Every sailor knows that the more precisely a ship keeps to the prescribed course, the more certain it will be to reach its destination. With this nautical term, the author wants to prevent his readers from losing the course of God’s gospel and wandering from the sure word of God (J.A. Bengel1). The image of a rudderless ship, which is carried away by the currents and misses the port of destination, lends itself well to application to a church that is in danger of losing its stability because of weariness in faith.2
1 Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.