In the New Testament proskyneō, the most commonly used verb for worship, refers to an expression of devotion by which a person prostrates himself or herself, perhaps kissing the feet of the object of worship. On most such occasions in the Bible the worshipper falls to the ground. It is ‘an expression of devotion and subservience’,1 ‘to express by attitude and possibly by position one’s allegiance to and regard for deity’2.
In Revelation 4:9–11, 11:16, 19:4 the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fall down and worship God, who is seated on the throne, while in Revelation 7:11 the angels, besides the elders and living creatures, follow suit. Paul refers to the putative convicted unbeliever’s falling down and worshipping (1 Cor. 14:25). In each case there is willing subservience and adoration in the presence of the supreme Creator.
These are characteristics of the act of worship. However, does worship include the whole of life? Certainly, our life is to be an expression of our worship, a congruity existing between the two. Indeed, it is necessary to be reconciled to others before we appear before God (Matt. 5:23–24). Worship of God must be in harmony with the way we live, so that Paul urges us, in so far as it is possible, to live at peace with all people (Rom. 12:14–21). However, references to worship in the New Testament denote actions distinct from the rest of life. Is there a good reason why one should fall on one’s face while serving God as an airline pilot, university professor or business person? The Ethiopian had travelled to Jerusalem for the express purpose of worshipping God there (hos elēlythei proskynēsōn eis Ierousalēm); his destination was to worship at Jerusalem, while the travelling was a distinct prelude and postlude (Acts 8:27).
The Bible commends and requires only one object of worship, Yahweh, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament this was enshrined in the first commandment (Exod. 20:2–3), reiterated in Deuteronomy (Deut. 6:4–5, 13–15) and cited by Jesus in his wilderness temptations (Matt. 4:10; Luke 4:8). This was a central theme, and a corresponding problem for Israel, who continually dabbled in idolatry until eventually being cast out of the land at the exile for worshipping pagan deities.
In the New Testament worship is directed to Jesus. The Magi visit Bethlehem for that purpose (Matt. 2:2, 11), falling down and worshipping when they find him. There are ascriptions of praise, and confession that Jesus is the Son of God (Matt. 14:33). The man healed from congenital blindness worships Jesus (John 9:38). After the resurrection, the disciples worship the risen Jesus (Matt. 28:9, 17), and the apostles worship the ascending Christ (Luke 24:52). Jesus presents himself as coordinate with God the Father as the object of faith (John 14:1).
In contrast, John unthinkingly falls at the angel’s feet and worships him, only to receive a stiff rebuke and a reminder that God alone is the one to receive adoration (Rev. 19:10; 22:9). Paul writes of the futility and perversity of angel worship, improper for the church and its members (Col. 2:18).
Worship is not only to be directed to God alone but is a duty incumbent on all people. God calls his church to worship him. We worship because we must and because we may. It is our responsibility as creatures; it is our privilege as those united to Christ and given access to the communion of the life of God.
The Bible speaks of worship as occurring in a variety of settings. There is individual worship, frequently found expressed in the book of Psalms, some attributed to David as king of Israel in his representative capacity, but some from other authors. Daniel prays to Yahweh at set times during the day as his regular discipline (Dan. 6:1–15). Beyond this, family worship is stressed (Deut. 6:4–9); since this is in a covenantal context (Moses reiterating the terms of the Sinaitic covenant) it assumes dominant focus. It is restated in the New Testament (Eph. 6:1–3), reinforced by the covenantal promise of long life. However, the defining feature is the corporate worship of the covenant community, expressed in the feasts of Israel, the sacrificial system and latterly the synagogue. In the New Testament it occurs in the gatherings of the church. It is a meeting of the living triune God with his covenant people.
Naming in the ancient Near East denoted the sovereignty of the one who named over the one named. Thus Adam names the animals (Gen. 2:19–20) in fulfilling the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28–30 to exercise dominion over the animal world. However, only God ever names God. Only he has the right to name himself, for he as the Creator is not subject to any other being. Moreover, the covenant community is to have no other gods than him (Exod. 20:1–3). Contemporary human attempts to reimagine God or to name him as Mother or the like are simply figments of the imagination, idols made in a human image, without validity.
It follows that God is sovereign in his self-revelation. This is clear in Exodus 33:18 – 34:7, where Yahweh refuses Moses’ request to see his glory. Instead, he affirms his utter authority, placing Moses in a cleft in the rock while granting him a new revelation of his name.3 Further, God is sovereign in granting us knowledge of himself by the Holy Spirit. Sin places us in total reliance on God to make himself known. Paul insists we were dead in sin, helpless to do anything to put right our rebellion against God, unwilling to do so, for the dead can will and do nothing (Eph. 2:1–2). He also says unbelievers are incapable of repentance since they are blinded by the god of this age and unable to see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). As Jesus taught, we trust him only as we are drawn by the Holy Spirit (John 6:44). Hence humanity’s predilection for new objects and forms of worship is rebellion against the true and living God. Only by the gracious action of God, breaking into our darkness and death and arousing us to new life, can we truly know him. This was extensively and graphically portrayed by Calvin, in his treatment of the knowledge of God,4 idolatry and superstition,5 creation as the means of knowing God,6 but a knowledge given only through the Scriptures,7 which must be confirmed by the witness of the Holy Spirit.8 This was Calvin’s teaching throughout his career.9
The God who has made himself known for our salvation has revealed himself to be triune. He unfolds progressively his revelation in covenant history. At each stage he names himself, in the Abrahamic covenant as El Shaddai (God Almighty, Gen. 17:1), in the Mosaic covenant as ’ehyeh (Exod. 3:14; cf. yĕwāh, 6:3).10 At the apex of redemptive history Jesus came to fulfil the promises of the Old Testament. Matthew records how Jesus inaugurates the kingdom of heaven, promised to Abraham. The covenant, no longer restricted to Israel, extends to the whole world. Indeed, many Israelites would be cast out while Gentiles were now to be included (Matt. 8:11–12). As the Mosaic covenant was inaugurated with the sprinkling of covenantal blood, so the new covenant is founded on the blood of Jesus (Matt. 26:27–29). Finally, Matthew recounts how the nations are to be made disciples, with the new covenant sacrament of baptism. This baptism is into the one name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19–20). Jesus the Son names God as the one God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in connection with the new covenant sacrament, baptism. By naming the one God he affirms his equality with and identity to Yahweh. This is God’s crowning self-revelation. Retrospectively, it casts light on all that led up to it, like a detective mystery discloses in the final scene the clues that make sense of the entire story.11
So the triune God alone grants us access to himself and determines how we are to relate to and approach him. In the Mosaic covenant Moses was required to construct the paraphernalia of Israel’s worship exactly as Yahweh told him (Exod. 25:1–40; 40:1–38). Latterly, Jesus announced that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Access to the Father is exclusively through the mediation of the Son.
Therefore Christian worship is distinctively trinitarian. This has been recognized by the church from its earliest days. In the fourth century Gregory of Nazianzus, instrumental in the resolution of the trinitarian crisis, wrote:
When we look at the Godhead . . . that which we conceive is One; but when we look at the persons in whom the Godhead dwells, and at those who timelessly and with equal glory have their being from the first cause12 – there are three whom we worship.13
Later, in the eighth century, John of Damascus wrote that
one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one beginning, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, made known in three perfect subsistences and adored with one adoration . . . united without confusion and divided without separation.14
The church’s worship is grounded on who God is and what he has done. The Father has sent the Son ‘for us and our salvation’. This is prominent in John, chapters 5, 10 and 17, but Paul also directs our attention to it in Romans 8:32. In turn, the Father together with the Son has sent the Holy Spirit to indwell the church. The focus of the Spirit’s ministry is to speak of Christ the Son. This is summarized clearly in Galatians 4:4–6:
When the fullness of time had come God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the inheritance of sons. And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father.’15
Here lies the basic premise of all God’s actions – from the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. As Cyril of Alexandria states in his Commentary on John, ‘all things proceed from the Father, but wholly through the Son in the Spirit’.16 These words of Paul, and this order that is so evident in the church fathers, encapsulates the whole of redemptive history. Not only is our salvation a work of God, not only is it trinitarian through and through, but it is initiated by the Father, accomplished by the Son and applied by the Holy Spirit. Of course, Augustine was right in that all aspects of this great drama of redemption are put into effect by all three persons of the Trinity working together in harmony – opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt. The Trinity is indivisible and the works of the Trinity are inseparable. However, Calvin’s description holds true both as a general principle and as a reflection of what has actually happened in human history, that to the Father ‘is attributed the beginning of activity, and the fountain and wellspring of all things; to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and the ordered disposition of all things; but to the Spirit is assigned the power and efficacy of that activity’.17 The Father sent the Son; then, following the Son’s death and resurrection, he sent the Spirit of his Son.
Paul has pointed out that Christ made reconciliation by the cross (Eph. 2:14), tearing down the dividing wall between God and ourselves due to sin, and between Jew and Gentile due to the ceremonial law. He goes on to say that both Jew and Gentile have identical means of access to God in Christ. ‘Through him [Christ] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access in one Holy Spirit to the Father’ (esv). Access to God is ultimately access to the Father. This is through Christ, the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5). It is the Spirit who gives us life in place of death (Eph. 2:1), raising us in Christ (2:6–7) and graciously granting faith (2:8–10). Calvin held that the principal work of the Holy Spirit is to give us faith.18 It is a cardinal teaching of Scripture that saving faith is the gift of God, given by the Spirit (John 6:44; 1 Cor. 12:3; Eph. 2:1–10). Here is the reverse movement to that seen as the ground of the church’s worship – by the Holy Spirit through Christ to the Father. This encompasses our entire response to, and relationship with, God – from worship through the whole field of Christian experience.
From this it follows that prayer is distinctively trinitarian. The Christian faith exists in an atmosphere saturated by the Trinity. At its most basic level every Christian believer experiences in a tacit, unarticulated form communion with the holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit creates a desire to pray and to worship God, brings us to faith and sustains us in a life of faithful obedience. In turn, our access to the Father is exclusively through his Son, Jesus Christ. No one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Now that he has offered the one perfect sacrifice for sins for all time, we have access to the holy place, the presence of God (Heb. 10:19–20), and so can approach with confidence the throne of grace, knowing that our great high priest is there to intercede for us, he who has experienced to the full the struggles of human life in a fallen world and so can sympathize with us in our weakness (Heb. 4:14–16). Indeed, Jesus introduces us to the same relation he has with the Father. He is the Son by nature; we are children by grace. We now call on God as ‘our Father’. Moreover, the Spirit brings us into his own intercession for us (Rom. 8:26–27). He thus eliminates the distance between us and God, creating in us the same relation he has with the Father and the Son.19 Prayer and worship are thus explorations of the character of the holy Trinity.
The Samaritan woman’s question concerns the proper place of worship, whether at Jerusalem (which the Jews insisted Yahweh required) or Mount Gerizim (where the Samaritans worshipped). Jesus supports Jerusalem, indicating that the Jews worshipped according to knowledge, while the Samaritans did not. Both the Bible and history support this. The Samaritans were a mixed race, formed from remnants of the ten northern tribes together with settlers from other nations brought in by the Assyrians after the destruction of the northern kingdom. Their religion was syncretistic, combining elements of the worship of Yahweh, based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, together with aspects of the ancestral religions of the various imported nations. However, Jesus says now the time has arrived, when the distinction between Israel and Samaria, between Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim, is superseded. True worshippers now worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
What does Jesus mean? This hardly means merely that a particular location is completely irrelevant, or that true worship can now occur anywhere, although that may be entailed in what he says. Nor is ‘spirit’ a reference to the human spirit, as if true worship were purely inward and externals of no consequence; such an interpretation is reminiscent of Descartes. Rather, we should remember the extensive teaching in the Fourth Gospel on the Holy Spirit, concentrated later in chapters 14–16. Every reference to pneuma (spirit) in this Gospel, bar probably two, points to the Holy Spirit. In this connection Jesus means that true worship is directed to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the words of Basil the Great, referring inter alia to this passage:
It is an extraordinary statement, but it is nonetheless true, that the Spirit is frequently spoken of as the place of them that are being sanctified . . . This is the special and peculiar place of true worship . . . In what place do we offer it? In the Holy Spirit . . . It follows that the Spirit is truly the place of the saints and the saint is the proper place for the Spirit, offering himself as he does for the indwelling of God, and called God’s temple.20
Again, with reference to ‘truth’, do we have to look any further than John’s record of Jesus as the embodiment of truth (14:6), as the true light coming into the world (1:9), ‘full of grace and truth’ (1:14), who as a result brought grace and truth into the world (1:17)? Jesus is pointing to himself, implying, as does Paul, that new covenant worship is trinitarian. We worship the Father in the Holy Spirit and in the fullness of truth, his incarnate Son.21 In summary, Gregory of Nazianzus puts these passages in context with his comment ‘This, then, is my position . . . to worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, three persons, one Godhead, undivided in honour and glory and substance and kingdom.’22
Putting it another way, from the side of God, the worship of the church is the communion of the holy Trinity with us his people. We are inclined to view worship as what we do, but if we follow our argument, it is first and foremost something the triune God does; our actions are initiated and encompassed by his. The author of Hebrews refers to Christ’s offering himself up unblemished to the Father ‘in’ or ‘through eternal spirit’ (Heb. 9:14, my tr.), which is a reference to the Holy Spirit.23 Since our salvation is received in union with Christ, what is his by nature is ours by grace. Thus, in his self-offering to the Father, he offers us, his people, in him. We are thereby enabled to share in the relation he has with the Father. (Thus we can pray ‘Our Father in heaven’ – God is our Father by grace because he is first Jesus’ Father by nature.) Jesus ascended to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God (John 20:17). By his cross, resurrection and ascension he brought us into the same relation he has with the Father. Thus Christ is, in reality, the one true worshipper,24 our worship a participation in his. A focus on our worship, on what we do, is inherently Pelagian. Further, our worship is by the Holy Spirit in Christ. As John Thompson puts it, ‘If one understands the New Testament and the view it gives of how we meet with and know God and worship him as triune, then worship is not primarily our act but, like our salvation, is God’s gift before or as it is our task.’25 This should reassure us, for as Owen reminds us, while ‘the love of God is like himself, – equal, constant, not capable of augmentation or diminution; our love is like ourselves, – unequal, increasing, waning, growing, declining’.26
The worship of the church is thus not only grounded on the mediation of Christ but takes place in union with and through his mediatorial work and continued intercession:
Being still endued with the human shape, he moulds accordingly the form of his prayer, and asks as though he possessed it not . . . in Him, as the firstfruits of the race, the nature of man was wholly reformed into newness of life, and ascending, as it were, to its own first beginning was moulded anew into sanctification. . . . Christ called down upon us the ancient gift of humanity, that is, sanctification through the Spirit and communion in the Divine Nature.27
Behind this lies the incarnation (the Son of God did not simply indwell human nature but came as man, permanently assuming unabbreviated human nature – sin apart), the vicarious humanity of Christ (he took our place in every way – including in worship, since as man he owed it to the Father), his full and complete obedience to the Father by the Holy Spirit, and his continuing high priestly intercession.28 Therefore, since Christian worship is determined, initiated and shaped by, and directed to, the holy Trinity, we worship the three with one undivided act of adoration.
John Owen comments that our communion with the Trinity rests on the union we have with Jesus Christ, for ‘communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them’. Thus our communion with God consists ‘in his communication of himself unto us, with our returnal unto him . . . flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him’.29
What can be said, tentatively, about our worship of the three, remembering that the three coinhere, mutually indwell each other in the unity of the undivided Trinity? We recall the vital point made by Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.’30
It is often said that the only distinction of the persons is the ineffable eternal generation and procession. While this is so, the missions of the Son and the Spirit reflect the eternal relations. Only the Son became incarnate, not the Father or the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, not the Son or the Father. Only the Father, not the Holy Spirit, sent the Son. As I argued before, these economic activities point back to immanent relations.31 There is something appropriate in the Son qua Son’s becoming incarnate.32 We may ask whether this irreducible distinctiveness lends sharpness to our worship.
The Bible indicates that the Father determined that his kingdom be established and advanced principally by the Son. In this sense it is the Son who occupies centre stage. This is entirely in accord with the purpose of the Father: ‘’Tis the Father’s pleasure we should call him Lord.’33 The Father sent the Son with the purpose that he receive the glory and praise for our deliverance. His exaltation following his resurrection, by which he is given ‘the name which is above every name’, is to the glory of God the Father, in pursuance of his eternal plan (Phil. 2:9–11, my tr.). In turn, the Son will, after the economy of salvation is complete, hand the kingdom back to the Father (1 Cor. 15:28). Again the Holy Spirit works anonymously in the background, not speaking of himself or bringing glory to himself but testifying of Christ, the Son. He hears the Son and witnesses to him. He works unseen. Gregory of Nyssa writes of
a revolving circle of glory from like to like. The Son is glorified by the Spirit; the Father is glorified by the Son; again the Son has his glory from the Father; and the Only-begotten thus becomes the glory of the Spirit . . . In like manner . . . faith completes the circle, and glorifies the Son by means of the Spirit, and the Father by means of the Son.34
These distinct appropriations, whereby a particular work is attributed to one trinitarian person, are to be regarded in terms of the inseparable work of the Trinity, each of the three being engaged.
Thus we worship in one undivided act of adoration the three in their distinct persons and relations with one another. A living relationship with God requires that each of the persons be honoured and adored in the context of their revealed relations. The nature of our response in worship is to be shaped by the reality of the one we worship. We worship the Father, who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, who planned our salvation from eternity, who sent his Son into the world and gave him up for us. We worship the Son, in filial relation with the Father, who willingly ‘for us and our salvation’ was made flesh, who submitted himself to life in a fallen world, who trod a path of lowliness, temptation and suffering, leading to the cruel death of the cross. We worship him for his glorious resurrection, for his ascension to the right hand of the Father, for his continual intercession for us, and for his future return to judge the living and the dead, and to complete our salvation. As John says, ‘our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:3a esv). We worship the Holy Spirit, who gives life and breath to all, who grants us the gift of faith, who sustains us through the difficulties of life as Christians in a world set in hostility to God, and who testifies of the Son. And, as Gregory would urge us, we worship with one act of adoration the one undivided Trinity, for as we cast our minds and hearts before the three persons of the holy Trinity we at once are enlightened by the one. As Staniloae says, the three are ‘wholly interior to one another’.35
No one has expressed this better than John Owen. He writes that ‘the saints have distinct communion with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (that is, distinctly with the Father, and distinctly with the Son, and distinctly with the Holy Spirit)’. This is evident in the distinct ways in which Scripture refers to the three persons, particularly in the communication of grace to us. In this the Father communicates grace by way of original authority, the Son by making out a purchased treasury and the Spirit by way of immediate efficacy.36 However, as Owen is quick to point out, when we hold distinct communion with any one person, the other two persons are also included. We may have communion with one person principally, but the other two are included secondarily, ‘for the person, as the person, of any one of them, is not the prime object of divine worship, but as it is identified with the nature or essence of God’. Whenever we have communion with any one person, there is an influence from every person in that act. Moreover, communion with God, Owen acknowledges, is broader than this, for we have communion with the whole deity as such.37
Does this not demonstrate our own ignorance? These are matters beyond us. It is like the old illustration of dipping a teacup into the ocean. Besides the vastness of the Atlantic, the water in our teacup is infinitesimal. But yet – the water in the teacup is the Atlantic ocean, in so far as it is a true sample. It is true we do not and cannot know the inner workings of the Trinity, so it may even be better to remain silent. But we do know what the Son is like. We know that
being in the form of God, he did not count equality with God something to be exploited for his own advantage, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men. And being found in form as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross. (Phil. 2:5–8, my tr.)
We know also that he created and sustains the laws of physics. We also know something of what the Holy Spirit is like, for we know that in the midst of the turmoil of everyday life love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness and self-control are the fruit of the Spirit, hallmarks of his own character produced in us on a creaturely level. We know that the Father chose that his kingdom be initiated and advanced by the Son and the Spirit. We know, in Pannenberg’s words, that
as Jesus glorifies the Father and not himself . . . so the Spirit glorifies not himself but the Son, and in him the Father . . . The Father hands over his kingdom to the Son and receives it back from him. The Son is . . . obedient to [the Father] and he thereby glorifies him as the one God. The Spirit . . . fills the Son and glorifies him in his obedience to the Father.38
We also know, as Calvin put it, that the will of the Father differs not in the slightest from what he has revealed in his Word. And as we think of the three in their distinctness, we recall that they indwell each other in undivided union.
The second commandment, in prohibiting the worshipping of man-made images, entails the point that we are to worship God in the image he has provided. The commandment goes beyond a simple condemnation of idolatry. In the Bible where a promise is made, a corresponding warning is implied, and vice versa. Hence the prohibition against human construction of images of false deities for worship should be understood as a requirement to worship in the image God has provided, Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb. 1:3).
The third commandment forbids taking on our lips the name of the Lord in an empty, careless or irreverent manner. The reverse of this is that, positively, we are to worship in faith. Taking the whole sense of Scripture, this means that worship is to be in the Holy Spirit, who is the giver of faith.39
According to Bulgakov:
the dogma of the Holy Trinity is not only a doctrinal form, but a living Christian experience which is constantly developing; it is a fact of the Christian life. For life in Christ unites with the Holy Trinity, it gives a knowledge of the Father’s love and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is no truly Christian life, apart from knowledge of the Trinity.40
However, since the great outburst of trinitarian theology in the fourth and fifth centuries that filtered through the Middle Ages, there has been a paucity of hymnology that is clearly trinitarian. Many favourites could equally be sung by Unitarians, orthodox Jews or Muslims: ‘My God, How Wonderful Thou Art’, ‘Praise My Soul, the King of Heaven’, ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’, ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation’. We may bring to these texts trinitarian assumptions, but a trinitarian framework is not present in the hymns themselves. Since theology and worship are integrally connected, as the fathers taught,41 this is serious. Among the more recent informal hymns and choruses, ‘There Is a Redeemer’ makes an attempt in this direction but the refrain ‘Thank you, O our Father, for giving us your Son, and leaving your Spirit till the work on earth is done’ (my emphasis) misses the mark. The studied and stubborn opposition to fixed liturgies in much evangelicalism, with its descent into flippant informality, has accentuated this deficit.
This is the invariable pattern in all God’s ways and works. He is the Creator, bringing into existence all entities other than himself. The incarnation of the Son occurred without input or advice from any of his creatures. The redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ was not the result of a committee decision. The Spirit was not sent at Pentecost in response to a request of a church session. In all these cases it was God who acted in sovereign freedom. The Father’s determination is brought into effect through the Son by the Holy Spirit, yet all three are inseparably involved at each stage.
It is the part of the faithful to respond to the actions of God in faith. This human reply is by God’s grace, brought about by the Holy Spirit through the Son and focusing as the goal on the Father. In the worship of the church, Christ the Son joins with and leads the congregation in its praise to the Father (Heb. 2:10–13).
This paradigm is in stark contrast to the various Pelagian forms of worship common today, where the focus is almost entirely on the worshipper. When the topic of worship is mentioned, immediate attention is normally directed to what we do, to the attitudes of the worshippers’ hearts, to the sincerity or fervour we generate. Clearly, the worshippers must be living in communion with God and one another. If anything, there is a priority for reconciliation over worship; if we are living at odds with another, we must do all in our power to put the situation right and be reconciled before ever we join in the worship of God (Matt. 5:23–24; 1 Cor. 11:17–34). However, this is a prerequisite for worship; it is not worship itself.
No, worship is above all a transcendent activity in which the holy Trinity is the agent. It is the meeting place between heaven and earth. In it the triune God grants us access to the worship around the throne of God in heaven. In union with Christ we are seated with him in heavenly places (Eph. 2:5–7). We have come to Mount Zion, to innumerable numbers of angels in festal gathering, to the saints of the Old and New Testament, and above all to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant (Heb. 12:18–24), a scene into which angels themselves long to look (1 Peter 1:12). The worship of the church is, in an astounding way, a dialogue in which the Trinity takes the lead.
In the call to worship, the Father calls us in Christ his Son by the Holy Spirit to worship. This entails that the Trinity is present first, that God takes the initiative and that our part in worship is a response to his prior call. The habit of many evangelical churches in starting their services with chatty informality may accord with contemporary tastes but misses the point entirely.
It is well to understand that the words of the ordained minister are not uttered on his own authority. Called to the ministry by Christ, he is there solely on Christ’s behest and so speaks for him. These words themselves are a declaration of grace, cosmic in their significance. Whereas by our deeds we warranted everlasting exclusion from the presence of the Lord, we are instead called near to communion and union in Christ. Distance is overcome, and we draw near through the blood of Christ. In this connection the confession of sins (preferably by the congregation as a whole) and the subsequent declaration of pardon (better, absolution)42 seals this glorious reality.
It follows that the reading of Scripture is of prime importance. It is the Word of the Lord himself, no less, speaking to the congregation of his people. In turn the proclamation of that Word carries his imprimatur. In Ephesians 2:17 Christ is said to have preached peace to the Gentiles at Ephesus: ‘he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near’ (esv). Jesus never visited Ephesus; Paul refers to his own preaching in founding the church. In Paul’s preaching Christ himself preaches. In Romans 10:14, where Paul insists on the urgency of preachers being sent to his compatriots, the Jews, the subjective genitive is to be preferred, yielding the clause ‘how are they to believe him whom they have not heard?’ (my tr.). In short, Christ is heard in the preaching of the gospel.43 When the Word is truly preached, Christ is present.44 That the preacher is sent indicates the ministerial nature of preaching; the preacher is subservient to the Word.45 Other passages that address this theme are Luke 10:16, John 5:25–47 and 2 Corinthians 5:19–20.46 Here the Father speaks in the Son in the words uttered by the Holy Spirit in holy Scripture.
In line with this Calvin regarded preaching as both a human and a divine activity, the Holy Spirit working in sovereignty through the words of the preacher.47 As such, he states that ‘God himself appears in our midst, and, as Author of this order, would have men recognize him as present in his institution.’48
In turn, in the sacraments the Father enables us to commune with the Son by the Holy Spirit. Baptism and the Supper, as means of grace, are the chief ways by which we are nurtured in union and communion with the Trinity.49
The benediction is not a pious wish, a form of prayer in which we address God. It is rather a declaration of a state of affairs that exists, established by the Father in the Son by the Holy Spirit. The minister, ordained to that task, pronounces the blessing, a blessing in the name of the holy Trinity, a blessing that is a glorious actuality. In doing so, he dismisses the congregation to serve the Lord in the callings to which they have severally been called.
As we saw above, the church’s response to hearing God’s Word is an act of faith, by the Holy Spirit through the Son to the Father.
It is clear from what I have said that there is a need for trinitarian hymnology, newly composed or retrieved from the archives. As Benedict XVI insisted, church music must reflect transcendence, wonder, amazement and awe. This is in contrast to the alleged ‘simplicity’ of much Reformed worship, which at times may be a euphemism for staleness, and also to excitement generated in some circles by unrealistic expectations of sensational or unusual events. Instead, the most sensational event of all is that we are given access to the trinitarian life of God, the Spirit granting us audience with the Father in, through and with his eternal Son. In this we join with Christ in singing praise (Heb. 2:11–12). What could outstrip this?
The Lord’s Supper is the communion of the body and blood of Christ. We feed on him by faith. As bread and wine enter our system and become integrally part of us, so Christ and his people are one flesh, a union unbreakable by anything in the entire creation. In feeding on Christ by the Spirit – who unites us to him – we are given access to the Father and receive his life, signified at creation by the tree of life, realized and embodied in the Son, given by the Spirit of life who proceeds from the Father.
The benediction is not a prayer, expressing a wish that such and such may be the case. It is a declaration of a state of blessing that the church has received, given in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The church receives the benediction. Christ’s last visible act was to raise his hands in blessing as he was taken up into heaven. This was to be the state of affairs that exists from then to his parousia. In union with him we have been raised and have ascended to the right hand of the Father. Man with God is on the throne. In the benediction we hear this reality.
Advent, Crucifixion, Easter, Pentecost, Ascension are all trinitarian events and provide ample opportunity to teach the congregation. Abandonment of the church calendar leaves congregations hostage to the whims and idiosyncrasies of individual ministers. Its focus is on the great central themes of the faith and keeps the church anchored in these. The anti-liturgical movement that has driven an aversion to these great milestones is based on the fallacy that faith and spontaneity go together, form inevitably wedded to formalism. If this were so, it would be well that the ministers of the church avoided preparing sermons and that hymns be composed on the spot.
Preaching is the high point of worship. Not only must the Trinity as such be preached, but all preaching must be shaped by the recognition that the God whose Word is proclaimed is triune. A trinitarian mindset must become as integral to the preacher as the air we breathe. As Peter Toon comments, ‘preachers and teachers need so to communicate the Faith and so direct public worship that they really and truly give the impression that the Holy Trinity is God and God is the Holy Trinity’.50 This will come only as preachers give explicit recognition in their prayers and sermons to God as triune, and so encourage their congregations to think, pray and live in that light. Sinclair Ferguson remarked to me in an email that when Jesus gave his upper room discourse to disciples about to be plunged into grief and stress, he instructed them not on stress management techniques but on the Trinity.51 The most practical preaching enables us to advance in our knowledge of the God who is three persons.
Baptism is into the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each baptism provides a point for reinforcing the congregation’s awareness of the Trinity. In turn, the Lord’s Supper entails our feeding on Christ through faith by the Holy Spirit. The sacraments derive their significance from the Word. Careful and appropriate words of instruction can guide the church in this regard.
Many of the great prayers of the Christian church are steeped in trinitarian teaching, Foremost among these is the great Te Deum. The Collects in The Book of Common Prayer express the church’s relationship to the triune God; these prayers impress themselves on the memories of congregants. Not only do they provide a springboard for refreshing the prayers of individuals when they find it difficult to pray, but they also contain a nucleus of trinitarian expressions that can be internalized in the minds of the faithful. Another resource not to be despised but to be used with discernment is the ancient Liturgy of St Chrysostom.
Prayer is, inter alia, exploration of the holy Trinity. Christian experience is trinitarian, prayer very centrally included. One wonders, how much of the decline in appreciation of the Trinity is due to exclusively unguided extemporaneous prayer. At times of theological strength and spiritual vitality this may be fine, but when decline sets in there is nothing to check it. I am not suggesting that written liturgical prayer should be the exclusive, or even the main, diet of church worship. However, it can and does provide a backbone, a foundation, for the prayers of the church. If anyone wants biblical support for this claim, the book of Psalms will do; there we have written prayers and doxologies that have been prayed and sung down the ages.
In prayer we engage directly with our three-personed God, with ‘our Trinity’, to borrow from Gregory of Nazianzus. In the words of Lukas Vischer, ‘in our calling upon him the mystery of the Trinity itself is actualized. So we pray with Christ and in the power of the Spirit when we call on God his Father as our Father.’52 Dimitru Staniloae adds that the intratrinitarian love is the foundation of our salvation, ‘the extension to conscious creatures of the relations that obtain between the divine persons’. Through his incarnation the Son introduces us to filial communion with the Father, while through the Spirit we pray to the Father or speak with him as sons. In prayer the Spirit draws us into his own prayer, creating between us and the Father, through grace, the same relation he has with the Father and the Son by nature. The incarnate Son as man expressed his filial love of the Father as an obedient love, while the Father was affirming his love to us as Father. For his part the Holy Spirit sanctified and pervaded the Son’s humanity, making it fit to participate in the love the Son has for the Father. Thus we are drawn through the Holy Spirit into the relationship the Son has with the Father. We are raised ‘into communion with the persons of the Holy Trinity’.53
Worship and reconciliation go together. Christian worship focused on the holy Trinity and controlled by the Trinity, on the undivided Trinity in which the three indwell each other in love, seeking the interests of the other cannot but promote the unity of the body of Christ. Worship entails the whole person submitting to, becoming conformed to, the one worshipped (Pss 115; 135; 2 Cor. 3:18). This is the one exception – the one thing to which worship is, in the short term, to be subordinate. If reconciliation is needed, that must come first (Matt. 5:24).
Glory to you, our God; glory to you.
O heavenly King, the Comforter, Spirit of Truth, who is in all places and fills all things; Treasury of good things and Giver of life: Come and take up your abode in us, and cleanse us from every stain; and save our souls, O Good One.
O Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
O Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
O Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
O all-holy Trinity, have mercy upon us. O Lord, wash away our sins. O Master, pardon our transgressions. O Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities, for your Name’s sake.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, unto ages of ages. Amen. 54
© Robert Letham, 2016