Immortal Invisible God Only Wise
Acclaimed Scottish pastor and academic Dr. Walter Smith used to write hymns as a hobby. How blessed we are to have his powerful 1867 hymn based on 1 Timothy 1:17, a song which has touched many lives with its bold proclamation of God's glory and light.
It's time for another Friday Classic Hymn, and would you believe I've done 63 videos already on all these great old hymns? If you love the old hymns or if you're trying to discover them, I really hope you'll go back and watch a bunch of those videos where I look at the history of the hymn and take a deep dive into the lyrics before singing it.
Today we are doing another one that I didn't know. I'm getting to the point where people are saying they can't believe I didn't know this one. This song, "Immortal Invisible God Only Wise," is one that everybody seems to know, but I've never sung this before in my life. I had to look it up on YouTube last week and start to get familiar with it. I really love it. It's pretty deep, the words are quite formal and quite grandiose, but very powerful stuff.
What about you? Do you know this one? I always ask you this, but if you have a story behind the song or a story of this song in your own life—or a memory of singing it at a particular place, or if the song means something to you—please share that below in the comments. I love to read your stories, and we're all richer for hearing your history of these hymns as well.
If you haven't subscribed to the channel, may I ask you to do that? Like the video and maybe put a comment below. These things will help the channel to grow. If YouTube sees a lot of engagement with the video, it throws the video out to more people, which I'd love to see. These videos reach more people, so thank you for doing that. Let's get into the song as I tell you the history behind it.
The Story Behind "Immortal Invisible God Only Wise"
The author of this hymn is Walter Chalmers Smith, born in Aberdeen, Scotland. Smith was ordained into the Free Church of Scotland in 1850 at the age of 26. He spent years as a minister in the Free Church and was well respected, rose up through the ranks, and eventually became the moderator, which was the highest position in the church.
He was a respected scholar and preacher, but he was a little bit on the liberal side—not liberal in the way that we would understand the word today, but for his time he apparently published a couple of things that were banned by his church because they were a little bit more liberal than the church was used to at the time. He was still respected and loved as a minister of this church.
According to Frank Colquhoun's book Sing to the Lord, Smith wrote his hymns as a retreat from his hard labours, but his hymns weren't altogether too famous or well-received. This is the only one that seemed to get anywhere, and it lives on today because it's so well-loved for the depth that it portrays in the words.
The song lives on in popularity, especially in England. Queen Elizabeth actually chose this as one of the hymns to be played at the service that was given at her 60th birthday at Windsor Castle. I was speaking to someone yesterday, telling them that I was going to do the song, and they said, "Oh, we sang this song often at school. We all knew this one by the end of the year. We were belting it out."
Here it is, all these years later, and the song of Smith's still has a place in our lives.
What Do the Lyrics of "Immortal Invisible God Only Wise" Mean?
Verse 1: "Immortal, invisible, God only wise"
The first verse begins with the words "Immortal, invisible, God only wise," which is a slight paraphrase of 1 Timothy 1:17, which says, "Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever." He just flipped some of those words around so that his rhyme would work, but it's directly out of Scripture.
God who is immortal—unlike we who are created and will die in the flesh—He's invisible. As Paul said in that verse, He's not seen in our world in His person. Of course, we see His fingerprints everywhere. We see signs of Him, and of course in Jesus we saw Him in person, but He's not visible as He might be. Of course, we know that the sky declares the glory of God, and creation declares the glory of God. There are so many ways in which we can see Him.
"God only wise"—only wise God. None is as wise as Him. Solomon in all his wisdom is not nearly as wise as God Himself. Of course, Paul was writing in a time where there were lots of false gods in the religions of the people around him, so maybe this was him saying, "Well, this is the only God who has any wisdom. He's the only real God, the one true God, and He alone is wise."
"In light inaccessible hid from our eyes"—in the second line we see a theme that repeats all throughout this hymn, which is the theme of light. God is so light that He's hidden from our eyes, inaccessible, because His light in all its splendour would actually blind us—sort of like the sun. You can't look directly at the sun, but it lights everything up. God is kind of shielded from us, but it is His light that makes everything what it is.
"Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days." Of course, that phrase comes from Daniel 7, where Daniel sees one like the Son of Man—Jesus—going on the clouds to the Ancient of Days, to God the Father. That's just a picture of God in His glory and His splendour.
"Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise." Lovely verse about the grand splendour of God and why we worship Him—because He is so great.
Verse 2: "Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light"
"Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light"—what a good bunch of words there. Unresting, unhasting—so He's not sitting around doing nothing, He's at work, but He's not in haste. He's not running Himself ragged. He is perfectly at rest as He works. That's an amazing thing about God.
"Silent as light"—there again is the word light. Silent, but He speaks, doesn't He? He speaks in many ways, but it's not as if He's booming all the time. He is quiet and gentle but still present.
"Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might." Again, a lovely little contrast there—doesn't need anything, doesn't waste anything, unlike humans. He rules in might. He rules over the world in might and power.
"Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above." God is both justice—like mountains soaring, justice. His justice is perfect and huge and present. He's a just God, but He is also full of goodness and love.
"Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love." Fountains of goodness and love. The clouds in the sky are pictures of His fountains of goodness and love.
This is a great picture of God. We perhaps don't sing of His justice enough anymore—maybe you would disagree—but I think we need to have both His justice and His love in our hymns.
Verse 3: "To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small"
"To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small; In all life Thou livest, the true life of all." That's beautifully put. God gives life to all, great and small, and He lives and gives life. In other words, true life is God living within all. God living within someone gives them true life—not just the ability to breathe, but a quality of life.
Remember, Jesus said, "I've come to give you life and life in abundance," or "life to the full," as the translations say. He's the one who gives life but then gives us the great quality of life that only He can give.
"We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree." That's a common picture in Scripture of people of God flourishing like trees. If you look at Psalm 1, it's a great example: the person of God is like a tree planted by streams of water that flourishes, that gives forth its fruit in season. Those who have God living within them flourish and blossom.
"And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee." The last line says that we also wither and perish, which is true. Though we flourish spiritually and blossom, of course our lives come to an end physically. But God Himself doesn't die. Nothing changes Him. Even though we go through our seasons, God is the same the whole time. Lovely words to sing.
Verses 4 and 5: "Great Father of glory, pure Father of light"
Verses 4 and 5 are normally mixed, so in most hymnals today you'll find a mix of verse 4 and 5, but I want to show you them both in their fullness here.
Verse 4 says, "Great Father of glory, pure Father of light." Once again, light—a theme that he loved obviously. He's the Father of glory, so He is worthy of praise and wonderful and amazing. He's the pure Father of light, and so we see this picture of His perfection and His wonder.
"Thine angels adore Thee, all veiling their sight." The angels worshipping but veiling their sight because His glory would probably be too great to look directly upon.
"Of all Thy rich graces this grace, Lord, impart: Take the veil from our faces, the vile from our hearts." Beautiful. He says, "You've got so many graces to give, Lord, but impart this grace we pray. Take the veil from our faces," so he's talking about wanting to see more of God's glory.
The Bible talks about how we've got this veil over our eyes until He lifts the veil. Once the veil is lifted, we can see His glory, and that's a picture of salvation—is God lifting the veil from our eyes. He's asking here, "Lift the veil from our eyes and the vile from our heart," so lift the sins off of us. Another picture of what happens in salvation is God removes the vile and the sinful things from our hearts, makes us new. We become born again and new creatures. What a beautiful verse.
The last verse, verse 5: "All laud we would render; O help us to see." ("Render" means praise—we don't use that word anymore, but it means praise.)
"'Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee." Again, that theme of the light of God which hides Him. He's so bright that the light shines, but we can hardly even look at it. We want to praise Him, He says, but He says, "Oh Lord, help us to see. We want to see more of You."
"And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart, Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart." I love that line. Lord, since we can't look on You directly because Your light is so bright, let the Christ story—let us look at Jesus. In His story—His birth, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, His coming again in judgement and glory—let it all impart Christ into our hearts. Let us have a stronger view and understanding of Your glory through Jesus.
Conclusion
That is a wonderful hymn. What words have stood out for you today? Was something there really meaningful for you in one of these verses? Please share that below. Maybe we should sing this more. I'm trying to think if this would work at our church, if we had to sing it, if people would know it. It might be worth doing because it's powerful stuff.
Before we close, just a big thank you to those who donate towards my ministry. Many of you have been so kind in giving me a donation on PayPal or subscribing to my Patreon, where I send out my extra daily devotions and all of that. Thank you for those who are able to do that. It really keeps me going. Please remember this is always free, and I hope that you will share it and just enjoy these songs week after week.
References
Frank Colquhoun. Sing to the Lord: A Fresh Look at Great Hymns on Praise. 1988. Hodder & Stoughton: London
Ian Bradley. The Penguin Book of Hymns. 1989. Penguin Group: London
