEEQ , for if you come to Allah with a sincere intention Allah will hasten to you with His assistance.
♦ Lastly, we should know that if the sin is related to someone else’s, for instance, if you stole another person’s money then here your tawbah can be fully accepted by Allah after you have returned the money to the owner. It is not sufficient to steal another person’s money and then say ‘ I repent’ you must repay back that dept as well. If the sin is that you hide the truth then you must
repent and make clear what the truth is etc.
Allaahu A’alam!