THE FORM OF SOUND WORDS – Charles Spurgeon
THE FORM OF SOUND WORDS
“Hold fast the form of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” 2 Timothy 1:13.
Introduction
My incessant anxiety for you, dearly beloved in the faith of Jesus Christ, is that I may be able, in the first place, to teach you what God’s truth is. And then, trusting that I have, to the best of my ability, taught you what I believe to be God’s most holy gospel, my next anxiety is that you should “hold fast the form of sound words.” So that whatever may occur in the future—should death snatch away your pastor, or should anything occur which might put you in perilous circumstances—my desire is that even if you were tempted to embrace any system of heresy, you might, every one of you, stand as firm and as unmoved as rocks! And you would be as strong as mountains abiding in the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, whereof you have heard and which we have proclaimed to you. If the gospel is worth your hearing—and if it is the true gospel, it is worth your hearing—our anxiety is that you should be so established in the faith that you may, “hold fast the profession of your faith without wavering, for He is faithful who has promised.” The Apostle most earnestly admonished Timothy to, “hold fast the form of sound words which he had heard from him in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” I do not suppose that by this, it is intended that Paul ever wrote for Timothy, a list of doctrines. Or that he gave him a small abstract of divinity, to which he desired him to subscribe his name, as the articles of the church over which he was made a pastor. If so, doubtless that document would have been preserved and enrolled in the canons of Scripture as one of the writings of an inspired man! I can scarcely think such a creed would have been lost, while other creeds have been preserved and handed down to us. I conceive that what the Apostle meant was this—“Timothy, when I have preached to you, you have heard certain grand outlines of the truth of God. You have heard from me the great system of faith in Jesus Christ. In my writings and public speaking, you have heard me continually insist upon a certain pattern or form of faith. Now I bid you, my dearly beloved son in the gospel, Hold fast the form of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.”
This morning I shall first attempt to tell you what I conceive to be a, “form of sound words,” which we are to hold fast. In the second place, I shall endeavor to urge upon you the strong necessity of holding fast that form. In the third place, I shall warn you of some dangers to which you will be exposed, tempting you to give up the form of sound words. Then, in the last place, I shall mention the two great holdfasts, faith and love in Christ Jesus, which are the great means of “holding fast the form of sound words.”
I. What is a “FORM OF SOUND WORDS”?
Ten thousand persons will quarrel upon this. One will say, “MY creed is a form of sound words.” Another will declare that his creed, also, is sound if not infallible! We will not, therefore, enter into all the minute details which distinguish creeds from each other, but just simply say that no system can be a form of sound words unless it is perfectly Scriptural. We receive no doctrines as the doctrines of men—whatever authority comes to us which is not the authority of the Holy Spirit and inspired by God, is no authority at all to us! We laugh to scorn all the dogmatism of men. We care for nothing they assert, however strongly they declare it, or however eloquently they plead for it. We utterly reject and discard it! We hold it a sin to “take for doctrines the commandments of men.” We give no heed to the traditions that are handed down to us. If our opponent cannot quote text or verse for anything he advances, we hold no argument with him! Scripture is the only weapon we can acknowledge.
But since it is said that texts may be found to prove almost everything, we must remark that a form of sound words must be one that exalts God and puts down man. We dare not, for a moment, think that any doctrine is sound that does not put the crown upon the head of Jesus and does not exalt the Almighty. If we see a doctrine which exalts the creature, we do not care one fig about what arguments may be brought to support it! We know that it is a lie—unless it lays the creature in the very dust of abasement and exalts the Creator. If it does not do this, it is nothing but a rotten doctrine of pride. It may dazzle us with the brilliant malaria rising from its marshes, but it can never shed a true and healthful light into the soul. It is a rotten doctrine, not fit to be built on the gospel, unless it exalts Jehovah Jesus, Jehovah, the Father, and Jehovah the Holy Spirit!
We think, also, that we may judge of the soundness of doctrine by its tendency. We can never think a doctrine sound when we see plainly upon its very surface that it has a tendency to create sin in men. Unless it is a doctrine according to godliness, we cannot conceive it to be a doctrine of God! Unless the believer of it, earnestly and truthfully believing it, does give himself to virtue—unless that doctrine has in itself a natural tendency to promote in him a love to the right—we are at first sight, suspicious of it. And if we find on examination that it is a licentious doctrine—it may have all the glitter and the glare of novelty, but we cast it away as not being the doctrine of Christianity, because it does not promote holiness in the soul.
We shall, perhaps, be asked what we do regard as a form of sound words and what those doctrines are which are Scriptural, which at the same time are healthful to the spirit and exalting to God. We answer, we believe a form of sound words must embrace, first of all, the doctrine of God’s being and nature. We must have the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity. Any doctrine which has not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as equal persons in one undivided essence, we cast aside as being unsound.
We are sure that such doctrines must be derogatory to God’s glory. And if they are so, it is enough for us. If any man despises Father, Son or Holy Spirit, we despise him and despise his teachings and cannot even say to him, “I wish you God speed.” Now we hold that a form of sound words must look upon man aright as well as upon God aright. It must teach that man is utterly fallen, that he is sinful, and for his sin, condemned. It must teach that man in himself is altogether hopeless of salvation. If it exalts man by giving him a character which is not a true one and clothing him with a spurious robe of righteousness, woven by his fingers, we reject and utterly discard it! And next, we think that a doctrine that is sound must have right views of salvation as being of the Lord, alone. Unless we find in it everlasting, unchanging love, working out a salvation for a people “who were not a people,” but were made a people by special divine grace—unless we find discriminating love, others may say what they will—we cannot consider such a creed to be a form of sound words unless we discern redeeming mercy openly and boldly taught! Unless we see final perseverance and all those great and glorious truths which are the very bulwarks of our religion, others may embrace the doctrine as being a form of sound words, but we cannot and we dare not! We love the old system of our forefathers. We love the old truths of Scripture, not because they are old, but because we cannot consider anything to be truth which does not hold the Scriptural view of salvation.
I think Paul, himself, in this very chapter, gives us a form of sound words where he speaks of “God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.” I need not stop, this morning, to prove to you that which I have briefly hinted at as a form of sound words because you believe it and believe it firmly. I am not about to urge you to receive it, because I know you have already received it! But what I have to say is, “Hold fast,” I beseech you, “the form of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.”
II. The Necessity of Holding Fast the Form of Sound Words
Now let me show you THE NECESSITY OF HOLDING FAST THIS FORM OF SOUND WORDS, AND KEEPING IT FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, FOR THE CHURCH’S SAKE, FOR THE WORLD’S SAKE.
For your own sake hold it fast, for thereby you will receive ten thousand blessings. You will receive the blessing of peace in your conscience. I proclaim, before God, that if at any time I ever doubt one of the great things I receive from God, instantly there comes an aching void which the world can never fill and which I can never get filled until I receive that doctrine, again, and believe it with all my heart! When at any time I am cast down and dejected, I always find comfort in reading books which are strong on the doctrines of the faith of the gospel. If I turn to some of them that treat of God’s eternal love, revealed to His chosen people in the person of Christ—and if I remember some of the exceedingly great and precious promises made to the elect in their covenant head—my faith at once becomes strong and my soul, with sublime wings, mounts upwards towards its God! You cannot tell, beloved, if you have never tasted, how sweet is the peace which the doctrines of grace will give to the soul! There is nothing like them. They are— “A sovereign balm for every wound, A cordial for our fears.” They are God’s sweet lullaby, wherewith He sings His children to sleep, even in storms. They are God’s sheet anchors which are cast out into the sea to hold our little vessels fast in the midst of tempests. There is a “peace of God which passes all understanding,” which accrues to a man who is a strong believer. But you know the tendency of the day is to give up old landmarks and to adopt new ones—and to avow anything rather than the old-fashioned divinity! Well, my dear friends, if any of you like to try new doctrines, I warn you that if you are the children of God, you will soon be sick enough of those new-fangled notions, those newly invented doctrines which are continually taught! You may, for the first week, be pleased enough with their novelty. You may wonder at their transcendental spirituality, or something else which entices you on—but you will not have lived on them long before you will say—“Alas! Alas! I have taken in my hands the apples of Sodom! They were fair to look upon, but they are ashes in my mouth.” If you would be peaceful, keep fast to the truth, hold fast the form of sound words—so shall, “your peace be like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”
“Hold fast the form of sound words,” again, let me say, because it will tend very much to your growth. He who holds fast the truth will grow faster than he who is continually shifting from doctrine to doctrine. What a mighty number of spiritual weathercocks we have in this world right now! We have men who in the morning hear a Calvinistic preacher and say, “Oh, it is delightful.” In the evening they hear an Arminian and they say, “Oh, it is just as good. And no doubt they are both true, though one contradicts the other!” The glorious charity of the present day is such that it believes lies to be as good as the truth of God—and lies and His truth have met together and kissed each other! And he that teaches the truth of God is called a bigot—and the truth of God has ceased to be honorable in the world! Ah, beloved, we know better than to profess such unlimited but false charity! The truth is, we know how to “hold fast the form of sound words,” which was given to us, because in this way we grow! Changeable people cannot grow much. If you have a tree in your garden and plant it in one place today, and tomorrow place it somewhere else, how much bigger will it be in six months? It will very likely be dead! Or if it does not die, it will not be very much grown. It will be marvelously stunted. So it is with some of you—you plant yourselves here. Then you are persuaded that you are not quite right and you go and plant yourself somewhere else. Why, there are men who are “anythingarians”—who go dodging about from one denomination to another—and cannot tell what they are! Our opinion is of these people that they believe nothing and are good for nothing—and anybody may have them who likes. We do not consider men to be worth much unless they have settled principles and “hold fast the form of sound words.” You cannot grow unless you hold it fast. How could I know any more of my faith, in ten years’ time, if I allowed it to take ten forms in ten years? I would know but a little in each and know nothing thoroughly of one. But he that has one faith and knows it to be the faith of God and holds it fast—how strong he becomes in his faith! Each wind or tempest does but confirm him, as the fierce winds root the oaks and make them strong, standing firmly in their places; but if I shift and change, I am none the better, but rather the worse. For your own peace, then, and for your growth, “hold fast the form of sound words.”
But, my beloved, I would beseech you to hold it fast for your own sakes from a remembrance of the great evils which will follow the contrary course. If you do not “hold fast the form of sound words,” listen to me while I tell you what will happen to you! In the first place, every deviation from the truth is a sin. It is not simply a sin for me to do a wrong act, but it is a sin for me to believe a wrong doctrine. Lately our ministers have absolved us all from obeying God in our judgments. They have told us, point blank, many of them, in their drawing rooms and some of them in the pulpit, that we shall never be asked in the day of judgment what we believed! We have been told that for our acts we shall be responsible but for our faith we shall be irresponsible, or something very much like it. They have told us plainly that the God who made us, although He has authority over our hands, our foes, our eyes and our lips, has but little authority over our judgments!
They have told us that if we make ever such blunders in divinity, they are not sins as long as we can live right lives. But is that true? No! The whole man is bound to serve God. And if God gives me a judgment, I am bound to employ that judgment in His service. And if that judgment receives an untruth, it has received stolen goods and I have sinned as much as if I put forth my hand to take my neighbor’s goods! There may be degrees in the sin. If it is a sin of ignorance, it is, nevertheless, a sin—but it is not so heinous as a sin of negligence, which I fear it is with many. I tell you, beloved, if, for instance, baptism is not by immersion, I commit a sin every time I practice it! And if it is by immersion, my brother commits a sin who does not practice it! If election is true, I am committing a sin if I do not believe it. And if final perseverance is true, I am committing a sin before Almighty God if I do not receive it. And if it is not true, then I sin in embracing what is not Scriptural! Error in doctrine is as much a sin as error in practice. In everything, we are bound to serve our God with all our might—exercising those powers of judging and believing which He has given us. I warn you, Christians, not to think it is a little thing to hold faith with a feeble hand—it is a sin every time you do anything which makes you waver in the faith of Jesus Christ!
III. The Church’s and World’s Good
And now, for the good of the Church, itself, I want you all to “hold fast the form of sound words.” Would you wish to see the church prosperous? Would you wish to see it peaceful? Then “hold fast the form of sound words.” What is the cause of divisions, schisms, quarrels and bickering among us? It is not the fault of the truth of God! It is the fault of man’s errors! There would have been peace in the church—entire and perpetual peace—if there had been purity. Going down to Sheerness on Friday, I was told by someone on board that during the late gale, several of the ships there had their anchors rent up and had gone dashing against the other ships and had done considerable damage. Now, if their anchors had held fast and firm, no damage would have been done. Ask me the cause of the damage which has been done to our churches by the different denominations and I tell you, it is because all their anchors did not hold fast. If they had held fast by God’s truth, there would have been no disputing.
IV. Two Dangers
And now, in the last place, I am to tell you of the great holdfasts whereby you are to hold fast the truth of the gospel. If I might be allowed to mention one or two before coming to those in the text, I would say, in the first place, if you want to hold fast the truth, seek to get an understanding of it. A man cannot hold a thing fast unless he has a good understanding of it. I never want you to have the faith of the coal miner who was asked what he believed. He said he believed what the Church believed. “Well, but what does the church believe?” He said the Church believed what he believed and he believed what the Church believed and so it went all the way round. We do not want you to have that faith! It may be a very pernicious faith, a very obstinate faith—but it is a very foolish faith! We want you to understand things, to get a true knowledge of them. The reason why men forsake the truth of God for error is that they have not really understood the truth. In nine cases out of ten, they have not embraced it with enlightened minds.
Let me exhort you parents as much as lies in you to give your children sound instruction in the great doctrines of the gospel of Christ. I believe that what Irving once said is a great truth. He said, “In these modern times you boast and glory and you think yourselves to be in a high and noble condition because you have your Sunday schools and British schools and all kinds of schools for teaching youth. I tell you,” he said, “that philanthropic and great as these are, they are the ensigns of your disgrace. They show that your land is not a land where parents teach their children at home! They show you there is a lack of parental instruction—and though they are blessed things, these Sunday schools—they are indications of something wrong. For if we all taught our children, there would be no need of strangers to say to our children, ‘Know the Lord.’”
I trust you will never give up that excellent Puritan habit of catechizing your children at home. Any father or mother, who entirely gives up a child to the teaching of another, has made a mistake. There is no teacher who wishes to absolve a parent from what he ought to do himself! He is an assistant; he was never intended to be a substitute. Teach your children, parents! Bring out your old catechisms, again, for they are, after all, blessed means of instruction and the next generation shall outstrip those who have gone before it. The reason why many of you are weak in the faith is this you did not receive instruction in your youth in the great things of the gospel of Christ. If you had, you would have been so grounded, settled, and firm in the faith, that nothing could by any means have moved you. I beseech you, then, understand God’s truth and then you will be more likely to hold fast by it!
But then, Christian brothers and sisters, above all things, if you would hold fast the truth, pray yourselves right into it. The way to get a doctrine is to pray till you get it. An old divine says, “I have lost many things I learned in the house of God, but I never lost anything I ever learned in the closet.” That which a man learns on his knees, with his Bible open, he will never forget. Well, have you ever bowed your knees and said, “Open You my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your law”? If you have seen that wondrous thing, you will never forget it. He that prays himself into God’s truth will never be gotten out of it by the very devil, himself, though he were to put on the garb of an angel of light!
Pray yourselves into the truth. But the two great holdfasts are here given—faith and love. If you would hold the truth of God fast, put your faith in Jesus Christ and have an ardent love towards Him. Believe the truth. Do not pretend to believe it, but believe it thoroughly. And he who does believe it and fixes his faith, first in Christ, and in all Christ says, will not be likely to let it go. Why, we do not believe religion, most of us! We pretend to believe it, but we do not believe it with all our heart and all our soul, with all our might and all our strength—not with that, “faith which is in Christ Jesus.” For if we did, come storms, come trials, like Luther of old, we would not flinch because of persecution, but stand fast in the evil day, having our faith fixed upon a rock! And then the second holdfast is love. Love Christ and love Christ’s truth because it is Christ’s truth, for Christ’s sake. And if you love Christ’s truth, you will not let it go. It is very hard to turn a man away from the truth he loves.
“Oh,” says one, “I cannot argue with you about it, but I cannot give it up—I love it and cannot live without it. It is a part of me, woven into my very nature. And though my opponent says that bread is not bread and I cannot prove that it is, yet I know I go and eat it. It is wonderfully like it to me and it takes away my hunger. He says that stream is not a pure stream. I cannot prove that it is, but I go and drink of it and find it the river of the water of life to my soul. And he tells me that my gospel is not a true one—well, it comforts me, it sustains me in my trials, it helps me to conquer sin and to keep down my evil passions and brings me near to God. And if my gospel is not a true one, I wonder what sort of thing a true one is—mine is wonderfully like it and I cannot suppose that a true gospel would produce better effects!”
That is the best thing to do—to believe the Word—to have so full a belief in it that the enemy cannot pull you away. He may try to do it, but you will say—
“Amidst temptations sharp and long, My soul to the same refuge flies! Faith is my anchor, firm and strong, When tempests blow or billows rise.”
Hold on then, Christian, to “faith and love which are in Christ Jesus”—two blessed holdfasts wherewith we grasp the truth. And now, brothers and sisters, I pray that my Master will enable you to see the importance of what I have uttered. Perhaps you may not think it so important, now, especially those of you who are young. But there are some here, the fathers of this church, who will tell you that the older they grow and the longer they live, the more they find the truth of God to be valuable. They may, perhaps, in their youth have had a little radicalism in them with regard to God’s truth, but they are conservative in their views of it now! They feel it to be worth conserving. It would be well for us if, with regard to the truth, we began to be conservative as soon as we believed it and held it fast and never let it go. I think the chief fault of the present day is that in seeking to be charitable, we do not hold the truth firmly enough. I met, some time ago, with the case of an eminent minister in the gospel, a brother whom I respect and esteem, who preached a sermon from the text, “Prove all things.” A young man was there who was professedly a believer in Christianity. But such was the style in which the subject was handled, that after hearing that sermon, he went home and bought some infidel works. The consequence is that he has become entirely apostate even from virtue, itself, and has forsaken everything that he once held to be true! I say, send your anchor right down, young Christian—and whatever may come against you, still hold on by that truth. And you may yet, even then, “prove all things.” But while you are doing it, remember to “hold fast that which is good.” Do not “prove all things” by giving up that which is good to do it!
Now such of you as know not the Lord, if you are ever saved, let me tell you that the most likely place for you to meet with salvation is under a pure gospel ministry. Therefore there is a lesson for you. Attend where the gospel is preached. Again—the most likely way for you ever to receive God’s grace is to believe God’s truths. Never kick against God’s doctrines, but receive them! And I have one thing to say to you this morning, if in your heart, poor sinner, you can say, “I believe God’s gospel to be a glorious gospel.” You are not far from something else. If you can say, “I submit to all its demands, I believe God just if He destroys me, and if He saves me, it will only be because of His sovereign mercy,” then, sinner, there are good hopes for you! You have proceeded some way on the road to heaven. If you can but do one thing more and say, “Though He slays me, yet will I trust in Him.” And if you can come to the cross of Christ and say, “Jesus, I love Your gospel and I love Your truth. If I perish, I will perish believing all Your truth, I will perish clasping Your cross. If I die, I will die proclaiming that You are a just and gracious God and still, in my poor way, holding fast the form of sound words,” I tell you, poor soul, God will never damn you! If you do believe in Jesus Christ and hold fast His words, He will look upon you in Love. He will say, “Poor soul, though he does not know that these truths are his, yet he thinks them precious. Though he dares not hope that they belong to him, yet he will fight for them. Though he does not know that he is really a soldier of the cross, chosen of Me before time began, yet see how valiantly he strives for Me.” And the Lord will say, “Poor soul, you love the things that you think are not your own—I will make you rejoice in them as your own, by My grace. You love election, though you think you are not elect—that is evidence that you are Mine.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized, and you shall be saved.” And now my brothers and sisters, stand fast,
I beseech you. If my tears, if my bended knees, if my cries, yes, if my blood could prevail with you to lay to heart what I have said, this morning, here should be tears, and cries, and blood too—if I could but make you all hold fast in these evil, perilous times! Hold fast and with the tenacity of the dying hand of the sinking mariner—“Hold fast,” I beseech you, “the form of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.”
Charles Spurgeon