Explanation of His saying: (O son of Adam, if your sins reached the clouds of the sky, then you sought forgiveness from Me, I would forgive you).

The Shaykh: , "The clouds of the sky" means the clouds, and this is an allusion to the fact that the Muslim servant, no matter how many his sins are, to the point that some people with weak faith may fall into despair that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) will forgive these sins for him because of their multitude, their horror, and their severity; so in this hadith, the servant's attention is drawn to not despair of the mercy of Allah; because: by the explicit text of the Noble Qur'an, and rather the servant should turn to Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) with a pure heart in his worship of his Lord, asking Him to forgive his sins, so Allah (Mighty and Majestic) forgives these sins no matter how many they are, even if they reached the clouds; so Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
But here is a note that must be reminded of again and again; in this hadith there is an encouragement for the servant, without doubt, of the forgiveness of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) and His vast pardon, but that is conditioned and tied to the servant asking his Lord (Mighty and Majestic) to forgive him, so this encouragement mentioned in this hadith for the servant regarding the pardon of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) is not a mere hope from the servant that Allah will forgive his sins no matter how many they are, but rather that is with a condition and a requirement that he seeks forgiveness from Allah (Mighty and Majestic); because He says: ; so this is also an affirmation of the necessity of the servant turning to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) with supplication and asking Him for forgiveness. And this is supported by the authentic hadith that Imam Muslim narrated in his "Sahih" from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: , so this hadith explicitly states that the forgiveness in which our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) encourages His servants is tied to the servants turning to Him by asking Him for forgiveness, and in this hadith, as some of the heedless imagine, there is no encouragement to increase in sins; because the hadith says: , so they take the first part of the hadith and deduce from it that it encourages the Muslim to turn to the disobedience of Allah (Mighty and Majestic).
But the truth is that the hadith was not narrated for this purpose, and it is not conceivable that there would be in the Shari'ah an encouragement from Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to the servants to commit disobedience, but rather the hadith was narrated to address what a person may fall into of disobedience and sins, so that he may rectify that; by what? By seeking forgiveness and humbling himself to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) that He forgive him; therefore He said: , He did not say: "A people came who committed sins and Allah forgave them," but rather He said: ; so forgiveness is tied to the servant asking for it from Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), and in that is an affirmation, as we explained in the previous lesson, of the servitude of the servant and his submission to his Lord (Mighty and Majestic) and his not being self-sufficient without His pardon and forgiveness.
Yes, in this hadith, the hadith of Abu Hurayrah that I mentioned earlier, there is an indication of the nature of man upon which Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) created him; and that is that man was not created and not endowed with a nature of not committing disobedience; because Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), by His wisdom, created the creatures in two categories: a category that is accountable and a category that is not accountable. The accountable category includes humans, jinn, and angels, and then He made this category into two parts: a part that is protected from disobedience, and they are the angels only, and that is the saying of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He): , so the angels of Allah, their nature is that they do not disobey Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He), but rather their nature is to obey His command (Mighty and Majestic), and from here we can remind of the invalidity of the story attributed to Harut and Marut, and they claim that they were two angels and that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) sent them down from the sky to teach people sorcery when sorcery was a profession and craft exploited to mislead people and to make them submit to arrogant kings, and that when these two came down to the earth, they were tested in a long story with a beautiful woman; so they persisted with her until they fell into her, and she led them astray from their religion, so Allah (Mighty and Majestic) transformed them and transformed the woman, making her the star known as Venus. This story is narrated, unfortunately, in some books of tafsir and hadith, but it is a story that does not establish its attribution to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), but rather it is from the Isra'iliyyat, and it contradicts the previous verse: ; so how can it be attributed to the angels that they drank intoxicants and committed zina with that woman?! This is impossible.
Therefore, the first category is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) created the angels not to disobey Allah, as He said in the Noble Qur'an, and He created the two heavy ones, humans and jinn, endowed with a nature of disobedience, but Allah (Mighty and Majestic), by His wisdom, enabled them and decreed for them that they not drown in disobedience in the first place, and then, since He endowed them with a nature of disobedience, He enabled them to be saved from their burdens and sins by taking refuge in Allah (Mighty and Majestic) and asking Him for forgiveness, so the previous hadith: ; means that the will and wisdom of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) preceded in that He would create the accountable creatures in two categories: a category that does not disobey Allah, and another category that disobeys Allah, so He says to humans: ; so that there would be a creation other than the creation of the angels, and so that an attribute or an effect of an attribute of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) in His creation would appear, which is the attribute of forgiveness, Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful, so if there were no creation that disobeys Allah (Mighty and Majestic), there would be no effect of the attribute of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) which is forgiveness, so in this hadith there is an explanation of the reality of this accountable category that was endowed with a nature of disobedience, that they not rely on this nature and say: since we were created, we are not protected like the angels, so disobedience is inevitable; the answer is: yes, disobedience is inevitable, but this disobedience may be small and may be large, and it is within the ability of a person to strive against his self and not fall into the larger part of it, as for the small amount of it, it is inevitable so that the attribute of the forgiveness of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) would appear in this accountable person.
So we affirm and say: it is inevitable for a person to make mistakes; because Allah (Mighty and Majestic) decreed that in this human creation, unlike the angels, as He also affirmed (peace and blessings be upon him) in the hadith whose authenticity is known by the narration of Imam al-Bukhari and Muslim from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he said: ; it is written for the son of Adam, not for the angels, , these preliminaries, which are from the minor sins, were written for the human, so he is inevitably aware of them.
So the first part of the hadith: , means that the wisdom of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) required, in contrast to the angels who do not disobey Allah, humans who disobey Allah, but He did not create them to disobey Allah out of compulsion, force, or defeat, but rather they have the choice in that; nevertheless, whatever they choose to fear Allah (Mighty and Majestic) and to stay away from sins and disobedience, it is inevitable that their foot will slip a little or a lot, but Allah (Mighty and Majestic) made an exit for them, so He said: as in the other Qudsi hadith, also, which Imam Muslim narrated in his "Sahih", , ; so do we rely on the guidance of Allah (Mighty and Majestic) as the majority of people, the open sinners, say when they are called to turn to righteousness, it is said to them: fear Allah?! and he says: my brother, guidance is from Allah (Mighty and Majestic), so if He wills to guide us, He will guide us. Yes, He guided us, but it is inevitable that you knock on the door to hear the answer, He said (Mighty and Majestic) in this hadith: , all these hadiths take hold of one another by their necks, and they meet at this reality; which is that if a person was created with a nature of disobedience or some disobedience, that does not mean that he should remain in his disobedience, stained with its filth and dirt, but rather he must follow the path of purifying himself from it; and that is by turning to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) and asking Him for His forgiveness.