Enduring sound doctrine is vital for every believer in an age when many turn away from the truth. The apostle Paul warned, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3). To “endure” sound doctrine is to receive, cherish, and continue in the pure teaching of God’s Word, even when it confronts our desires or challenges popular opinion, instead of seeking messages that merely please the flesh, the child of God is called to submit to the wholesome, life-giving truth of Scripture.
When you go to the scriptures that most reprove the sin and worldly lusts in your own life and concentrate your thoughts on them in sincerity, humility and repentance, that is enduring sound doctrine.
The pure Word of God is a sword that corrects us, and rather than resisting that correction, believers are to welcome it and “hold fast the faithful word” so that they are strong to endure the onslaught of the enemy and not lose any ground. 2Corinthians 10:5 proclaims, Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God,….
In a world filled with the false teachings produced by the deceptions of the human heart that have wrangled the scriptures and a famine of holy living, God’s people must be firmly anchored in the truth. Without enduring sound doctrine and holding fast to what you “know” undeniably has been proven, you will not be able to endure the warfare of Christianity. The battle is to pressure the Christian into fulfilling what is declared in 2 Timothy 4:4, to “turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables”. Those who endure sound doctrine do not surrender or succumb to the whisper of their own heart, but rather fulfil the scriptures of holding forth the Word of life in a crooked, dark, perverse and deceived generation. (Phil 2:15-16)
2Thessalonians 2:8-12 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
To endure sound doctrine is to go against your own human nature that tends towards the loving of pleasure and living in vanity. It’s when you choose the cold, hard truth and stay there, no matter how ugly it may be.
(All scriptures quoted in this newsletter are from the Authorized King James Version)
