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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadEzekiel, Jonah, and Pastoral Epistles by Patrick Fairbairn - 1 Timothy 6:15 - 6:16
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Vers. 15, 16. These verses begin with a more particular description of the expected appearance of Christ in its relation to God, and then run out into a doxology, celebrating the incomparable greatness and glory of God. This Baur and others would regard as a protest against the semi-polytheism or dualism of the Gnostics—an entirely fanciful and unnatural view. The object seems rather to have been to fortify the mind of Timothy to a consistent and persevering adherence to the Christian faith and life amid the scorn or opposition of worldly powers of the stamp of Pontius Pilate, by placing distinctly before him the sole supremacy, the peerless eminence, and infinite sufficiency of Him who has decreed the future manifestation in glory of Christ, as He had done that of His past humiliation. This affords a reason perfectly cognate to many others introduced by the apostle in this epistle (1Ti_1:18-19, 1Ti_2:5-7, 1Ti_3:15-16, 1Ti_5:21, etc.), and in proper keeping with the connection. Which (namely, appearance) in His own seasons He shall show, [who is] the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only has immortality, dwelling in light that is unapproachable, whom no man hath seen nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen. In regard to what is said at the outset about the appearing of Christ, that it is to take place in God’s own seasons, there is plainly indicated a certain indefiniteness, as in regard to a matter which belongs to the secret things of God, not therefore to be pronounced upon by the superficiality and littleness of human foresight (Bengel: brevitatem temporis non valde coarctuans). The words remind us—perhaps were purposely designed to remind us—of the address given by our Lord before His ascension to the disciples on this very subject: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power” (Act_1:6),—the seasons, namely, which concern the greater movements of Christ’s kingdom, and especially, as here, His advent in glory. Nay, our Lord Himself had previously told them, that as regards the precise period when He should come to manifest Himself in the glory of that kingdom, even He did not know it in His humiliation (Mar_13:32), doubtless because He did not wish to know it; the knowledge would have been unsuited to that transient and provisional state of things. God is here designated the blessed, as at 1Ti_1:11—the antithesis of everything that can be called sorrow or vexation; also the only Potentate ( ìüíïò äõíÜóôçò )—alone in the universe possessed of independent right, absolute sovereignty. The epithet King of kings and Lord of lords is, with a slight variation in the form, directly applied to Christ in Rev_17:14, Rev_19:16; for in this, as in all divine prerogatives, “all that the Father hath is His.” But it is plainly God the Father that is here the subject of discourse, as some parts of the description are not properly applicable to Christ as the God-man. When it is said of God that He only has immortality, the meaning plainly is, He alone has it of Himself—it is in Him as its fountainhead. Joh_5:26, which declares the Father to have life in Himself—life in the full and absolute sense—is substantially parallel. Further, He is represented as dwelling in an atmosphere of light—light that from its excessive splendour and intense brilliancy is incapable of being approached or looked upon by the eye of man: compare Joh_1:18; 1Jn_1:5; Psa_104:2. The whole of this sublime representation concludes, and is most appropriately wound up, with an ascription of honour and power to God, as alone entitled to receive the homage and adoration of His intelligent creatures.