The Quran

إِلَّا الَّذينَ آمَنوا وَعَمِلُوا الصّالِحاتِ وَتَواصَوا بِالحَقِّ وَتَواصَوا بِالصَّبرِ

Mir Ahmed Ali

Save¹ those who believe, and do good deeds, and exhort each other to truth and exhort each other to endurance.^I

‘Those who believe’ may include every believer to the extent or the degree of the strength of his conviction or faith and those who will be meant here with the fullest application of the term, will be only those who satisfy to the fullest extent the owning of the several great qualities of a believer mentioned by God. See 26:15, 2:177, 6:163, 9:20, 26.
The believers are those from whom God has purchased their wealth and their lives in exchange for His pleasure with them 9:111. Those who hold the Holy Prophet in preference to their own souls 33:6.
The perfection or the purity in the faith can never be found in any other than those whom God Himself has purified (33:33) to he the models of purity in every aspect of goodness in the life on earth. Thus those who are referred here immediately are the Holy Ahlul-Bait.
When asked the explanation of this Sura the Holy Prophet said that “those who are safe and whose faith and deeds are totally correct and perfect are my Ahlul-Bait,” i.e., Ali and the Imams in his seed "and those who reject me or them, are in the loss." (MS.)
As regards the preaching of the Truth, who else could do it duly, sane those who must themselves be fully conversant with it and even realised it by their own conviction and the strength of faith. The Holy Prophet had said that “I and Ali are of one and the same Light” and “Ali is always with the Truth and the Truth will always be with Ali”. The preaching of the Truth needs knowledge of it, and the Holy Prophet had said “I am the City of Knowledge and Ali is its Gate.” The preaching of the Truth needs the knowledge of the Final Word of God, i.e., the Holy Qur’an and the Holy Prophet had said “I leave behind me Two weighty (very important) things: The Book of God, (i.e., the Holy Qur’an) and my Ahlul-Bait, if ye be attached to these Two, never, never shall ye get astray and never, never, will these Two get separated from each other until they meet me at the ‘Houz’ or (Cistern) of Kauthar” in heaven. Thus the immediate application of this reference could rightly he only to Ali or the Ahlul-Bait collectively and those according to their attachment to these holy ones.
As far as the enjoining of patience is concerned, the preachers themselves must have the quality of patience to the maximum degree possible, and who else could be compared to have exercised more patience in this world than the Holy Ahlul-Bait who suffered untold miseries, tortures and even a wholesale massacre of all their dear ones. None of the Eleven Holy Imams left this world with a natural death—all of them suffered martyrdom.
Enjoining of goodness and preaching abstinence from evil has been referred to as the qualities of the Best of the nations, i.e., the Holy Ahlul-Bait see 3:109 and this has also been prescribed and made incumbent on the believers see 3:103. The Best of the people can be only those whom God Himself had purified (33:33). The others, according to the degree of the purification they would have achieved.

Rv. 90:17