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1 Timothy 1:17 vs. “Immortal Invisible”

Reawaken Hymns · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

Passage1 Timothy 1:17 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on 1 Timothy 1 →
Translation shownKJV (public domain) · fixed (the finding depends on this wording)
Presents itself asparaphrase
Categoryadditions / omissions
AlbumHymns of the Father (Reawaken Hymns) · 2021
Words addressed tothe Father
Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful
✗Translation named
✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The title and opening carry the verse's own King James vocabulary, resequenced but not altered, and Smith headed the hymn with the verse itself when he published it
  • Nothing sung of God is unscriptural. Even the disputed "God only wise" is word for word the KJV of Romans 16:27, and the unapproachable light and the Ancient of Days have their own addresses in 1 Timothy 6:16 and Daniel 7:9
  • It is a pure doxology. Every stanza is about God, the singer appears only to praise and to ask, and the requests are for grace and for Christ's glory in the heart
  • This arrangement sings Smith's original fifth and sixth stanzas whole, restoring the closing prayer through Christ that the standard 1906 hymnal revision cut

⚠ Cautions

  • No translation is named on the recording, so the King James wording has to be recognised rather than checked
  • The title's "wise" rests on later Greek copies. The earliest manuscripts read "the only God," most modern translations print that, and a listener comparing hymn to Bible should check the verse before calling either one wrong
  • The confession is not sung. In the letter the doxology erupts one sentence after "of whom I am chief," and a singer who has only the hymn gets the eruption without the mercy that caused it. Verses 12 to 16 are the trigger
  • The Ancient of Days is Daniel 7's title for God, not this verse's phrase. True, but imported

Verse Proof

1 Timothy 1:17

The text in KJV (public domain)

“Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Paul is opening his letter to Timothy, whom he has left in Ephesus to restrain false teachers. In verses 12 to 16 he gives his own history as the argument: he was a blasphemer and a persecutor and obtained mercy, and then the faithful saying, "that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (1:15, KJV). Verse 17 is not the next step of that argument. It is an eruption. Paul interrupts his own paragraph to praise the God who showed the mercy, and verse 18 picks the instruction back up as if nothing had happened. The Greek behind "King eternal" is literally King of the ages, the ruler of every epoch. The doxology is what remembered mercy sounds like mid-sentence.

What the song says, described not quoted

The recording checked here is the official lyric video from Reawaken Hymns, Nathan Drake's modern arrangement of Walter Chalmers Smith's 1867 hymn, from the album Hymns of the Father. It sings four stanzas and adds no chorus and no words of its own. The title is the verse's own adjectives resequenced for meter. The first stanza sets God in light no one can approach, the image of 1 Timothy 6:16 later in the same letter, calls him blessed and glorious by Daniel's title, the Ancient of Days, and ends with a corporate vow of praise to his name. The second stanza describes how God governs: never resting, never hurrying, needing nothing and wasting nothing, with his justice compared to mountains and his goodness to clouds that pour down. The third stanza turns to a direct vocative, addressing God as Father of glory and of light, notes that the angels cover their sight before him, and asks for the grace of unveiled faces and cleansed hearts. The last stanza resolves to render all praise, says that what hides God from us is not distance but the sheer brightness of his light, and closes by asking that the Almighty's glory reach human hearts through Christ. The whole hymn speaks to God, named as Father from the third stanza on, and the singer appears only as part of a praising "we."

Three things moved between the verse and the hymn. First, the order. The King James runs "the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God," and the hymn's title runs the same vocabulary in a different sequence to make a singable line. Nothing is misquoted. "King eternal" is the one phrase not carried; the Ancient of Days stands in for it. Smith printed the verse itself, in the King James wording, as the hymn's heading in 1867, so the source was labelled from the first page it appeared on. Second, the reading. The word "wise" is a King James word here, not a modern one. The earliest Greek manuscripts of 1 Timothy 1:17 read simply "the only God," and the classic commentators, Vincent, Meyer and the Pulpit Commentary among them, judge that "wise" crept into later copies from Romans 16:27, where Paul really does write, in the King James, "To God only wise." That is worth reading twice: the hymn's title phrase is the exact KJV word order of Romans 16:27, the verse the word likely migrated from. Translations split down the fork. The KJV, NKJV and World English Bible keep "wise"; the NIV, ESV, NASB, CSB and Berean Standard Bible print "the only God." Third, the occasion. In the letter the doxology bursts out of a confession, mercy shown to the chief of sinners. The hymn universalizes it into pure attribute-praise and does not sing the confession that set it off. This recording's final stanza, asking that God's glory reach hearts through Christ, is the closest the hymn comes back to the letter's frame.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The hymn recasts the KJV vocabulary of 1 Timothy 1:17 into meter without misquoting it. It was published under the verse as its heading. But it never names a translation. And the title's word "wise" follows the later Greek copies behind the KJV rather than the earliest manuscripts.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

The hymn did not add "wise." The King James carried it there, and the title has been taking a side in a manuscript question ever since.

Why it matters

A singer who loves this hymn and opens an ESV or NIV will not find its fourth word in the verse. The natural conclusion is that the hymn added something, and the conclusion is wrong. The word was in the Greek copies the King James translators worked from, and textual scholars were already setting it aside decades before Smith wrote in 1867. This site has met this family twice before, at Matthew 6:13 and Job 13:15. What is new here is where the variant lives. It is not a closing line a hymnal could trim or a footnote could catch. It is baked into the hymn's title, printed in every index and projected on every screen, so the song takes a side in a manuscript question every time it is named.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a vocabulary for God's transcendence, and it is hard to think of a healthier one: a God too bright to be seen rather than too distant to care, unhurried and unresting, needing nothing, wasting nothing. The tag is God because the count is not close. The singer surfaces only inside a corporate "we" that praises and asks, and both petitions are Godward, unveiled faces and Christ's glory in the heart. Looped, the hymn builds the habit Psalm 1 and Colossians 3:16 are after, a mind that returns to what God is like when nothing is being asked of it.

One pairing makes it better. In the letter this doxology is not a standalone anthem but the sound Paul makes one sentence after calling himself the chief of sinners. Read 1 Timothy 1:15-16 before singing it, and the hymn's fourth stanza, glory reaching hearts through Christ, lands as the verse's own story: mercy first, eruption second.

Helpful comparison

The page is pinned to the King James because the finding depends on the exact wording. If it were not pinned, the site's own translation toggle would show the fork by itself: the World English Bible keeps "God who alone is wise," and the Berean Standard Bible prints "the only God," both from the same Greek verse.

The hymn's editorial history is its own small lesson. Smith published six stanzas in 1867 under the verse as heading. W. Garrett Horder smoothed the meter in 1884, and Percy Dearmer's 1906 English Hymnal cut and fused the last two stanzas into the four-stanza version most hymnals carry, dropping the closing prayer through Christ. The hymnologist Erik Routley observed that the hymn "never now appears as its author wrote it." This recording quietly reverses part of that: it sings stanzas one, two, five and six of Smith's original, so the Christ ending is back, at the cost of the two middle stanzas on God's giving of life and his changelessness.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Mark 10” Streetlights Mark 10:23-27 Play it freely. This is Mark 10 itself, read word for word in a named translation. The line about all things being possible arrives as the answer to a question about being saved.

✓ The whole chapter, in order, so verse 27 arrives after the rich man’s scene and after the disciples ask who can be saved, instead of standing on its own

⚠ “Word-for-word” here describes the reading, not the translation theory. Streetlights uses it for what is read. Tyndale uses the same phrase for a different thing

 ✓ VERIFIED “Citizens Of Heaven (Philippians 3:20-21)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Philippians 3:20-21 Sing it. It is Philippians 3:20-21 whole and in order, in the ESV, and the publisher's free chord chart names that version on the same page as the words.

✓ Both verses whole and in order. The only words that repeat are words the passage already gave, so nothing new gets memorized as scripture

⚠ The YouTube upload names the reference but not the version. The ESV credit sits on the chord chart, the album page and the song list, so a viewer has to go looking

 ✓ VERIFIED “Breathed Out By God (2 Timothy 3:16-17)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Timothy 3:16-17 Sing it. It is 2 Timothy 3:16-17 whole, in the ESV, and the chord chart names not just the version but the edition, so anyone can check the words against the exact text.

✓ Both verses whole and in order, in the ESV's wording, with every repeated line drawn from the passage itself

✓ no cautions: this is the standard

More songs like this

~ FAITHFUL “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” Reawaken Hymns 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 Sing it. The stanza that taunts death and the grave is Paul's own pair of questions, kept in the King James wording and reshaped only for meter. Nothing is added that the passage does not carry.

✓ The taunt stanza keeps both of Paul's questions whole: death asked about its sting, the grave asked about its victory, nothing softened

⚠ No translation is named. The grave-address tracks the King James specifically, so a singer checking the stanza against most modern Bibles will find both questions put to death and no grave addressed at all. The hymn did not err; its Bible was the KJV

 ✎ DEPARTS “Take Captive Every Thought (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 You can sing it. It is 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 in the NIV's words. But the label says ESV. Check it against an NIV, and know one printed word is not the NIV's either.

✓ Verses 3, 4 and 5 all arrive, in order, in the NIV's wording. No line is added, and none is explained or expanded.

⚠ The label names the ESV in four places. The words are the NIV's. Check the song against an NIV, not against the version the label sends you to.

 ✎ DEPARTS “Every Word of God (Proverbs 30:5)” Seeds Kids Worship (Seeds Family Worship) Proverbs 30:5 Sing it. It is Proverbs 30:5, and the ESV it names is the version being sung. One word is swapped, all for those, and both words point at the same group.

✓ Both halves of the verse are sung, in the order Proverbs 30:5 gives them. The song adds no sentence of its own.

⚠ One word is not the ESV's. In the shield line the song sings all, where the ESV at Proverbs 30:5 has those. Both words point at the same group.

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