FOCUS ON 'SOUND WORDS'

June, 2024

There is important truth in the 2 Tim. 1:13 instruction to ‘hold fast to the form of sound words’. Fact is ‘form’ (Greek, morphosis) does not only mean the ‘outward shape or appearance’, as I once thought. Rather, it means the very nature and substance of that it describes.

So, the Apostle Paul means Timothy should hang on to exact essence of the words and the truth they express. And to ‘hold fast’ comes with as much force as God’s commandment that a man should ‘cleave’ unto his wife.

As some translations show, the ‘form of sound words’ is also a ‘pattern’ Timothy should follow in his teaching of others. What’s more, it contains ‘all the truth and love which are [for us believers] in Christ Jesus’ (AMP), not just some of it. Importantly, all of it is found in the very words Timothy ‘heard’ from Paul.

Thus the ‘sound words’, (Greek hupotuposis), form an example of truth to adhere to. The shorter word tupos in Rom.6:17 carries the same thought: ‘But God be thanked, ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.’

So, just as Roman believers obeyed the doctrine Paul gave them in the Acts period dispensation, so the later saints Timothy ministers to (i.e.us) should obey the very pattern of Paul’s teaching in this later dispensation of grace and the mystery (Eph. 3:1-4) as found in Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon.

Why are these teachings of Paul so important? Because, it is by obeying his doctrine that believers are conformed to the image of Christ. Vine’s Dictionary comments: ‘The gospel (Paul’s ‘my gospel’, that is) is the mould; those who obey its teachings become conformed to Christ who it represents’. And in 2 Timothy it is by holding fast to ‘sound words’ that those who are obedient become filled with the ‘the fullness’ of Christ (Eph. 1:23).

The Amplified Version gets to the heart of the matter rendering verse 14 ‘Guard and keep [with the greatest care] the precious and excellently adapted Truth] which has been entrusted [to you] by [help of] the Holy Spirit who makes his home in us.

It says the ‘form of sound words’ is actually a body of ‘precious and excellently adapted truth’ entrusted to Timothy (and to us) to be ‘kept and guarded with the greatest care’. Sadly, in Christendom today it is very widely set aside and ignored in favour of other understandings. At worst, it is repudiated by those who resist and reject the teachings of Paul in favour of those of earlier times.

Students will note the breakdown of 2 Tim. 1:13-14 according to Vine’s Expository and Strong’s Concordance:

  1. Form (hupotuposis) means a firm pattern to follow, an ensample (i.e. an unbreakable mould).   In Romans 6:17 it is ‘the form of doctrine that was delivered you’.  
  2. Sound (hugianio), as in ‘sound words’, means having ‘sound health’ (i.e. a healthy body); to be un-corrupt, thus true in doctrine; to be fully healthy, wholly true.   
  3. Words (logos) means they are the very words of God Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ.
  4. The IMPLICATION of ‘sound words’.

The Amplified Version translates ‘sound’ as ‘wholesome’. Thus it is ‘whole’, meaning nothing need be added to it. Hence, wholesome meaning that ‘sound words’ contain all needful to be in full health, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

In New Zealand, dog trialling is popular among farmers. Dogs compete to see which one can best herd sheep along a set course and into a pen. When screened on television such trials are accompanied by adverts proclaiming a certain dog biscuit is ‘all you need to feed’.

Similarly, I suggest that in the present dispensation of grace the ‘form of sound words’ is all you need to have faith in, to be saved, sealed, incorporated into Christ and filled with his fullness. For we are saved by grace through faith plus nothing and this in, ‘the form of sound words’.

Remember, the dispensation of grace and the mystery was given the Apostle Paul specifically for us Gentiles (Eph. 3: 3:4-5). (Not that any Jew who wants to join is excluded). So to add earlier truth specifically directed to believers and proselytes in Israel in the now past Pentecostal dispensation – and set aside along with Israel as the vehicle for salvation in Acts 28:28 – only detracts from the all sufficient grace now bestowed on all who believe.

Studying the ‘sound words’ reveals that today believers are both saved and called…

with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the (new) world began (begins) (2 Tim. 1:9).

Quite simply, we are no longer called or saved in the same way saints were saved and brought to know Christ as Saviour in the earlier Pentecostal dispensation of the Acts period. Nor are we called for the same purpose as they. They were called in ‘the hope of Israel for which I am bound with this chain’ (Acts 28:20, 26:6-8 and 1:6) - i.e. that through resurrection the kingdom would be restored to the nation Israel. In contrast, we as believers saved ‘…by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast’ (Eph. 2:8-9), have a different hope.

This ‘blessed hope’ is set out in Titus 2:13. It is that of our resurrection to ‘reign’ with Christ as He brings in his kingdom at his appearing (2 Tim. 4:1), Importantly, this is not his much later 1,000 year reign on David’s throne on earth, but, rather, his pre-millennial kingdom which dawns when He shows Himself as the supreme and only ruler (1 Tim. 6:14-15) and takes over government of the world. We put our hope in the fact that this is the very next item on God’s agenda

(2) The EXTENT of ‘sound words’:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

When the Apostle Paul tells Timothy ‘the form of sound words’ are those ‘which thou hast heard of me’ it widens the scope to include all that is written in the ‘prison epistles – Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon plus some truths carried over from the apostle’s Acts period letters. But it also sharply narrows the definition to those things spoke (or written) by Paul and found in his writings as ‘the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles’ (Eph. 3:1). Like the Lord’s grace itself they should be all ‘sufficient’ for us.

  1. The EFFECT of ‘sound words’:

It is no coincidence that right after commanding Timothy to ‘hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me’ Paul in 2 Tim 2:15 has to tell him that: ‘This thou knowest that, that all they that be in Asia be turned away from me; of whom are Phygellus and Hermogones’.

That’s still a problem today. Many believers ‘turn away’ from the greater truths brought to light in the latest word from God – the revelation of ‘the form of sound words’ given by the Lord to Paul for us.

History teaches the first collection of New Testament scriptures contained only Paul’s epistles, mainly Ephesians and other ‘prison’ epistles written as ‘the prisoner of the Lord (2 Tim. 1:8).

This was the only published New Testament for well over a century. The gospels, Acts and other epistles were only added much later. Thus it was indeed Paul’s ‘my gospel’ and ‘the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery’ (Rom. 16:25-26) that for a century or more after the apostle’s death was the gospel message that converted so many Gentiles in the Roman world.

John Dudley Aldworth

john.aldworth@hotmail.com