Colossians 3:25 Meaning But He Who Does Wrong Will Receive

Ẓulm: Wrongdoing that puts a thing outside its rightful place The word also means darkness, and a saying of the Prophet describes wrongs as layers of darkness heaped on the one who did them. Someone who leans on a person weaker than him loses the ability to see the thing plainly: he defends it, he needs it to be fine. The harm settles into him long before any reckoning reaches him from outside.

An atom's weight of wrong will be seen: nothing is too small to come back A line of the Quran promises that the smallest good and the smallest wrong both come back into view. People sort their behavior into what counts and what is too small to bother with, and the second pile hides most of the damage. The sharp word to someone who cannot answer back, the wage shaved a little, the promise quietly dropped, all of it is kept.

Al-ʿAdl: The Just, one of the names of God Justice in this sense means each thing landing exactly where it belongs, with nobody's thumb on the scale. A person with standing learns early that standing bends outcomes: the benefit of the doubt, the softer word, the quiet exception. The habit of being excused by everyone around him runs into a place where the excuse does not work.

Nothing stands between the prayer of a wronged person and God: the powerless are heard The Prophet said this to a man he was sending out to govern a province. Someone treated badly by a person with power over him usually has nowhere to take it, since complaining costs more than silence. Learning that his voice carries straight up, with nothing in the way, changes what he does with the waiting.

Muḥāsaba: Settling your own accounts A line the tradition repeats often holds that a person takes account of himself before he is taken to account. Running that tally on other people is easy and costs nothing, while running it on yourself is short and uncomfortable. The one who does it finds his own wrongs while they are still small enough to fix and pay back.