Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me. — It was not sufficient for Timothy to renew his fainting courage and to brace himself up for fresh efforts; he must do something more — in his teaching he must never let those solemn formularies he had once received from him be changed. Perhaps in the heart of St. Paul lurked some dread that the new glosses and specious explanations which the school of false teachers, so often referred to in these Pastoral Epistles, chose to add to the great doctrines of Christianity would be more likely to be listened to by Timothy when the hand of his old master was cold and the heart had ceased to beat; so he urged upon him to hold fast those inspired formularies he had heard from St. Paul’s lips — such, for instance, as those “faithful sayings” which come before us so often in these Epistles to Timothy and Titus.
In faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. — Timothy, in days to come, must mould and shape his teaching after the pattern of the teaching of his master St. Paul, and he must do it in that faith and love which alone comes from a life passed in communion with Christ.
The very frequent reference to the “sound, healthy words” in these Epistles by St. Paul, and from which he urges his disciples and successors never to depart, indicate to us the deep importance St. Paul and the first generation of believers attached to the very words and expressions used by the apostles and those who had been with the Lord.
False doctrines so easily might creep in, and loose forms of expression respecting great truths were an ever-present danger; a lax life, too, St. Paul knew, was the almost invariable accompaniment of false doctrine, hence these repeated exhortations of his to these representative teachers, Timothy and Titus, of the second generation of Christians, to hold fast the form of sound, healthy words — such words as these had again and again been heard from the lips of apostles and hearers of the Lord — “words which thou hast heard of me,” St. Paul.