1 Timothy 1:17

‘Now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory to the ages of the ages. Amen.

This reads more like a prayer from a worshipful heart, as he contemplates what the King has done, rather than a creed (compare Romans 16:25-27 which contains the same sense of timelessness). It may have had a basis in a Jewish prayer, but Paul was surely quite capable of such a flow of thought himself. And it is a description wrung from the heart of someone who has recognised and absorbed the glory of the King. And in the context the idea of the King must surely include Jesus. In the preceding narrative it is He who came into the world for the salvation of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15; compare Zechariah 9:9). It is He Who has shown His longsuffering to Paul (1 Timothy 1:16). It is He Who is ‘Christ Jesus our Lord’ Who has made His appointments to His service (1 Timothy 1:12). It is He Whose grace has abounded exceedingly to Paul as from ‘the Lord’ (1 Timothy 1:14, compare 1 Timothy 1:12). And all Paul’s concentration has been on Him. We would thus surely expect Him to be the recipient of Paul’s praise at this point.

Yet in spite of that the majority see it as applying to God the Father, as though having contemplated the glory of Christ Jesus, Paul’s thoughts are turned directly towards God. And certainly in Hebrew thought it was He Who was the One Who was designated as the ‘King of the ages’. For the idea see Psalms 145:13, ‘your Kingship is an everlasting Kingship’, and for the phrase the Jewish work Tob 13:6 ; Tob 13:10 .

‘To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory to the ages of the ages.’ Note the stress on the King’s everlastingness (compare Micah 5:2), and the fact that His honour and glory will continue into everlastingness. Also on His invisibility, the concept which was emphasised by the ‘empty’ throne in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. It is this characteristic that might turn the argument in favour of this referring to God Himself, but with the proviso that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, and therefore also included. Here is One Who stretches the mind beyond what it can cope with because no mind can even begin to comprehend Him. Thus He can neither be seen, nor can His eternal Being be comprehended. He is cloaked in invisibility. And yet He became mortal and visible in Jesus Christ so that Jesus could say, ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father’. Can we then believe that Paul did not include Jesus in the description? For to Paul He certainly was ‘the only God’. Such is the wonder of the incarnation.

‘The King of the ages.’ He is sovereign over all things from beginning to end, and Lord over the ages. His people are those ‘on whom the end of the ages has come’ (1 Corinthians 10:11). ‘ In the ages to come He will show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us’ (Ephesians 2:7). Paul has been appointed ‘to make all men see the outworking of the mystery which from all ages has been in God Who created all things, to the intent that now to the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Ephesians 3:9-11). Truly He is the King of the ages.

‘Immortal.’ That is, untouchable by death, the very idea of which is foreign to His nature, for He is the source of all life and the very epitome of it. And He alone has immortality (1 Timothy 6:16). Thus in the end death and all connected with it has to be totally divorced from God, Who is the source of all life, in the same way as light is from darkness. It is foreign to His own nature. It is the opposite of what He is. Thus compared with being with Him death is to be in ‘nothingness’ (Psalms 88:5; Psalms 115:17). It is to be in the ‘outer darkness’ away from the light and glory of God. Indeed, for the opposite of what immortality is, see Ezekiel 32:18-32, where we find a vivid picture of humanity as vague shadows apart from God.

‘Invisible.’ (Compare Colossians 1:15). That is, beyond man’s physical senses and comprehension so that each man can only know Him as He is revealed in the centre of that man’s inner being, his spirit. Thus when He is depicted in action in the world it is by His ‘Spirit’, Whose activity, like that of the wind, is discerned while He Himself is never seen. Speaking physically He is the ultimate unknowable. When He was revealed in flaming fire, and that was His favourite method of manifestation, it was still but a faint representation of what He is, the One Who is all mystery and light, for that was why fire was chosen, it was both magnificent and mysterious at the same time. For He dwells in ‘light unapproachable’ and is the One Whom ‘no man has seen or can see’ (1 Timothy 6:16). Indeed none could see Him as He really is, for He Himself is Spirit (John 4:24).

‘The only God.’ (Compare ‘the eternal God, the God of ages’, Romans 16:26). That is, He is unique in His Godhead, and in His ‘otherness’, the ‘High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, Whose Name is Holy’ (Isaiah 57:15), dwelling in unapproachable light Whom no man has seen or can see (1 Timothy 6:16), Whom nothing else and no-one else can even begin to approach to, whether in Heaven or on earth, for He is far above all principalities and powers in the spiritual realm (Ephesians 1:20-21). Yet although He is far beyond what man can attain to, He is yet reachable by those with a contrite spirit and a contrite heart (Isaiah 57:15), for He is reachable in the realm of the spirit to those whose hearts are open to Him (see John 4:24), and especially through His Word (John 1:1-3; John 1:14). And as such He is the One to Whom all honour and glory belong for ever and ever (compare Ephesians 3:21), for He alone is worthy of such. To which we can only say, ‘Amen’.