Our God is Immortal (1 Tim. 1:17)

Our Awesome God
Is Immortal

INTRODUCTION:
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who lived in the late ninetieth century. He is associated with a statement that he made a few times in his books: “God is Dead.” He made the statement three times in the book The Gay Science and once in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Because of the Enlightenment period and the teaching of evolution that made the “God-hypothesis” unnecessary, Nietzsche said that “belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.” And, everything built on that faith, propped up by it and grown into it was bound to collapse, including the whole European morality.

The Greek word for “immortal” is athanasia which means literally “no death.” It means “imperishable” or “incorruptible.”

The New Testament teaches that when Christians get to heaven, our physical life will have given way to our spiritual life. And in 2 Corinthians 5:4, Paul says, “what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.”

When the Bible teaches that God is “immortal,” it means that He is Life. Everything that God created has life by His grace, but God is inherently life.

GOD IS IMMORTAL:
Paul writes a word of praise to God: “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Tim. 1:17). Later in the same letter, he writes: God “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (6:16).

The fundamental problem with idolatry - even the type of idolatry we practice in the USA when we put anything and everything in front of God and His worship - is that we are “exchanging the glory of the incorruptible [immortal] God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures” (Rom. 1:23).

GOD IS THE GIVER OF IMMORTALITY:
We are all very familiar with the words of John 3:16 - “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Only God can give eternal life because only He has eternal life.

Again, in John 5:24, Jesus states: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.” “Eternal life” here is set in contrast to “death.” God gives eternal life. If someone does not have that eternal life which only God can give, then he or she will experience eternal death, eternal separation from the One who gives immortality.

The Bible teaches that God only gives immortality to human beings; other living things on earth (plants and animals) do not have immortality. However, because they have life, then they have life only from God. He is the only one who Is life; He is the only one who can give life.

WE MUST SEEK IMMORTALITY:
In Romans, Paul writes: “In the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, He will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation” (Rom. 2:5–8.

So here we see that we need to seek for: glory, honor, and immortality and life as if it is important to us. And God will give us eternal life. Notice also that this “seeking” is set in contrast with “not obeying the truth.” So “seeking immorality” is another way of saying “obeying the truth.” When we do that, God will give us immortality.

Paul wrote in that God’s “grace was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, and has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:9-10). This gospel which we have to believe and obey in order to be saved shares the same nature of Jehovah God because it is His words out of His mouth. Listen to the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1:23: “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. For, “All flesh is like grass, And all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, And the flower falls off, But the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the word which was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:22-25).

When we obey the Gospel, then, when we seek the “glory of God, honor and immortality,” and God gives us eternal life, then our physical bodies will be swallowed up by immortality. Listen to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:50-54:

Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.

We are also told that the reward for staying faithful to Christ, which we will receive in heaven, is a crown that is immortal or incorruptible: 1 Cor. 9:25. And, our inheritance in heaven will be “incorruptible” (1 Peter 1:4).

WE SHOULD PRAISE GOD FOR HIS IMMORTALITY:
As in all His attributes, we ought to praise God that He is “undying.” He is “immortal.” He is “incorruptible.” As Paul told the people in Athens, Greece, “in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28) and as he wrote in Colossians 1:17: “in Him all things hold together.” And we praise God because He will give us an incorruptible body one day: Phil. 3:20-21:

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”

Take home message: Let’s live God’s incorruptible message so that He will give us an incorruptible body as a part of our incorruptible inheritance.