WORSHIP NOTES
Volume 19, No. 9 (September 2024)
The members of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are all equally God and equally glorious. Yet, remarkably, the different members of the Trinity voluntarily perform different roles: The Father sends the Son (a major theme in the Gospel of John: 4:34; 5:24, 36–38; 6:29; 7:16; etc.); the Son obeys the Father (John 4:34); and the Spirit, as we see here, glorifies Christ (John 16:14).
It is beautiful that the members of the Trinity are so eternally secure in their relationship with one another that there is never any sense of competition or of one claiming superiority over the other. They willingly perform their different roles in order to fulfill the purposes of their one, unified divine will. So the Father gives his only begotten Son (John 3:16); Jesus is willing to submit to the Father (Luke 22:42) and to become human and to die (Phil 2:6–8); and the Spirit points always to Christ. (Ron Man, Let Us Draw Near: Biblical Foundations of Worship, 278-79)
The central importance of the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be overemphasized:
In the doctrine of the Trinity beats the heart of the whole revelation of God for the redemption of humanity. Our God is above us, before us and within us. (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, 2:260)
The Trinity is not one doctrine among others, but gives distinctive shape to Christian faith and practice. . . . The Father, the Son, and the Spirit stride across the chapters of redemptive history toward the goal whose origin lies in an eternal packed between them. We worship, pray, confess, and sing our lament and praises to the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. . . . We are adopted as children, not of a unipersonal God, but of the Father, as co-with his Son as Mediator, united to the Son and his ecclesial body by the Spirit. (Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples, 103)
Horton then goes further to make this concerning observation:
One of the reasons that many Christians have found little practical relevance of this doctrine for their lives is that our public worship—and therefore private piety—has become increasingly emptied of Trinitarian references. . . . To the extent that our experience is not Trinitarian, it is not properly Christian. (103-4)
We simply cannot assume that the people in our pews have a full and nuanced understanding of the Trinity and the different, though complementary, roles each Person plays. Leslie Newbigin wrote that “the ordinary Christian in the Western world who hears or reads the word ‘God’ does not immediately and inevitably think of the triune Being—Father, Son, and Spirit—but rather of a supreme monad” (The Open Secret, 27).
Those of us who plan and lead worship need to make sure both that we have an appreciation for and comprehension of Trinitarian truth, and that that truth becomes part of the ethos and language our services.
Embracing and Resting in the Trinitarian Dynamics of Worship
The Three Persons Active in Our Worship
As has often been pointed out, the prevailing New Testament pattern of worship is that “we honor the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit.” As John Witvliet has put it:
The Father receives our worship.
The Son perfects our worship.
The Holy Spirit prompts our worship.
Trinitarian worship offered to the Father, through Christ, in the Spirit conceives of God as the One who acts “before” us, “within” us, and “alongside” of us to receive, prompt, and perfect our worship—divine action in continuity with both past and future divine actions. Trinitarian pastoral concern calls for helping worshipers sense the grace, beauty, and majesty of this vision” (Witvliet, “Prism of Glory: Trinitarian Worship and Liturgical Piety in the Reformed Tradition,” in The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer: Trinity, Christology, and Liturgical Theology, 298)
The Son’s Role in Mediating Our Worship
Jesus Christ is the true Leader of our worship: “I will proclaim your name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise” (Hebrews 2:12). No worship leader, pastor, worship set, or song can lead people into God’s presence. Only Jesus can!
See Worship Notes 1.8, 4.11, 19.3 for more on this transformative truth; also these points from the extensive treatment in Let Us Draw Near (pages 308-14):
- As much as we rightly focus on the past, finished work of Christ, we dare not neglect his present ministry.
- The living Christ is present in our midst when we gather for worship.
- Christ is the essence, enabler, empowerer, channel, guide, activator, offerer, mediator, and perfecter of all true worship.
- Our worship is pleasing and acceptable to God not because of its own inherent excellence, but because of (and only because of) the excellence of his Son.
This marvelous reality takes a lot of pressure off worship leader and worship alike: we do not come to worship in fear that our offering may not be good enough—when we come through Christ, it’s always good enough! Worship is not a work—it is our grateful response through Christ for all that God has freely given us in the Redeemer.
Practicing the Trinitarian Dynamics of Worship
The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation for several criteria that can be used to evaluate and prescribe liturgical practices in many contexts. These criteria can be phrased as simple questions: Does liturgy speak of God with reference to particular actions in history recorded in Scripture? Does corporate worship in a particular congregation rehearse the whole of the divine economy? Are its liturgical actions carried out as means for a personal relationship and encounter with God? Do these actions acknowledge the example and mediation of Jesus Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Does the community itself model the kind of intimate fellowship or koinonia that is central both to divine life and the Christian life? . . . The doctrine of the Trinity . . . is about reconceiving the purpose and meaning of the entire grammar of the liturgical event, reconsidering how we approach God.
(John D. Witvliet, “The Trinitarian DNA of Christian Worship”)
Framing the Service from the Outset
It has been recommended that we regularly start our services with some explicit reference to the Trinity whom we have gathered to worship. This may be done in different ways:
- Making a statement such as “We have gathered here today to worship God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “We have come to worship the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit” or “We enter the presence of God through our Mediator and High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Spirit empowers us”
- Singing the Doxology
- Singing a clearly Trinitarian hymn, such as “Holy, Holy, Holy” (“God in three Persons, blessed Trinity”) or “Come, Thou Almighty King” (one verse for each Person of the Trinity, followed by in verse 4 by praises sung “to the great One in Three”); or a contemporary song such as “How Great Is Our God” (Christ Tomlin) (“The Godhead Three in One, Father Spirit Son”)
- Reciting the Apostles Creed or the Nicean Creed
Singing the Doctrine
There have been a number of studies bemoaning the relative lack of Trinitarian truth in modern-day worship songs.
One is Lester Ruth’s “How Great Is Our God: The Trinity in Contemporary Christian Worship Music” in the collection The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise and Worship. And Robin Parry, in his excellent book Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship, includes a survey which yielded the following results:
Notice the great preponderance of what Parry terms “You Lord” songs, which refer to God generically without any distinguishing of the Persons or roles. Of course, not every song has to include explicit references to the persons of the Trinity, but the problem has been in the other direction.
These two studies are dated, but still highlight trends which continue in many churches. However, there has been some real improvement in recent years, with some notable Trinitarian additions to the contemporary worship repertoire. See “12 Trinitarian Worship Songs Worth Singing.”
A full-orbed, robust Christianity delights in the beauty of the Trinitarian nature of our faith and our relationship with God. Let us be sure that our congregations are steeped in this truth in their private and public devotion.
SEEALSO
“Trinitarian Worship: This Doctrine Makes a Difference in How You Worship”
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