1 Corinthians 3:6 Meaning I Planted

Asbāb: The means, the ordinary steps a result comes through Al-Ghazali calls God the Causer of causes, working behind every ordinary step. Someone who has put in long effort easily feels that the effort itself produced the outcome, since he watched each step happen. Holding those steps as means keeps his work serious while leaving the result outside his hands.

Tawḥīd al-afʿāl: Seeing one doer behind everything that happens Sufis treat this as the deepest layer of saying that God is one. When two people have each done something toward the same outcome, the mind starts dividing shares: this much mine, that much his. Tracing every act back to one source ends the accounting before it starts, since neither portion was the thing that made it work.

You did not throw when you threw, but God threw: the hand moves, the outcome comes from elsewhere Sufis return to this line in the Quran constantly. A person feels his own hand moving and feels nothing of what came after, so he assumes both belong to him. The line separates them: the motion was his, and the effect that followed was never his to control.

ʿUjb: Being quietly pleased with your own work Al-Ghazali names this as the flaw that spoils good work from inside. The feeling needs no boasting out loud; a person simply looks back over what he did and warms to it. Once the outcome is credited elsewhere, that private glow has nothing to feed on, and the work stands on its own.

Ikhlāṣ: Sincerity, working for God rather than for a name Al-Ghazali treats sincerity as the hardest thing to keep clean. People attach themselves to whoever helped them and start taking sides, and the helper quietly begins to enjoy having a following. Sincerity cuts that tie: a person keeps doing the work for the one he answers to, and stops needing his name fastened to what came of it.