1 Timothy 6:16 — God alone has immortality

“… who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human has seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal might. Amen.”

1 Timothy 6:16

Context: The doxology at the close of the Pastoral Epistles

1 Timothy 6:11-16 is the closing exhortation to Timothy and culminates in a solemn hymnic doxology (vv. 15-16) that ranks among the densest doxologies of the New Testament. Six predicates are exclusively ascribed to God: he is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, the one who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no human has seen or can see, to whom belong honour and eternal might. The verse is therefore no incidental liturgical clause, but a precise theological-anthropological statement in its most solemn form: immortality is God’s essential possession, not man’s.

The doxology functions structurally like the confession of 1 Tim 1:17 (“to the King of ages, the immortal, invisible, the only God”). Both passages predicate of God exclusive properties: aphtharsia in 1:17 and athanasia in 6:16. Both designate what distinguishes God from all creatures. The hymnic usage in 1 Tim 1:17 and 6:16 is ancient-Christian and monotheistic, drawing on Hellenistic-Jewish models (e.g. 2 Macc 1:24-25; Sir 18:1-7; Philo, De decalogo).

The literary frame is the exhortation to Timothy, to “keep the commandment unstained until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 14). The “appearing of Christ” is the eschatological horizon: on his day the Living and Blessed One — God — will bring about the appearing of Christ. The verse is thus not statically speculative but eschatologically directed: God is the immortal Lord of history who, through Christ, will bring about the resurrection and with it the gifted immortality of believers (2 Tim 1:10).

The verse also sits at the intersection of the Hellenistic environment. Philo’s late-Jewish writings and the Book of Wisdom (Wis 2:23; 3:4) speak of an immortality promised to humanity. Paul places a pointed counter-accent: immortality is not man’s property but God’s — and only a gift unlocked in Christ. This Pauline line becomes, in the later Polish-Brethren Socinianism, the very groundline of its anthropology.

Socinian core thesis: Immortality is God’s property, not man’s nature

The central Socinian thesis on 1 Tim 6:16 runs: mónos really means alone. If Paul says that God alone has immortality, then no other being has it of itself. This excludes the human being — even the one made in the image of God — from any natural possession of immortality. Whatever incorruptible life the human can receive comes through Christ — as a gift, not as the activation of an innate property (2 Tim 1:10: “Christ has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”).

This reading is the hermeneutic key to the whole of Socinian anthropology. It stands in direct opposition to the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition that, by way of Augustine, Anselm, and most of the Reformers, has entered into Christian doctrine. Plato teaches in the Phaedo that the soul is simple, indivisible, and therefore by nature immortal. This philosophical thesis was wedded to the Christian hope of resurrection to produce a double-nature anthropology (mortal body + immortal soul, separated at death, reunited on the last day). 1 Tim 6:16 stands athwart this construction.

The Racovian Catechism, the theological summa of Polish-Brethren Socinianism, draws the anthropological consequence with full clarity. Already in its introductory section on the knowledge of salvation it declares that man was “created mortal from the beginning.” This is grounded by a fivefold series: man’s earthly constitution, his need of food, his being made for procreation, the meaning of the Tree of Life, and the simple bodily vulnerability of Adam. Every single point implies that man is constitutively mortal. Only this anthropology makes 1 Tim 6:16 truly intelligible — the verse is not an isolated doxology but a confession of the entire biblical view of man.

The soteriological point follows immediately: salvation is not the awakening of a slumbering, naturally immortal soul, but the reception of a real gift — immortality itself. Christ is the first human to whom this gift has been granted in inseparable fashion (Rom 6:9; Rev 1:18); believers receive it through him on the day of resurrection (1 Cor 15:53-54: “this mortal must put on immortality”, endysásthai athanasían). The Greek expression endysásthai (“to put on”) shows even linguistically: immortality is a garment, not skin; gift, not nature.

Core statement

Exegesis: key terms and word field

Four Greek expressions decide the linguistic-philological interpretation of 1 Tim 6:16:

mónos — “alone, only” as an exclusive adverb

The Greek mónos is unambiguously exclusive in Koine. It does not mean “chiefly” or “in a special way”, but: nothing and no one other than what is named. Paul uses the word in precisely this sense at parallel places: in 1 Tim 1:17 (“to the only wise God”, monôi sopho theo) and in Rom 16:27 (likewise). The usage is firmly anchored in Hellenistic-Jewish doxology (cf. John 5:44; 17:3; Jude 25): the adverb serves the monotheistic separation of God from all that is created.

With this, 1 Tim 6:16 is logically unambiguous. “X alone has Y” is a universal negation of all other bearers of Y. Whoever says “only Socrates is just” thereby says that all others are not just. Whoever says “God alone has immortality” thereby says that no other being has immortality. This is not a hermeneutical narrowing, but elementary logic. The Racovian Catechism cites the verse in exactly this reading in order to reject the Platonic doctrine of soul-immortality as unbiblical.

échôn — “having, possessing” as an essential predicate

The present participle échôn denotes lasting, abiding possession. It is not a punctual having, but an enduring essential property. Theologically important: immortality in the hymnic usage of doxology is not an ascribed quality but a predicate of Godhood itself. God is immortality; it belongs to him as omnipotence or wisdom does. What it is not: a divisible substance which could somehow be transferred to man without the distinction between Creator and creature collapsing.

When man receives immortality, it is not by the transfer of a piece of divine nature, but through eschatological salvation: by the resurrection on the last day (1 Cor 15:42-54). What man then has is derived, gift-dependent immortality — not God’s own essential good.

athanasía — “immortality” in Pauline usage

The noun athanasía occurs in the New Testament only three times: in 1 Cor 15:53 and 15:54 (in the resurrection context) and in 1 Tim 6:16. In all three cases the use is pointed: in 1 Cor 15 as that which the resurrected put on (endysásthai); in 1 Tim 6 as that which God alone has. The Pauline evidence is consistent: athanasía is nothing that man possesses by nature; it is gift (1 Cor 15) or God’s essential possession (1 Tim 6). Paul knows no usage that ascribes a natural athanasía to man.

The related noun aphtharsia (“incorruptibility”) is used in the same word field: in Rom 2:7 as that which humans “seek” (zêtousin) — not possess. In 2 Tim 1:10 as that which Christ “brought to light” (phôtisas). Here too: incorruptibility is goal, seeking, receiving — never original stock. For the Socinian view this dovetails seamlessly with the statement of 1 Tim 6:16: what God alone has, man can only receive as a gift.

phôs aprositon — “unapproachable light”

The second half of the verse specifies the ontological distance: God dwells in a phôs aprositon — a light to which one cannot draw near. The adjective aprósitos is a hapax legomenon in the NT and stems from Hellenistic theophany language (cf. Exod 24:17; 1 Kgs 8:11; Hab 3:4). It designates the unapproachable holiness of God which no creature can reach of itself.

Important for the anthropological reading: the light is unapproachable. If God dwells in such light, then his immortality belongs to this unapproachable sphere — it is not a property shared with creatures or partially transferred. Only through Christ, who “brought life and immortality to light” (2 Tim 1:10), is access to immortality opened for believers — yet not as the activation of their own nature, but as the reception of an alien gift.

Comparison of the readings

Reference to Fausto Sozzini and the Racovian Catechism

The Racovian Catechism (1605, composed in the tradition of Fausto Sozzini and his immediate disciples) cites 1 Tim 6:15-16 expressly in its section on “the nature of God” as the locus classicus of divine uniqueness. To the question in what sense Scripture calls God “the only Sovereign and Lord” (1 Tim 6:15), the catechism answers:

“For this very reason, that he alone has dominion of himself and is altogether head, while all others depend upon him alone and owe their dominion to his goodness; in which sense he is also called alone wise, alone immortal, and no one is good except that One.”

Racovian Catechism, section “The Nature of God” / “On God’s Existence and Unity” (commentary on 1 Tim 6:15-16)

This passage is, on the Socinian reading, the key to the interpretation of 1 Tim 6:16. The Racovian Catechism draws a twofold consequence: first, God alone is Sovereign because he is “of himself” (a se) and all others “owe their dominion to his goodness” (are gift-dependent); second, the same usage holds for his other predicates: “alone wise, alone immortal”. The parallel construction is not accidental — it shows that mónos is to be understood consistently and exclusively throughout the doxology. If no one “but that One” is good (cf. Mark 10:18), then no one besides God is immortal.

In the next section on “the eternity of God”, the catechism specifies what this immortality of God means in content, and refers directly to 1 Tim 1:17 as a parallel to our passage:

“That he has no beginning and no end, that is, that he always has been and always will be, in such a way that he cannot fail to be and live perpetually. Whence he is also called in the Holy Scriptures incorruptible and immortal.”

Racovian Catechism, section “The Eternity of God” (with reference to 1 Tim 1:17)

Noteworthy: the catechism defines God’s immortality as necessary eternity (he “cannot fail to be and live perpetually”). That is immortality in the strict ontological sense: an essential feature that cannot be cancelled. It is in precisely this sense that immortality is proper to God alone. Man possesses no such necessary eternity; his being depends on God’s sustaining; death is constitutively possible for him.

The anthropological consequence is drawn in the section on “the mortality of man.” To the question why man is subject to death, the catechism answers with all desirable precision:

“For a twofold reason. The first is, that man was created mortal from the beginning, that is, as one who not only could die by his nature, but who, if left to his nature, must inevitably die, although he could be constantly preserved in life by divine grace.”

Racovian Catechism, section “The Mortality of Man” (answer to the question on death)

Here the whole of Socinian anthropology is condensed into a single sentence. Man is mortal from the beginning. His nature is so constituted that without divine grace he must inevitably die. This is the anthropological reading that immediately explains 1 Tim 6:16: if God alone has immortality, then man does not — neither before the fall nor after it, neither as a whole person nor as an immaterial soul.

The traditional objection that man was “created for immortality” (Wis 2:23) is answered with a philological precision that summarises Socinian hermeneutics in classical form:

“It is one thing to say that man was created for immortality, and quite another to say that he was created immortal: the former can only indicate the end for which man was created; the latter, however, points to his natural constitution. Indeed, if man was created to the end that he should finally become immortal, how could he have been created immortal?”

Fausto Sozzini / Racovian Catechism, section “The Mortality of Man” (answer to Wis 2:23)

This distinction — created for immortality vs. created immortal — is the hermeneutic key of the entire Socinian anthropology. At the same time it resolves the apparent tension between the biblical destination of man (to eternal life) and his factual constitution (mortal). Man is created toward immortality, but not out of immortality. Immortality is goal and promise, not original stock. That is precisely what 1 Tim 6:16 says: God alone has it; man receives it through Christ (2 Tim 1:10), or forfeits it (Rom 2:7-8).

Overview of Sozzini’s books

Logical arguments

From 1 Tim 6:16 the following logical and linguistic-philological arguments arise against the doctrine of a naturally immortal soul:

1. Argument from the exclusive adverb mónos. The Greek mónos is unambiguously and unmistakably exclusive. When Paul says God has alone immortality, then no other being possesses it of itself. This is not hermeneutic narrowing but the elementary logic of universal statements. A softened reading (“God has it in a special way”) finds no support in Pauline usage.
2. Argument from the parallel 1 Tim 1:17. Paul predicates of God with the same exclusivity also “incorruptible, invisible, the only God.” Both doxologies use mónos in the same sense. The exclusive-monotheistic language of doxology is consistent: what is ascribed to God is denied of all creatures.
3. Argument from 2 Timothy 1:10. Christ has “brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” If Christ brings immortality to light, then it was not naturally there already. It is revelation and gift, not a universal human property.
4. Argument from 1 Corinthians 15:53-54. “This mortal must put on immortality.” The Greek endysásthai athanasían already shows linguistically: immortality is a garment that is put on; it is not innate. What must be put on was not previously possessed.
5. Argument from Romans 2:7. Paul says: humans “seek incorruption” (aphtharsian zêtousin). Whoever seeks does not yet have. Whoever must seek immortality does not possess it by nature. With this, the Platonic thesis of a naturally immortal soul is directly excluded by Paul.
6. Argument from Adam’s natural mortality (Racovian Catechism). Adam was mortal — formed from earth, in need of food, made for procreation, pierceable and combustible. An immortal soul in such a body would be anthropologically absurd. The whole man is mortal from the beginning; immortality is nowhere built into his constitution.
7. Argument from Ezekiel 18:4, 20. “Behold, all souls are mine… the soul that sins shall die” (ha-náphesch ha-chotét hi tamut). The prophetic text directly says that the náphesch can die. With this, the Hebrew anthropology in which Paul stands is set against the Platonic doctrine of the soul.
8. Argument from Genesis 2:7. Man becomes a living náphesch because God breathes breath into him. The soul is not a pre-given indestructible element but the principle of life that arises from God’s breath. It is from the beginning gift-dependent, not autonomous.
9. Argument from Matthew 10:28. Jesus himself says that God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. What can be destroyed is not naturally indestructible. The Platonic premise of an indestructible soul is immediately rejected by this saying of Jesus. Cf. Matthew 10:28.
10. Argument from the history of Greek import. The naturally immortal soul is a Platonic theorem (Plato, Phaedo, ca. 380 BC). It enters Church doctrine only through Hellenistic-Christian theology (Justin, Clement, Origen, Augustine). The New Testament itself neither knows nor requires it. 1 Tim 6:16 unintentionally makes plain the breach between Platonic anthropology and biblical soteriology.

Biblical cross-references

The following passages are essential for the right understanding of 1 Tim 6:16 and weave the Socinian anthropology into a consistent picture:

1 Timothy 1:17 — to the only God, the incorruptible

“To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” The parallel doxology predicates of God exclusively aphthartôi (incorruptible) and monôi theo (only God). The exclusive adverb mónos is used consistently in both doxologies (1:17 and 6:16). The line of the Pastoral Epistles is unambiguous: what God alone is, no one else is.

2 Timothy 1:10 — Christ brought immortality to light

“… and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.” The Pauline line is consistent: immortality is not already there by nature, but is “brought to light” through Christ (phôtisas). It is an eschatological gift, not a universal natural endowment.

1 Corinthians 15:53-54 — this mortal must put on immortality

“For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” The Greek endysásthai athanasían is a central Socinian proof-text: immortality is put on like a garment — it is not innate. The whole resurrection chapter presupposes the natural mortality of man and promises eschatological transformation into immortality.

Romans 2:7 — seeking incorruption

“To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, he will give eternal life.” Humans seek incorruption; they do not have it. The Pauline seeking presupposes the lack. With this, the Platonic premise of a naturally immortal soul is directly rejected: one does not seek what one already has.

Genesis 2:7 — man became a living soul

“Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul.” The náphesch is not a pre-given autonomous element but the result of dust plus God’s breath. It is constitutively dependent and thus from the beginning not by nature indestructible.

Ezekiel 18:4, 20 — the soul that sins shall die

“Behold, all souls are mine… the soul that sins shall die.” The prophetic sentence ha-náphesch ha-chotét hi tamut directly says that the soul (náphesch) can die. The Hebrew confession is incompatible with the Platonic doctrine of an indestructible soul. Cf. Ezekiel 18:4.

Ecclesiastes 9:5 — the dead know nothing

“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.” Ecclesiastes summarises the Hebrew view of death as the ceasing of consciousness. If death cancels consciousness, then there is no surviving, naturally immortal soul. Cf. Ecclesiastes 9:5.

Psalm 146:4 — on that day all his plans perish

“When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” Classical Hebrew anthropology: no conscious intermediate state of the soul, but a return to the earth, with the expectation of resurrection at the end. Cf. Psalm 146:4.

Romans 6:23 — wages of sin, gift of God

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Paul contrasts death and eternal life as the eschatological poles — and eternal life is explicitly gift, not an inborn right. Cf. Romans 6:23.

Objections and Socinian replies

Objection 1: “The verse only praises God’s uniqueness — no statement about man follows from it.”

Socinian reply: yet it does — linguistically the inference is compelling. The adverb mónos is, in Koine and especially in Pauline usage, unambiguously exclusive (cf. 1 Tim 1:17; Rom 16:27; John 5:44; 17:3; Jude 25). When a sentence says “X alone has Y”, then by the elementary logic of universal statements it follows that no other being possesses Y. That is no hermeneutical leap, but a direct consequence.

Moreover, doxology is not detached from doctrine. Paul deliberately portrays God in this monotheistic-exclusive language because it bears the theological ground line of his message: the distinction between Creator and creature. This distinction is broken when one grants to man a naturally immortal soul that shares directly in one of God’s essential properties. The doxology is not bundling liturgy but condensed doctrine — precisely for this reason the Racovian Catechism cites it.

Finally: 1 Tim 6:16 does not stand in isolation. It fits seamlessly into the Pauline line of Rom 2:7 (humans seek incorruption) and 1 Cor 15:53-54 (they put on immortality) and 2 Tim 1:10 (Christ brought immortality to light). From the Pauline texts a coherent anthropology emerges: man has no natural immortality; it is goal, search, and gift.

Objection 2: “Humans are God’s image-bearers — therefore they carry divine immortality in themselves.”

Socinian reply: the imago Dei, in the context of Genesis 1-2, refers to dominion and relational capacity — not to essential equality with God. Gen 1:26 itself specifies the image as a commission of dominion: “and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens…” The Racovian Catechism states this expressly: “The image of God does not signify immortality. This is evident from the fact that Scripture, at the time when man was already subject to death, still recognises this image in man (Gen 9:6; Jas 3:9).” If the image were immortality, the post-fall mortal man would no longer be God’s image — which Scripture itself denies.

As for Wis 2:23, the Racovian Catechism answers with two points. First, the book is apocryphal and not a sure ground of doctrine. Second (and more decisively), Wis 2:23 actually says “for incorruption” (epí aphtharsíai) created — not “created incorruptible.” The preposition epí denotes goal and destination, not original stock. The Racovian Catechism writes: “It is one thing to say that man was created for immortality, and quite another to say that he was created immortal.” Precisely this distinction is the hermeneutic point of Socinian anthropology.

The reference to Rom 5:12 (“death came into the world through sin”) also fails to carry. The Racovian Catechism specifies: Paul there speaks not of the mortality of human nature, but of eternal death as punishment. Mortality (natural perishability) and eternal death (eschatological perdition) are to be distinguished. Adam was mortal from the beginning; eternal death as punishment is the consequence of his transgression. The two aspects are not identical.

Objection 3: “If the soul is mortal, the Christian hope is meaningless.”

Socinian reply: on the contrary — the Christian hope of salvation does not rest on a naturally immortal soul, but on the resurrection of the dead by God’s power. Paul argues expressly in 1 Cor 15: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” The ground of the Christian hope is God’s act of raising the dead — not the natural endowment of man. Platonic doctrine has shifted Christian hope away from resurrection onto the post-mortem soul — that is a displacement of the centre, not a protection of the hope.

The Racovian Catechism formulates this expressly, when it comments on the significance of Christ’s resurrection for our immortality: “… that we too, although we are mortal and shall die, shall nevertheless in his own time be raised from the dead and enter into the fellowship of the very same immortality of which he himself has already become partaker, if we have followed in his footsteps.” The hope is eschatologically realistic, not naturphilosophical.

Furthermore: a naturally immortal soul makes the resurrection of the body in effect redundant. If the soul already lives eternally, the bodily resurrection at the last day would be only an anthropological appendix. In fact, however, resurrection is, throughout the whole apostolic preaching, the actual saving event that carries everything (Acts 4:2; 17:18, 32; 23:6; 24:21; 26:23). Socinian anthropology has the merit of restoring the biblical centrality of resurrection.

Objection 4: “If man ceases in death, there is no one left who could rise.”

Socinian reply: this objection presupposes a philosophical premise that Scripture does not share — namely, that personal identity can be preserved only through a continuing immaterial substance. Scripture knows a different premise: personal identity is borne by God’s remembrance and act of raising. When God preserves the memory of a person (Eccl 12:7: “the dust returns to the earth, and the spirit to God”) and raises him at the last day, the personal continuity is divinely grounded, not substance-grounded.

Images such as sleep (1 Thess 4:13-15: “those who have fallen asleep in Christ”; John 11:11-14: Lazarus “sleeps”) are biblically tailored precisely to this situation: between death and resurrection man is as one sleeping — without active consciousness, yet not erased from God’s memory. The resurrection at the last day is the awakening, not a new beginning. Personal identity is not ontologically secured by an immortal soul, but theologically by God’s faithful remembrance.

One must also ask whether the premise is even philosophically strong. Even in the traditional doctrine, the raising of the body by God’s omnipotence is what is constitutive — not the continuance of an immaterial substance. If God can raise the body from the dust (1 Cor 15), he can also raise the whole man from the sleep of death without any intermediate continuity of soul being necessary. The Platonic premise is here theologically unnecessary.

Objection 5: “But Jesus says to the thief: ‘Today you will be with me in paradise’ — this presupposes post-mortem consciousness.”

Socinian reply: Luke 23:43 is linguistically ambiguous. Greek punctuation is not fixed in the original; one may read: “Truly I say to you today: you will be with me in paradise” (the “today” belongs to the speech-act, not to the promise). This reading is exegetically tenable and compatible with Socinian anthropology. Furthermore: Christ himself says on Easter day to Mary: “I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17). He was therefore on the day of the crucifixion precisely not “in paradise with God”, but in the grave. The thief therefore cannot on the same day have been “in paradise with Christ” if Christ himself was not.

As to 2 Cor 5:8 and Phil 1:23: both passages express Paul’s longing for union with Christ. They do not however exclude that this union occurs only at the resurrection — subjectively experienced as the immediate sequel of death, since the sleep of death itself is without sense of time. Whoever falls asleep in death and awakes on the last day experiences it subjectively as immediately consequent. That is precisely what Paul describes, without ontologically teaching an immaterial intermediate stage.

Finally: Paul himself places his own hope precisely on the resurrection, not on a post-mortem state of soul. In 2 Tim 4:8 he says he expects the crown of righteousness not on the day of his death, but “on that day” — the day of Christ’s appearing. The Pauline hope is eschatologically realistic, not naturphilosophically intermediate.

Theological consequences

Connected verses

The following passages support, deepen, or contrast the interpretation here presented:

• Genesis 2:7 — Man becomes a living náphesch through God’s breath.
• Ecclesiastes 9:5 — The dead know nothing.
• Psalm 146:4 — On the day of death his plans end.
• Ezekiel 18:4 — The soul that sins shall die.
• Matthew 10:28 — God can destroy soul and body in Gehenna.
• Romans 6:23 — The wages of sin is death; the gift of God is eternal life.
• Acts 2:29 — Even David died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
• John 11:11-14 — Lazarus sleeps, then Lazarus died.

Summary

1 Timothy 6:16 is the locus classicus of biblical anthropology: “who alone has immortality.” The adverb mónos is linguistically and logically exclusive: no one but God possesses immortality of himself. Pauline usage is consistent (cf. 1 Tim 1:17; Rom 16:27) and takes up the monotheistic-doxological tradition of Hellenistic Judaism. The verse excludes the human being — even the one made in God’s image — from any natural possession of immortality.

The Racovian Catechism cites 1 Tim 6:15-16 expressly in order to ground the whole Socinian anthropology. God alone is Sovereign, wise, and immortal; man was “created mortal from the beginning” and made toward immortality, not formed out of immortality. The distinction “for immortality” vs. “immortal” is the hermeneutic key: immortality is goal and gift, not original stock.

Read with the Socinians, 1 Tim 6:16 is no isolated doxology but the key to the whole Pauline line. Humans seek incorruption (Rom 2:7), they put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53-54), they receive it through Christ, who “brought it to light” (2 Tim 1:10). The Platonic doctrine of a naturally immortal soul is incompatible with this Pauline anthropology. The Christian hope rests not on a post-mortem continuity of soul, but on God’s act of raising the dead at the last day — the day on which “the one who alone has immortality” gives his gift to believers.