How can Jesus be the only immortal one - when the scripture says the Father is, thus showing Jesus is not GOD? 1 Timothy 1:17; 1 Timothy 6:15. So goes the argument - now the response! To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Tim 1: 17 This is one of the Apostolic doxologies that Paul wrote; another example can be seen in Rom 11: 33 – 36.Such praise is right and just given the great work of salvation that has been wrought by GOD the Father, in His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Christians have no issue in seeing this praise of GOD the Father within a Trinitarian context. The Father is to be praised and He is eternal, immortal (incorruptible/imperishable), invisible and wise. He, as the fountain of the Trinity, is the source forever and ever, for ages unto ages, of these qualities. It is from Him that the Son draws the same and is the same as the Father: immortal, invisible, wise, deserving therefore of the same honour and glory. It is oft the way of grace that those steeped in the worst sin are the most grateful for their salvation as was The Apostle Paul in this sentence. Christ, at the Incarnation, does not change his eternal nature into mortal nature, nor does he mix his immortality with mortality. We do not confuse his invisibility with his visibility, and we do not presume His divinity ceases to be wise because His human nature grows in wisdom. The divine Logos takes to Himself a human nature, which remains and is human in every sense. To state that the divine is 'immortal' is not confused with the fact that Christ took to Himself a 'mortal' nature; and it was that human nature that was finite, mortal, visible, growing in wisdom, and needing to receive honour and glory. The divinity was unaffected by all these things; only the Humanity was possessed of it, and the person of Christ - who possessed that humanity - experienced these qualities according to His humanity. There is a textual variant here as the words: μόνῳ σόφῳ θεῷ pronounced, monō sophō theō and translated, “the only wise God”, do not appear in most ancient texts such as: (א D H Ψ 1175 1241 1881 M al); but not in all for instance א* A D* F G H* 33 1739 lat co. Some of our earliest texts do not contain the word 'wise', therefore the passage reads 'only GOD'. Yet, despite these textual variances, no doctrine of the Church is changed, as GOD the Father is described as ‘wise’ in some variants, but if the word wise is missing, then GOD is still described as wise in Rom 16: 27 (among other places) and thus nothing of what we believe is changed by the textual variant. Describing the Father as the 'only GOD' does not make any statement on whether the Christ is also of the same divinity, it merely requires that the divinity of Christ is of the Father's own divinity, which is precisely what Christians believe. The Father is the only source of the essence that is possessed fully and completely by the Son and the Holy Spirit. Further, and quite simply, the word GOD in this sentence is just being used as a substitute word for the ‘Father’, and so you can read the passage as the ‘only Father’ thus showing this is not meant to suggest in any way that Christ is not divine, but rather that there is only one Father. Some of the quotes of the Church Fathers can be quite illuminating on this topic: But if you think that God is seen by those who are pure in heart in this world, why did Moses, who had previously said, “I have seen the Lord face to face, and my life is preserved,” afterwards plead that he might see him distinctly? And because he said that he had seen God, the Lord told him, “You cannot not see my face. For no one shall see my face and live.” For this reason also the apostle calls him the only invisible God, who dwells in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen nor can see. Jerome The point being made here is that Christ is the one who is seen – even before the incarnation. Only the Logos and the Spirit are seen, the Father is seen by no one and so in another sense only Father is ‘invisible’. We know that of all the names by which Deity is indicated some are expressive of the Divine majesty, employed and understood absolutely, and some are assigned with reference to the operations over us and all creation. When the apostle says, “Now to the immortal, invisible, only wise God,” and the like, by these titles he suggests conceptions which represent to us the transcendent power. In other cases, however, God is spoken of in the Scriptures as gracious, merciful, full of pity, true, good, Lord, Physician, Shepherd, Way, Bread, Fountain, King, Creator, Artificer, Protector, Who is over all and through all, Who is all in all; these and similar titles contain the declaration of the operations of the Divine loving kindness in the creation Gregory of Nyssa The energies of GOD are the titles He is praised and lauded by, and that is what Paul is doing: to the Father whom we worship as priests, empowered by the Holy Spirit, we offer prayers to the Father by our great High Priest Jesus Christ. So this faith is also a rule for salvation, to “believe in God the Father almighty,” creator of all things, “king of the ages, immortal and invisible.” He is indeed the almighty God who at the origin of the world made all things out of nothing. He is before the ages and made and governs the ages. He doesn’t, after all, grow with time, or stretch out in space, nor is he shut in or bounded by any material. He abides with and in himself as full and perfect eternity, which neither human thought can comprehend, nor tongue describe... In order to attain that vision by which we see God as he is, he has warned us that our hearts must be cleansed. As objects are called visible in our fashion of speaking, so God is called invisible lest he be thought to be a material body. Yet he will not deprive pure hearts of the contemplation of his essence, since this great and sublime reward is promised, on the Lord’s own word, to those who worship and love God. At the time when he appeared visibly to bodily eyes, he promised that his invisible being also would be seen by the clean of heart, “He that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.” It is certain that this nature of his, which he shares with the Father, is equally as invisible as it is equally incorruptible. Augustine of Hippo Christ reveals the Father exactly and perfectly. We do not gaze upon the Father, but see the Father, by looking upon the Son who is the exact image, the very same nature as the Father. Jesus has made the Father known, and through this knowledge we may praise and laud the Father with greater clarity than any Israelite who did not know communion with the Son. Da’ii also martial arguments using 1 Timothy 6: 15 which reads: which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Here the title of Kings of Kings and Lords of Lords is given to the Father, and so Da’ii attempt to argue that Jesus cannot also be King of Kings and Lords of Lords? This argument backfires spectacularly and shows the utter insincerity of the way Da’ii martial their arguments. If Christ has the same titles as the Father then He has equality with the Father - see Rev 19: 16. This shows His divinity not the absence of it. We should clarify, dear Muslim, that the sovereignty proclaimed by the titles ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lord of Lords’ is a property of the divinity. Since the Father and Son share the same divinity, and thus same sovereignty, so both can be proclaimed as ‘Lord of Lords and Kings of Kings’ Moreover they have the same will, they command the same things, and thus their Kingship and Lordship is the same. What Paul is doing in this verse, is deliberately challenging the pagan Roman Caesar cult, which proclaimed the Emperor as ‘king of kings and lord of lords. By using this well-known phrase, the Apostle was aligning the Church to oppose the pagan world that surrounds it. It is a term of monotheism, a rejection of pagan worship, and, as a result, shows that the early Church had a Trinitarian monotheism from earliest times. This is so much clearer when we read this verse in its immediate context of 11 – 16. Roman authority is directly referenced and the Church clearly put on a confrontational footing vis a vie the Roman world and is called to ‘fight the good fight of faith’. This whole ‘King of Kings, Lord of Lords’ doxology has a hymnal quality where it brings together several phrases from Scripture that are transposed into the Hellenistic language. The key point of the theme being that only GOD (not Ceasar and the Roman Pantheon) is to be worshipped; and we all should worship awed at His ineffable glory. Why them call Him ‘only Sovereign’? We will not repeat ourselves - our answer is clearly stated above, but we will add to it the words of the Fathers of the Church: In His times, that is, the due and fitting times, that he may not be impatient, because it has not yet come. And whence is it manifest, that He will show it? Because He is the Potentate, the only Potentate. He then will show it, Who is blessed, nay blessedness itself; and this is said, to show that in that appearing there is nothing painful or uneasy. But he says, only, either in contradistinction to men, or because He was unoriginated, or as we sometimes speak of a man whom we wish to extol. John Chrysostom Chrysostom points out something we know: that when we wish to acclaim someone great we often do so in such a way as make it sound like there is no one like them. That, in fact, does not mean there is actually no one else like them, it just means that in the moment of exultation, to heighten the sense of praise we offer, we speak as if they are unique. Chrysostom offers two other appropriate teachings that God is the Father, the origin of all that the Son is and the eternal fountain of the eternal river. And so, while both are fully divine, one can be spoken of as from unique origin while both share immortality - the immortality of the Son is that of the Father. A third and final valid interpretation and answer to the objection is that the contrast offered by Paul is not against Christ, but rather it is against man, which, given its polemical value against the Roman Ceasar cult, makes a lot of sense. Nota bene, apologetics can offer all of the reasonable answers to a problem, but it is for the Church, with discernment, to take up the argument it is moved to with guidance from the Holy Spirit, or it can take up all or none or the arguments. Apologetics is not making dogmas, it is simply demonstrating the reasonableness of the faith in response to objections. When I speak of the Father, I do not make separation of the Son, because the Son is in the bosom and the solitude of the Father. When I speak of the Son alone, I also associate the Father, even as the Son also associated him, saying, “Behold the hour is coming for you to leave me alone. But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” In this way is the Father called “the blessed and only Sovereign”—in such a way that the Son, who is always in the Father, is not separated from him. Ambrose of Milan Ambrose offers another truth, which is that when two are closely associated, as the Father and Son are, we can speak of both by referencing just one. This is often seen when speaking of married couples, as what is said of one cannot be understood without reference to the other since they have a shared life. To say that ‘Elizabeth has lost her daughter in a car crash’; also means her husband, Tom has lost his daughter in the same car crash; to speak of one is to speak of the other. He, the framer of all creation and maker of our race, became man for our sake, and coming from a holy Virgin’s womb, on earth conversed with men. For us ungrateful servants the master endured death, even the death of the cross, that the tyranny of sin might be destroyed, that the former condemnation might be abolished, that the gates of heaven might be open to us again. In this way he has exalted our nature, and set it on the throne of glory, and granted to them that love him an everlasting kingdom and joys beyond all that tongue can tell or ear can hear. He is the mighty and the only potentate, King of kings and Lord of lords, whose might is invincible and whose lordship is beyond comparison. He alone is holy and dwells in holiness, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is glorified. Into this faith I have been baptized. John of Damascus Finally, John the Damascene reads the 1 Tim 6: 15 verse as actually speaking of Christ: which He [The Father] will display at the proper time—He [The Son] who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. While this is a debatable interpretation of the text, I favour this passage referring to the Father. It does not actually contradict the script and can fit the text. This therefore eliminates the objection completely. All this shows us that this attack of the blessed Trinity and the divinity of the Son by using verses without considering them deeply, often backfires. Every argument of the Da’ii can be answered in multiple ways as we have demonstrated here.