The Prophet ﷺ said to Mu'adh ibn Jabal رضي الله عنه:
"O Mu'adh, fear Allah wherever you are, follow up a bad deed with a good one and it will wipe it out, and behave well toward people." (At-Tirmidhi)
Three instructions, in one sentence, covering the whole of a life. Ibn Taymiyyah built this advice around them.
What Each Part Establishes
Fear Allah wherever you are. Not only in the masjid, and not only where other Muslims can see you — the phrase is deliberately universal, and it addresses the person who behaves one way in a congregation and another at work.
Follow a bad deed with a good one. This is the answer to despair. Failure is assumed here, not treated as disqualifying. The instruction is what to do next, immediately, rather than how to avoid ever falling.
Behave well toward people. The third is horizontal where the first two are vertical, and it is the one most often neglected by people who take the first two seriously.
What the Book Covers
The advice within it addresses what would bring a person the good of this world and the Hereafter together — which is the combination Ibn Taymiyyah is interested in, and the reason the book is not a work of asceticism.
Beyond being a discourse on how a servant stays attached to his Lord, it gives sustained attention to interpersonal relationships: being good to others by giving them their rights, dealing justly with them, and the conduct that follows from taking the third instruction as seriously as the first.
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