3. Aal-i-Imraan

[Regarding His words from] verily God has heard to where He says:

if you are truthfulḍ': it is related that for the prophets of the Children of Israel the miraculous proof [of their prophethood] was that they would bring forth an offering and invoke God whereupon a fire would come down from the heaven and consume it. The interpretation of this is that they would bring forth their souls seeking nearness to God by them and they would invoke God through renunciation and devotion whereafter the fire of love would come down from the heaven of the spirit and consume this [offering of theirs] and annihilate it in the Oneness, whereupon their prophethood would be [proven as] authentic and would become manifest. The common folk of the Children of Israel came to hear of this and came to believe in its outward form, even if this should be possible in the world of [God's] power. They thus required from every prophet that sign. They also falsely believed that 'to lend to God' - which means to consecrate wealth in the way of God by expending in order to receive the full reward, and to consecrate [one's] acts and attributes by effacing them through the wayfaring and replace them with the attributes of the Truth and His acts and to actualise the station of the substitutes (abdāl) - meant that the Truth was poor and that they were rich. Or, it means that they contested contemptuously the prophets in both instances after they had understood.

Do not reckon that those who rejoice in what they have brought, those who are delighted by what they have done of acts of obedience or selflessness and every good deed and are veiled by the sight of these [deeds], and who love to be praised, that is, that people should praise them, and who are thus veiled by the accidental praise and commendations of people, or [who love] that they should be praiseworthy in the eyes of God for this same reason, for what they have not done, but what God has done through their hands, since there is no act that is not God's - And God created you and whatever you do [Q. 37:96] - [do not reckon them] saved from the chastisement of privation, and there shall be a painful chastisement for them, because of the place of their preparedness and their being veiled from what is in it. They should have by right attributed [all] merit and virtuous act to God and declared themselves quit of any power or strength on their part not being His, and not to have become veiled by seeing the act as issuing from themselves and to expect thereby commendation or praise.

To God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth: nothing of it belongs to anyone else that they should then give of it to another person and be self-satisfied with their gift; and God has power over all things, no one other than Him has the power to act in anyway that he should then be pleased to see it and rejoice in it a rejoicing of self-centered admiration.