1 Timothy 6:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"Who alone," he says, "has immortality." What then? Does the Son not have it? Is He not immortality itself? How could this be, when He is of the same essence as the Father?

"Who dwells," he says, "in unapproachable light." Is He Himself one light, and the light in which He lives another? Is He then defined by place? No.

The Apostle did not say this so that we would think in that way, but to show us the incomprehensibility of the divine nature. He said that God lives in unapproachable light, explaining the teaching about God as far as was possible for him.

Do you see how weak language becomes when it wishes to proclaim something great?

"Whom no man has seen," he says, "or can see," just as no one has seen or can see the Son.

"Who dwells in unapproachable light." Is He then defined by place? Or is the light one thing and He Himself another? Certainly, He Himself is light.

Do you see how weak language becomes when we wish to proclaim something great? This light is unapproachable because, on account of its measureless radiance, no one can approach it.

"Whom no man has seen or can see." That is, according to His divinity. He was seen and is seen only according to His humanity.

St. John Chrysostom understands the preceding words as spoken of the Son, and the following words especially of the Father. Yet these words also apply to the Son and to the Spirit.

"To Him be honor and everlasting dominion. Amen." Therefore, if His dominion is eternal, you must not fear, even though it is not now revealed.

You have already told me, O Lord, with a loud voice in my inner ear, that You are eternal, the only One Who has immortality. For You change neither in form nor in motion, and Your will does not vary according to time.

A will that desires now one thing and now another cannot be immortal. This is clear to me before Your face (Ps 78:11). I beg You, let it become clearer and clearer, and let me abide humbly under Your wings in this revelation.

I do not defend myself as doing rightly by lingering over this question. I have absolutely no doubt that the soul is immortal, not as God is, Who alone has immortality, but in its own kind and in some other manner.

The end of the virtuous life is blessedness. For everything in which we diligently make progress necessarily has some aim.

As the art of medicine has health in view, and the aim of agriculture is the provision of what life requires, so the acquisition of virtue serves this end: that the one who lives virtuously may become blessed.

This is the summit and limit of everything we conceive as good.

Therefore that which, in the true and proper sense, is contemplated and conceived under this exalted notion will rightly be called the divine nature.

God is the highest Light, ineffable and beyond utterance, incomprehensible to mind and inexpressible by word. He enlightens every rational nature. He is in the spiritual world what the sun is in the sensible world. According to the measure of our purification He is conceived. According to the measure of our conception He kindles love for Himself. According to the measure of love He is again contemplated by the mind. He alone is contemplated and comprehended by Himself, and pours Himself out only sparingly upon what exists outside Him. I speak of the Light contemplated in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Their wealth consists in consubstantiality and in the single outburst of brightness.

How could He not have immortality, Who has life in Himself? For He has it in His nature, He has it in His substance, and He has it not through temporal grace, but through eternal Godhead.

He has it not by gift, as a servant, but by the property of His birth as the coeternal Son. He has it as the Father has it.

He would have been in vain if He had not appeared. For God was Himself in the light, since He dwells in unapproachable light. He was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world (Jn 1:9).

Yet He willed that the light perceived by bodily eyes should appear.

Whoever wishes to build a house worthy to become the dwelling of a householder first examines, before laying the foundation, where the light will fall upon it.

This is the first good. If it is absent, the whole house will strike one by its ugly uncleanliness.

By what is proper and belongs to God, the Apostle confirmed the teaching concerning the resurrection, judgment, and recompenses.

First, he showed God's immutability by calling God blessed, because the blessed by nature admits no change. Then he showed His might, for he says, "the only Potentate, King of kings and Lord of lords."

After this he showed incorruptibility: "Who alone has immortality." In addition, because the very essence cannot be investigated, he indicated the light around that essence, saying, "Who dwells in unapproachable light."

But this is not properly applicable to God. His nature is indescribable. If He dwells in light, then He is described by the light.

Nevertheless, the Apostle hymns Him as far as possible and stretches his gaze as far as it can reach.

If unapproachable light is around Him, how is it possible to see Him? Therefore he added, "Whom no man has seen or can see."

God is this unbegotten and bodiless beauty, without beginning and without share in corruption. He is unchanging, unaging, and in need of nothing. In Himself and by Himself He is light, dwelling in an ineffable and unapproachable habitation (cf. 1 Tim 6:16). By the superabundance of His power He holds, creates, and forms all things. He created the soul according to the likeness of His image. Therefore it is both rational and immortal.

If the Apostle says that the Father is the only One Who has immortality, Who dwells in unapproachable light, how did the psalmist write, “Come to Him and be enlightened” (Ps 33:6)? Yet both sayings are justified and serve to disclose the truth itself. His light is called unapproachable when the nature of the one and almighty essence itself is being discussed. Yet when He pours Himself out through holy and divine grace, He both permits approach to Himself and fills with blessed illumination. Here the Vulgate corresponds literally to the Church Slavonic text. In the Synodal translation it is otherwise: “Those who looked to Him were enlightened.”

But lest you think that, just as you sit in darkness, so the Lord entered into darkness and was hidden, that is, covered by gloom, holy David says further: "His dwelling is around Him."

This dwelling St. Paul calls light: "Who dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim 6:16).

Both the Prophet David and the Apostle Paul wished to show that His Godhead is incomprehensible. One says that His dwelling is around Him, and the other that He dwells in unapproachable light.

They do not show that God is somehow limited or circumscribed. Rather, they use such figurative speech for the inquisitive, saying to them, as it were: O foolish investigators, do not think that our Lord and God, after ascending, entered some darkness and was hidden.

He is the Light that darkness neither comprehends nor receives (Jn 1:5). Only the one who has loved righteousness is capable of receiving Him. “Everyone who does evil hates the Light. He who does not believe in Him is condemned already. And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:18-20). Amen.

“The blessed and only Sovereign,” and so forth. In this doxology the Apostle conceals a depth and force of thought that strikes down false teaching. Especially by his final words, “dwelling in unapproachable light,” he exposes the boastfulness of the false teachers, who boasted that they knew everything about God. “To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.” This is not the conclusion of the Epistle, but the customary glorification of God, which involuntarily issued from his lips at the remembrance of God’s name.

84. The very Essence of God cannot be known. It is above all knowledge, not only of man, but also of the Angels. 85. Concerning this, Holy Scripture says through the Apostle Paul that God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Tim 6:16).

"By immortality he means unceasingness" (Blessed Theodoret). More fully, it means that He is He Who Is, ever-existing, having the source of life in Himself, borrowing nothing from elsewhere and never being exhausted by anything. From Him everything else has being and life. He is the one "who gives to all life and breath and all things" (cf. Acts 17:25).

Oecumenius asks here: "How does he say of God that He alone has immortality, when Angels, souls, and demons also have immortality?" He answers: "These do not have immortality in themselves, but are partakers of immortality by the grace of Him who alone is immortal by nature. For this, being immortal, has been given to them by God. God is He from whom we partake both of everything else that is represented as best and of immortality."

John the Theologian proclaims: "No one has ever seen God" (Jn 1:18). Is this said only in the past tense? Not at all.

He cut off every judgment concerning time by saying simply that no one has seen God anywhere.

The Apostle Paul confirms the same truth, saying: "Whom no man has seen or can see," probably because anyone who saw Him would die.

Meanwhile, the same apostles solemnly testify that they have seen and handled God (cf. 1 Jn 1:1).

If Christ is the same as God, and the Son the same as the Father, how could He be both visible and invisible at the same time?