1 Timothy 6:16 – Serving Time's Sovereign

13 I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, 14 that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, 15 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality…

"Depend upon it," focuses Spurgeon in Morning and Evening. "Where life begins, sorrow begins." But his plaintive proclamation quickly turns to a plea for a better prism through which to view his predicament. "But if God be my supreme delight and only object, To me 'tis equal whether love ordain my life or death-appoint me ease or pain."

Spurgeon's realization that since Christ is in control of his ultimate life-and-death disposition lesser crises are not really crises is a two-person job in 1 Timothy 6:16. With the picture of Christ before Pilate still in Timothy's memory, Paul reminds Timothy that Christ alone has immortality. It's His to enjoy now that he has beaten death.  Putting Timothy's upcoming Ephesus confrontations in perspective, immortality is also Christ's alone to give out. Time, as Hillsong rejoices in "Here Now" runs its race within His hand.

The sweetness of eternity with Him and His is past calculating, but the tactical advantages of remembering that time and eternity are Christ's to manage are considerable. Much to the demon's chagrin in CS Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, humans don't have long to face temptation. Once we realize that, he laments, temptations are much less powerful.

Since we begin with a child's wonder if not a full awareness of God's centrality to it and only gradually give this away, Screwtape advises urgently, "70 years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unravelling their souls from Heaven and building up a firm attachment to the earth."

The satisfactory moments in our week, then, are not miscast at the closest approximation we get to true meaning. Our aggravation, or even our suffering, can serve to remind us that it's hold and duration is limited and specifically measured out by Christ with 1 Timothy 6:16 precision.  Neither this Earth's pleasures nor pains are but a dot on Christ's glory which shines resplendent forever more. His alone is immortality.

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