1 Timothy 1:17 · World English Bible
1 Timothy 1:17 Meaning Now to the King Eternal
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
What does 1 Timothy 1:17 mean?
Everything perishes except His Face: only God outlasts what passes Sufis repeat this line from the Quran their whole lives. Someone taking stock of their own past can feel how much of it has already slipped away, including the parts they would undo.
From the Sufism reading below.
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Everything perishes except His Face: only God outlasts what passes Sufis repeat this line from the Quran their whole lives. Someone taking stock of their own past can feel how much of it has already slipped away, including the parts they would undo. Turning toward the one thing that never wears out puts that record in its place, because nothing important was ever resting on it.
Tanzīh: Holding God clear of any likeness Ibn Arabi uses this word for refusing to shrink God down to anything you can picture. Praise reaches for images by habit, and every image it lands on is smaller than the one being praised. Naming God as beyond all of them keeps the words open, so a person is not quietly praising a picture of their own making.
His veil is light: too much brightness for our eyes A saying of the Prophet has it that God's veil is light, and al-Ghazali leaned on that line. Not seeing something can feel like proof that nothing is there, and the doubt often arrives in the middle of praise. Looking straight at the sun fails the same way, and the trouble is the amount of light.
Tawḥīd: God's oneness Sufis take oneness to mean that nothing else owns anything by itself. Saying that wisdom belongs to God alone settles a question a person carries around: whether their own judgment is the final word on their life. Their thinking still gets used, but it stops being the thing everything else has to answer to.
Ḥikma: Wisdom that puts each thing where it belongs Sufis mean by wisdom the placing of each thing in its right spot. A person who has done damage and then been spared usually cannot see why, and the not-knowing stings on its own. Trusting the placing lets them stop demanding an account of their history before they can be grateful for it.
Ḥamd: Praise that belongs to God The Quran opens by saying all praise belongs to God, and Sufis start from there. After a hard look at their own record, a person's mind tends to circle it, going over the damage and the pardon. Praise breaks the circling by moving the subject, and the relief comes from finally talking about something other than yourself.
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Live 1 Timothy 1:17 today
- Spend two minutes today saying something good about God with no request attached and no mention of yourself. It will feel oddly empty at first, which is part of what it does.
- In conversation today, let one chance to steer the subject back to yourself go by. Ask a second question instead of telling your version.
- When you catch your mind looping over something you did wrong, going over it for the tenth time, change the subject rather than solving it. The loop is not repentance, it is just a treadmill with your name on it.
What have you been replaying that you have already been forgiven for?
The same truth in other traditions
Tao Te Ching 1
The opening lines say that the Tao you can put into words is not the Tao. Naming is useful and always smaller than the thing named.
Upanishads
The old formula is "not this, not that," clearing away every image until nothing graspable is left. What remains cannot be pictured, and that is the point rather than a failure.
Stoicism · Epictetus
Epictetus kept pulling the student's attention off his own record and onto the order he belongs to. Praise of something larger is what stops a person from circling his own case forever.
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