Love of Allah: When the Servant Draws Near and Allah Draws Nearer
Every believer carries the claim in his heart: I love Allah. It is the easiest sentence in the world to say, and the hardest to prove. What does Allah Himself say about the road to His love? Who are the people He loves, how did they get there, and what does His love actually bring into a servant’s life? Two texts answer with a clarity that leaves nothing to guesswork: a hadith qudsi — the Prophet ﷺ reporting the very words of Allah — preserved in Sahih al-Bukhari, and a single verse of the Quran that lays down the one road every claimant must walk. Between them they give the complete order: obligations first, then the extra deeds, then the following of His Messenger ﷺ — and at the end of that road, a love returned that changes how a man hears, sees, grasps and walks through the rest of his life.
This blog rests on those two texts alone. Sincerity comes first, because love that is claimed but not acted on is only a feeling; our sister article on sincerity (ikhlas) in Islam covers that ground. Here the question is the destination itself: what happens when a servant keeps drawing near until Allah loves him?
1. A Hadith Qudsi: Allah Speaks of His Own Love
Most hadith are the words of the Prophet ﷺ. A hadith qudsi is different in kind: the Prophet ﷺ reports what Allah Himself said. Abu Huraira narrated that Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said, “Allah said” — and then the words of the Lord of the worlds follow, words about war, nearness, love and death, spoken by Allah about His own servant. Because the Speaker is Allah, every clause carries the weight of a promise and a warning from Him directly.
The hadith opens, strikingly, not with love but with war:
“I will declare war against him who shows hostility to a pious worshipper of Mine.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
Before Allah describes how the servant earns His love, He announces what He does to anyone who makes an enemy of that servant. The pious worshipper — the wali, the friend of Allah — is so precious to Him that hostility toward him is treated as hostility deserving a declaration of war from Allah Himself. Loving the friends of Allah, and guarding ourselves from harming or hating them, is therefore part of this road; our article on loving for the sake of Allah explores that bond between believers. But the warning also teaches the scale of what follows: the servant described in this hadith is no ordinary person in Allah’s sight. Who is he? The rest of the hadith builds him, step by step.
2. Step One: The Obligations Are the Dearest Road
Ask most people how a servant draws closest to Allah and they picture something extraordinary — long nights, rare feats, spiritual heroics. Allah begins somewhere far more ordinary, and He calls it the most beloved thing of all:
“And the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to Me, is what I have enjoined upon him” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
What Allah has enjoined — the duties He made obligatory — is the dearest road to Him. Not the second-best road, not the beginner’s road: the most beloved. The five daily prayers prayed because He commanded them, the fast kept because He prescribed it, the zakah paid because He required it, the rights of parents, family and neighbours fulfilled because He laid them down — this is the ground on which nearness to Allah is built. A servant who chases extra deeds while neglecting what was enjoined is building the upper floors of a house whose foundation is missing.
Notice, too, the order of pursuit. The hadith does not say the servant draws near with what he invented, or with what impressed other people, or with what felt most spiritual. He draws near with what Allah enjoined — the servant’s devotion takes its shape from Allah’s command, not from the servant’s taste. That is the first mark of real love: obedience before preference. The claim “I love Allah” begins to be true at the exact point where His commands become the dearest things in our day.
3. Step Two: The Nawafil — Extra Deeds That Keep Drawing Near
Foundations laid, the servant does not stop. Allah continues:
“and My slave keeps on coming closer to Me through performing Nawafil (praying or doing extra deeds besides what is obligatory) till I love him” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
Nawafil are the voluntary deeds — “extra deeds besides what is obligatory”, as the narration itself explains. The extra prayers before and after the obligatory ones, voluntary fasts, charity beyond the required zakah, remembrance of Allah in the quiet minutes of the day — the whole wide field of dhikr and voluntary devotion — all of it belongs here. None of it was demanded. All of it is offered.
Two words in the sentence carry the secret. “Keeps on” — the coming closer is continuous, a direction of life rather than a single burst of enthusiasm. And “till” — the extra deeds have a destination: “till I love him.” The servant who adds voluntary worship to his obligations, and keeps adding it, is not wandering; he is travelling a road whose end Allah has named. He loves Allah, so he serves beyond the minimum; and Allah, seeing service beyond the minimum sustained over time, loves him in return. The nawafil are where duty flowers into love — on both sides.
4. “Till I Love Him”: The Destination of the Road
Pause at those three words, because they are the hinge of the entire hadith: “till I love him.” Everything before them is the servant’s movement — coming nearer, coming closer. Everything after them is Allah’s response. The servant’s love for Allah is expressed in deeds; Allah’s love for the servant is expressed in gifts, and the hadith now lists them one by one.
This ordering matters for every believer who wonders whether Allah loves him. The hadith does not direct us to search our feelings for a sign. It directs us to a path: fulfil what He enjoined, then keep coming closer with what He did not enjoin, and the end of that path is not uncertain — Allah Himself states where it leads. The love of Allah for His servant is not a lottery. It is the declared outcome of a declared road.
5. Hearing, Sight, Hand and Leg: A Life Under Allah’s Care
Then comes the most astonishing passage in the hadith, and it must be allowed to stand exactly as the Prophet ﷺ reported it:
إِنَّ اللَّهَ قَالَ مَنْ عَادَى لِي وَلِيًّا فَقَدْ آذَنْتُهُ بِالْحَرْبِ، وَمَا تَقَرَّبَ إِلَىَّ عَبْدِي بِشَىْءٍ أَحَبَّ إِلَىَّ مِمَّا افْتَرَضْتُ عَلَيْهِ، وَمَا يَزَالُ عَبْدِي يَتَقَرَّبُ إِلَىَّ بِالنَّوَافِلِ حَتَّى أُحِبَّهُ، فَإِذَا أَحْبَبْتُهُ كُنْتُ سَمْعَهُ الَّذِي يَسْمَعُ بِهِ، وَبَصَرَهُ الَّذِي يُبْصِرُ بِهِ، وَيَدَهُ الَّتِي يَبْطُشُ بِهَا وَرِجْلَهُ الَّتِي يَمْشِي بِهَا، وَإِنْ سَأَلَنِي لأُعْطِيَنَّهُ، وَلَئِنِ اسْتَعَاذَنِي لأُعِيذَنَّهُ، وَمَا تَرَدَّدْتُ عَنْ شَىْءٍ أَنَا فَاعِلُهُ تَرَدُّدِي عَنْ نَفْسِ الْمُؤْمِنِ، يَكْرَهُ الْمَوْتَ وَأَنَا أَكْرَهُ مَسَاءَتَهُ
“so I become his sense of hearing with which he hears, and his sense of sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
These are the hadith’s own words, and this blog simply presents them as they were spoken, without adding commentary from outside the text. Read plainly, they paint a servant whose very faculties have come under Allah’s special care and keeping: the hearing with which he hears, the sight with which he sees, the hand with which he grips, the leg with which he walks — his whole engagement with the world now moves in the orbit of the One he loves and Who loves him. What reaches his ears, what draws his eyes, what his hands take hold of and where his feet carry him — all of it belongs to a life lived in Allah’s nearness.
Consider what a transformation this describes. The servant began by coming nearer through deeds. He ends with his senses themselves described in terms of Allah’s love. The road that started with obligations ends with the innermost instruments of a man’s life — hearing, sight, hand, leg — named one by one, as if to say: nothing in the beloved servant is outside this care. Not his public worship only, but his private perceptions; not his rituals only, but his movements through an ordinary day.
6. Asking and Refuge: The Promises Attached to Love
Allah’s love, once given, is not silent. It speaks in two promises:
“and if he asks Me, I will give him, and if he asks My protection (Refuge), I will protect him; (i.e. give him My Refuge)” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
The servant who asks receives; the servant who seeks refuge is protected. These are not possibilities but declarations — “I will give him,” “I will protect him” — from the same voice that declared war on the servant’s enemies at the hadith’s opening. The circle is complete: the beloved servant is defended from others, guided in his own faculties, answered when he asks and sheltered when he fears.
This is why the friends of Allah are not anxious people. Their provision in every trouble is the same: ask, and seek refuge. The hadith ties both responses directly to the love that precedes them — the asking of a beloved servant is not the asking of a stranger at the door. A lifetime of obligations fulfilled and nawafil sustained has brought him to a station where his Lord has bound Himself, by His own gracious promise, to give and to protect.
7. Even at Death: “I Hate to Disappoint Him”
The hadith closes with a passage of extraordinary tenderness — about the one event every human being, even the most beloved servant, must face:
“and I do not hesitate to do anything as I hesitate to take the soul of the believer, for he hates death, and I hate to disappoint him.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih)
Allah, who decrees all things without weakness or delay, describes — in His own words — a hesitation that exists nowhere else in His actions: at taking the soul of the believer. And the reason He gives is not about the believer’s deeds or station, but about his feeling: “he hates death, and I hate to disappoint him.” The Lord of the worlds takes account of what His beloved servant hates, and grieves to disappoint him even in the matter that cannot be escaped.
The believer lives between fear and hope — our article on fear and hope in Islam treats that balance — but here hope is given a face. The end of the beloved servant’s story is not abandonment at the moment he most dreads. It is a Lord who, by His own declaration, hates to disappoint him. Death still comes; the hadith does not pretend otherwise. But it comes to a servant whose feelings Allah Himself has spoken of with care. That is what the love of Allah finally means at the bedside: not exemption from death, but never being unloved in it.
8. The Quran’s Single Road: “Follow Me”
The hadith qudsi gives the servant’s ascent: obligations, then nawafil, then Allah’s love. The Quran gives the same road its public sign — the test by which every claim of loving Allah is measured. Allah commands His Prophet ﷺ to announce:
قُلْ إِن كُنتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ ٱللَّهَ فَٱتَّبِعُونِى يُحْبِبْكُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ
“Say (O Prophet): “If you really love Allah, then follow me, and Allah shall love you and forgive you your sins.” (Quran 3:31)
Look at the verse’s exact logic. The claim comes first: “If you really love Allah.” Then the proof demanded: “then follow me” — follow the Messenger ﷺ. Then, and only then, the double result: “Allah shall love you and forgive you your sins.” Love of Allah that does not pass through following His Messenger ﷺ is, by this verse, an unverified claim. And following the Messenger ﷺ is precisely what the hadith described from the other side: the obligations he conveyed, fulfilled; the voluntary devotion he modelled, sustained. The two texts are one road seen from its two ends.
The verse also sets the fruits side by side: Allah’s love and Allah’s forgiveness, granted together to the one who follows. And it closes by naming the Giver:
“Allah is Most-Forgiving, Very-Merciful.” (Quran 3:31)
Forgiveness stands at the end of the verse because the road is walked by sinners — people who will stumble in the obligations and fall short in the nawafil, and who return, and follow again. Loving the Prophet ﷺ and walking his way is its own vast subject, treated in our article on love of the Prophet ﷺ; this verse is its root: following him is not merely admiration of him, it is the divinely appointed evidence of loving Allah, and the door to being loved by Allah in return.
9. The Order Allah Set: Walking the Road Today
Gather the two texts and the order stands complete, in Allah’s own sequence:
First, the obligations — “the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to Me, is what I have enjoined upon him.” The servant who wants Allah’s love starts where Allah started: with what He commanded, done consistently and done for Him.
Second, the nawafil — the servant “keeps on coming closer” with what was never demanded of him, until the minimum becomes the floor of his devotion rather than its ceiling. Extra prayers, extra fasts, quiet charity, remembrance — little by little, kept up over years.
Third, the following of the Messenger ﷺ in all of it — the Quran’s condition and proof, binding the whole road together: “If you really love Allah, then follow me, and Allah shall love you and forgive you your sins.”
And then the destination Allah promised: “till I love him” — a servant whose hearing, sight, hand and leg are under his Lord’s care; whose asking is answered and whose refuge is granted; whose enemies face a declaration of war; and whose very death is approached by his Lord with a declared reluctance to disappoint him. This is the love of Allah in Islam — not a slogan, not a feeling floating free of action, but a road with an order, a proof and a promised end. The servant draws near by an inch of obedience; and Allah, by the testimony of His own words, draws nearer still.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What is the most beloved way for a servant to draw near to Allah? A: The hadith qudsi answers directly: “the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to Me, is what I have enjoined upon him” — the obligatory duties Allah commanded come before everything else (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih).
Q2: What are nawafil, and what do they lead to? A: The narration defines them itself: Nawafil are the deeds of “praying or doing extra deeds besides what is obligatory”. The servant “keeps on coming closer to Me through performing Nawafil… till I love him” — voluntary deeds, sustained, lead to Allah’s love (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih).
Q3: What happens when Allah loves His servant? A: Allah says: “so I become his sense of hearing with which he hears, and his sense of sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks” — and He promises, “if he asks Me, I will give him, and if he asks My protection (Refuge), I will protect him” (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih).
Q4: How does the Quran say a person proves his love for Allah? A: By following the Messenger ﷺ: “If you really love Allah, then follow me, and Allah shall love you and forgive you your sins.” Following the Prophet ﷺ is the verse’s appointed proof of the claim, and its fruit is Allah’s love and forgiveness together (Quran 3:31).
Q5: What does the hadith say about the believer’s death? A: Allah says: “I do not hesitate to do anything as I hesitate to take the soul of the believer, for he hates death, and I hate to disappoint him” — the believer’s own feeling is named by his Lord, who declares His own reluctance to disappoint the servant He loves (Sahih al-Bukhari 6502 — Sahih).