Allah Ta’ala commands us: “O you who have Imaan! Fear Allah and stay with the truthful”.
Taqwa (fear of Allah Ta’ala and piety) and truthfulness indicates the perfection of deen. Thus the command is given to perfect our deen. Thereafter Allah Ta’ala guides us as to how to attain this perfection i.e. by adopting the company of those who are striving for perfection, the friends of Allah Ta’ala. Due to the blessing of the company of the pious our carnal desires tend to decrease and melt away. This in turn makes it easy for us to do good deeds, since the carnal desires generally hinder and obstruct our progress.
By keeping the company of the pious, we will learn how to practice on Deen and how to carry out the actions of Deen. This we will not acquire by merely reading books and learning laws on our own. Rather we will need to look at someone practically carrying out the actions in order for us to attain perfection.
This concept of adopting the company of those who are specialists in a field in order to gain perfection in that field is the norm in all worldly faculties and professions as well. For example, if a person wishes to merely follow the instructions of a recipe book and prepare various types of food items, he will cook up a disaster. Rather he needs to learn from a person who is an expert in the field of cooking. In this way he will learn with ease and he will soon be on the road to perfection.
On the contrary, if a person is bent on self-study and doing actions without the guidance of a teacher, then this person will experience great difficulty and problems at each and every step. We need to simply humble ourselves before the experts and work towards perfection.