2 Timothy 1:13 Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. Scripture-pattern. The whole Scripture is a large module of saving truth. The Word of God is full of such maps and modules of Divine truths necessary to salvation. The whole gospel, in general, is nothing but the great platform or standard of saving doctrine. But now, more particularly, we may observe that, beside this great universal map or synopsis of Divine truth, there are to be found in Scripture more compendious abstracts containing certain of the main heads and points of saving doctrine, methodised into lesser bodies and tables, for the help of our faith and knowledge; and we find them accommodated, by the penmen of the Holy Ghost, to two special ends and purposes. 1. To inform the Church in the principles of religion. The Ten Commandments, a brief abstract of the whole law. Three modules delivered by Christ in His first sermon. The first module contains the beautitudes; a list of particulars wherein man's true and chiefest happiness doth consist (Matthew 5:3-11). The second module contains a list of duties; things to be done by every one that would be saved. This our Saviour doth by asserting and expounding the moral law (Matthew 5:17-48), confuting and reforming the false glosses which the scribes and Pharisees had put upon the Ten Commandments, thereby "making the law of God of none effect." (Matthew 15:6). And these we may call the facienda, "things to be done." The third module contains a list of petitions, which (Matthew 6:9-15) He commends to His disciples, and in them to all succeeding generations of the Church, as a form or directory of prayer. The holy apostles tread in our Saviour's steps. You may observe in all their epistles, that in the former part of them they generally lay down a module of gospel-principles, and in the latter part a module of gospel-duties. 2. A second sort of modules, or a second end and design of such modules, is to obviate errors, and to antidote Christians against the poison and infection of rotten, pernicious principles: for no sooner had the good husbandman sowed his field with good seed, but the envious man went out after him, and began to scatter tares (Matthew 13:25). In opposition whereunto, the apostles in their several epistles were careful to furnish the Churches with such modules and platforms of truth as might discover and confute those "damnable heresies" (2 Peter 2:1). Parallel Verses KJV: Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. |
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