There is a thread that runs from the first pages of the Qur’an to the birth of Issa al-Masih. It began in the Garden. It ends at a manger. It is the thread of a promise.
وَلِنَجْعَلَهُ آيَةً لِلنَّاسِ وَرَحْمَةً مِنَّا وَكَانَ أَمْرًا مَّقْضِيًّا
“We wish to appoint him as a Sign unto men and a Mercy from Us. It is a matter so decreed.”
Surah Maryam 19:21 | quran.com/19/21
What happened in the Garden?
قَالَا رَبَّنَا ظَلَمْنَا أَنفُسَنَا وَإِن لَّمْ تَغْفِرْ لَنَا وَتَرْحَمْنَا لَنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ
“They said: Our Lord, we have wronged our own souls. If You do not forgive us and bestow upon us Your mercy, we shall certainly be lost.”
Surah Al-A’raf 7:23 | quran.com/7/23
Adam and Hawwa stood before Allah guilty. They asked for two things: forgiveness, and mercy.
Allah was gracious to them. He forgave them. But they had to leave the Garden. The mercy they asked for, the mercy that would have allowed them to stay as though they had never sinned, was not yet given.
It was promised. For the future.
And then Surah 19:21 says: We wish to appoint him as a Mercy from Us.
The mercy Adam asked for in the Garden. The mercy promised but not yet given. The mercy that would restore what sin had broken. Allah says: it is Issa. He is the Mercy.
Not a mercy. The Mercy. The specific, predestined act of Allah’s compassion that answers what Adam and Hawwa cried out for in the moment of their greatest loss.
And the verse adds: it is a matter so decreed. Predestined. Planned before the world began. Not an afterthought to human failure. The response Allah had already prepared before the failure occurred.
What does it mean that this mercy is a person?
In most of human understanding, mercy is an attitude or a decision. But here, the Qur’an says the Mercy of Allah is a person. An act. Something Allah did. He sent His mercy into the world in the form of a person, at a specific moment in history, with a specific mission.
The mercy arrived. It can be received. Not simply hoped for. Received.
From the Injil
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Injil, John 3:16 | bible.com/bible/111/JHN.3.16
The mercy that the Qur’an calls predestined, the Injil calls love expressed in giving. The two books describe the same moment from different angles.
A Parable
A father promised his ill child, years before, that he would find a remedy. The child grew up carrying the illness quietly, wondering if the promise had been forgotten.
Then one day the father came home with a physician who had spent years in the mountains finding the one plant that could cure this specific illness.
The remedy worked.
Afterward, the child asked: how long ago did you send for him?
The father said: before you were born. Before I knew what you would need. I knew what the illness was, and I sent for the remedy before you arrived.
The child said: You planned it before I was even here to need it.
The father said: Yes. That is what mercy is. Not a response to the cry. A provision prepared before the cry.
Adam and Hawwa cried out for mercy in the Garden. Allah promised it. Thousands of years passed. Then came Issa al-Masih, the one the Qur’an calls the predestined Mercy of Allah.
Have you received this mercy? Not hoped for it. Received it.
This is the question the Qur’an is putting before you. Sit with it. Bring it honestly to Allah in prayer.