unapproachable light

The Word for today:
1 Timothy 6:3-21

mark this: 1Timothy 6:16
…who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.



Sometimes, I just get stopped in my tracks. I comment on this, then that, then the other; and all the while I’m pretty cocksure of myself. Then I come to a verse like this one:

He alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light.

I can’t grasp the meaning of a line like that…which is exactly what it means!

We don’t know where God came from, because he has no point of origin. He just IS -- that’s His Name (1) -- and there never was a time when he was not.

For us, immortality means eternal life going forward. For God, who has no point of reference to time, immortality means been there, done that—in the opposite direction!

I used to ponder words like immortality until my head ached. The concept mocks our intelligence. I used to try to make God fit into my frame of mind. Sometimes he did, but oftentimes he did not.

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) said that, “A God whom we could understand would be no God.”

R.C. Sproul (b. 1939) said,
“The finite can "grasp" the infinite, but the finite can never hold the infinite within its grasp. There is always more of God than we apprehend.”

John Dick (1764-1833) said,
“We believe that it our knowledge of God will be progressive, and that as our views expand, our blessedness will increase. But it will never reach a limit beyond which there is nothing to be discovered, and when ages after ages have passed away, He will still be the incomprehensible God.”

Isaiah (writing from 740-700 B.C.), quoting God (who always was and always will be), said:
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” (55:8-9)

***

I used to be perplexed by infinity, and by other attributes of Jesus that are too profound for me (2). For the longest time, I thought that I would never get to know him. Then, one day, something clicked. A thought snapped into place, that if Jesus is too much for me to take it all in, that just proves I’m getting to know him.

He lives in unapproachable light, Paul tells us. Paul ought to know. He'd encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, and his eyes were never the same.

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(1) see Exodus 3:14; John 8:58; (2) Psalm 131:1; Psalm 139:6