Nothing in my hand I bring,
simply to the cross I cling;
naked, come to thee for dress;
helpless, look to thee for grace;
foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.

It was a stormy night in Somerset, England, in 1763. A large thunderstorm had quickly moved in, and Augustus Toplady, a preacher in the village of Blagdon, found himself exposed in the brutal elements of wind, rain and lightning. Noticing the nearby gorge of Burrington Combe in the Mendip Hills, he quickly found a small gap in the gorge and took shelter from the violent deluge.

While huddled in the small cove, Toplady was suddenly inspired with words. Scrambling to write them down, he found that he had no paper to write on except a playing card. He quickly scribbled these words:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me
Let me hide myself in Thee

These words later comprised a hymn, known as “Rock of Ages.” Within a generation, this hymn became known as one of the four greatest Anglican hymns of the 19th Century, sung by millions around the world, including at the deathbed of Prince Albert. It is claimed to be in more hymnals than any other English hymn! The lyrics later state:

Not the labors of my hands
can fulfill thy law’s commands;
could my zeal no respite know,
could my tears forever flow,
all for sin could not atone;
thou must save, and thou alone.

Toplady was saved that fateful night from the storm because of the shelter provided by the rocky cleft. You and I, in like manner, have been saved by Jesus Christ from the despair and destruction of sin and death. 1 Peter 1:2 speaks of three unique aspects of our salvation:

“…Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied.” (1 Peter 1:2).

1. CHOSEN: “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”

First, Peter says that we have been elected according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. The word “elect” is the Greek word eklektois (ἐκλεκτοις), which is a plural adjective from the verb eklego (ἐκλεγο) which means “to pick out” or “to select out of a number.” The verb is used in Ephesians 1:4 where it is rendered “chosen,” referring to the act of God in sovereign grace choosing out certain from among mankind for Himself, the verb in Ephesians being in middle voice, meaning the subject acts in his own interest. Quite literally, those to whom Peter is writing could be called “selected out ones.”

Election is tied to foreknowledge. This may seem difficult to understand with our finite minds, but God knows the end from the beginning. James the Apostle points this out in Acts 15:18: “Known to God from eternity are all His works.” Consider this truth: God is omniscient, which means “all-knowing.” God has always been omniscient, which thus means He cannot learn. He knows all things, thus there is nothing new for God to learn. So all His works were known to Him before a single one of them came to be.

I used to love Legos. Okay who am I kidding…I still love Legos! Legoland is only a few hours away from my house, and to be honest, I would probably go to Legoland even if I didn’t have kids (most people know Legos from their reputation in the middle of the night as parents go to check on their kids and step on one with bare feet!)

When I was growing up, I would get a Lego castle set. It came with a bag of bricks, and I would begin to organize each brick based on its size and shape, start reading the detailed IKEA-like instructions; and then I would begin selecting certain blocks to fit together.

One time it was dinner right when I opened my Lego box. I had dumped all the blocks out, and I had to leave it there and go to the dinner table. I remember coming back to the blocks after dinner once I had finished dish duty that night and my sister and brother had gone through my room and dumped all my normal blocks in with the new blocks. I was so mad! It’s funny to look back now, but I was so stressed out at the time, I thought I was going to have a small 12-year-old heart attack. I could hear the doctor saying, “Yeah we’ve never seen such a young boy have a heart attack of this magnitude…what happened…did one of his siblings mix up his Lego blocks?”

I had to slowly and methodically build the castle and look into this pile of mixed up blocks as I was hand selecting…or you could say… “electing” the blocks that were needed for this project. This selective process doesn’t make Lego unfair as a company or uncaring to the other blocks – it simply means that the Designer of the castle had a plan in mind from the beginning. The end result would mean some blocks would be chosen, and others would not.

Foreknowledge means that God knew us from the beginning. It isn’t solely based on knowing and electing us because He knew we would turn in faith to Christ, but that is certainly an aspect of it. What a wonderful truth! The Lord knew me and elected me before the foundation of the world! God foreknew and elected you to eternal life. Glorious!

2. CONSECRATED: “in sanctification of the Spirit”

The second aspect of our salvation is that we are sanctified or set apart: consecrated by the Holy Spirit. This concept is linked to the word “obedience,” meaning that when we first obeyed by placing our faith in Jesus, at that moment we were sealed and sanctified. We were made holy, forensically and legally put in the category of NOT GUILTY.

The Spirit of God has sanctified us, set us apart, consecrated us. Though we are already saved, past tense, we are “being saved” present tense (2 Corinthians 2:15; Philippians 2:12-13). This is the process of growing more and more like Jesus that begins with conversion and then continues endlessly until we see Him face to face in glory.

3. CLEANSED: “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ”

The third aspect of our salvation is the cleansing, atoning work of Christ on our behalf. Peter uses the phraseology and typology of the Levitical ritual where the priest sprinkled the people with the sacrificial blood. The writer of Hebrews picks up on this in chapter nine of his letter and speaks of the shedding of blood on our behalf.

Did you catch the Godhead’s work in salvation in these verses? Notice that each member of the Trinity has a work in our salvation:

. The Father knows us in advance and thus calls us the “elect”
. The Spirit sanctifies us (makes us holy, consecrated to God)
. The Son, Jesus, cleanses us from sin through His atoning sacrifice, made effectual to us by faith.

Vincent says “The Father foreknowing, the Son atoning, the Spirit applying the Son’s work in sanctifying.”

I like what one person said about these three aspects of our salvation:

“We have therefore the three steps taken by the three Persons of the Triune God. God the Father chooses the sinner to salvation. God the Spirit brings the sinner thus chosen to the act of faith. God the Son cleanses him in His precious blood. Perhaps someone may read these lines who is not saved. Your question is, “How can I know whether I am one of those whom God has chosen?” The answer is simple. Put your faith in the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour, the One who died on the Cross in your stead to make atonement for your sins, and God will save you. You will find that God the Father chose you for salvation, God the Spirit brought you to the act of faith, and God the Son cleansed you from your sin.”

Are you saved? Chosen, consecrated and cleansed? Those who receive Christ as their Savior are protected like Toplady from the wind and lightning. No one else can save from the torrents of sin and death. Only Jesus can be your true Shelter. Will you receive Him today?

If you are saved, what a wonderful reminder for us today: We are chosen! We have been elected to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We are consecrated: set apart to obey God and mature in Him. We are cleansed: washed white and clean because of the Word spoken to us. Let’s trust our Trinitarian God in our salvation so that:

While I draw this fleeting breath,
when mine eyes shall close in death,
when I soar to worlds unknown,
see thee on thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee.

When you think of a worship service, what sort of things come to your mind? Some think of music styles, choirs, lighting, formality, informality, and the list goes on and on. The diversity of approaches to a worship service are so sharp at some points, it has spawned what has been termed the “worship wars” as complaints and criticisms are given back and forth between differing views of what a proper worship service looks like. I want to make it clear that I am not seeking to address the entire subject of worship here. Worship is what man is made for, and it involves the totality of his life, not just an hour and a half, one day a week. Yet since we are told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves, (Hebrews 10:25) it is clear that corporate worship is necessary for true Christianity.

My aim in this post is to simply ask about the essence of corporate worship, what is it in it’s essence, and then address how that should shape our view of what we are doing when we gather together for corporate worship. I firmly believe that understanding the nature of corporate worship will inform and influence the way in which we approach our services and may even speak to the structures that we employ.

Christian worship is participation in the life of the Trinity

It was around two years ago as several other people and I would gather to pray during the week for our service on Sunday that this was deeply impressed upon me. During this time we would ask God to move in our midst, bring a sense of freshness and joy, and meet us in meaningful ways. In one of those meetings, it dawned on me in a fresh way that if we cannot serve God in our own strength, we cannot worship in our own strength. We needed God’s Spirit to enable us, empower us and infuse us with His own passion for God. We were not simply coming to God or giving Him permission to enter our building for a few hours, but we were desperate people who needed God to help us.
I took to heart that when we worship, it is the Spirit moving in us, causing us to respond to God in His strength. The Spirit influences and informs our words and awakens our affections to the glory and beauty of God, filling us with gratitude for His extravagant love in Christ.

When we worship together, we are on a corporate level participating in the life of the Trinity through the redemptive work of the incarnate Son.

God accepts our worship in Jesus, and the Spirit applies His life to us and empowers us.

We are simply experiencing the life of the Trinity through Christ the God-Man. I will expand on this later, but let me say here that our worship is a participation in the Son’s worship of the Father. We join Jesus in His adoration and affection for His Father as brothers and sisters whom He is bringing to God.

The reason it is important to recover a Trinitarian view of worship is because worship takes the shape of its object.¹ If we worship the Trinity, this should inform and influence the way we conduct our services, so that our worship takes the form of the Trinity.² While we spin our wheels thinking of programmatic ways to make people feel comfortable (which is very important) and think of philosophies and methods and environment, we cannot neglect substance. We must understand the essence of what is happening and seek to apply that to how we approach our corporate worship services. I am not saying there is a silver bullet, but I wonder if we are beginning on the user end, treating the parishioner as a client to be pleased rather then starting from the foundational concepts of what is really going on.

In my next post, I will unpack the concept of Trinitarian worship further and offer what I hope to be helpful ideas about how we view and perhaps even structure our services.

¹Boswell, Matt (2013-12-01). Doxology and Theology: How the Gospel Forms the Worship Leader (p. 60). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
²Ibid, pp. 60-61

“…And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

In the last article, I spoke of how the Trinity makes the Christian view of God distinct and unique. The aim of this post is to explore the relationship of the Trinity to the Christian life. To begin, I ask you to consider the following statement: The Christian life is a life that participates in the life of the Trinity. That is, the Christian has been invited into the very life of the Trinity, and thus, experiences this life, being drawn into it. Thus, the Christian life is entirely Trinitarian and cannot be truly understood in any other way. Donald Fairbairn goes so far as to say, “The doctrine of the Trinity is the gateway to understanding Christian life” (Fairbairn, 2009, p. 243).

Union with Christ

In order to understand this, we must first understand the nature of our union with Christ, for this is at the very heart of Christianity. We are vitally connected to Christ in His life, death, resurrection and ascension. In the incarnation, God has forever united humanity to Divinity. Therefore, by the incarnation, we participate as humans in the Divine life by the Spirit through the humanity of Jesus Christ, our brother, great High Priest and Living Head. Because He participated in our life as a human, we participate in His life as humans, and His life is a life that is lived within the eternal relationship of the Triune God. Therefore, we are brought into the Trinitarian relationship.

James Torrance puts it like this:

“The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God” (Torrance 1996, p. 32). Thus we participate ‘through the Holy Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father…'(ibid, p. 9). The point is that through our union with Jesus, we are invited and brought inside the circle of Trinitarian love (Seamands, 2005, p. 60). We participate in the unique love relationship of the Son and the Father in the Spirit.

This is what John has in mind in 1 John 1:3: “…That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” John is here saying that they have been included in the fellowship of the Son and the Father, a relationship that is extended to humans through the humanity of Jesus. Jesus Himself speaks to this in John 14. Notice the Trinitarian emphases of Jesus: “…The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:17).

Here Jesus makes reference to the indwelling of the Spirit, which is how He unites us to participate in His relationship with the Father. “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Jesus speaks here of what is termed the mutual indwelling of the Son and Father. What is remarkable is that by the Spirit uniting us to Jesus, we are included in this relationship. It is not that we are absorbed into the Divine so that we become Divine, but rather that we are included in the Divine fellowship between the Father, Son and Spirit.

As our great High Priest, in His prayer in John 17, Jesus clearly describes eternal life in terms of Him bringing those whom the Father has given Him into their communion and fellowship. Notice these words in John 17: “As You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:2-3).

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:20-23).

Here it is stated that our union with Christ brings us into the unity of the Godhead, and by that participation, we receive the love of the Father for the Son and become partners with God in the mission of Jesus.

Lastly, Jesus says, “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).

Again, Jesus is saying that through our union with Him, the Father’s love for Him will be in us. This may mean that He loves us as He loves Jesus, or that we now love Jesus with the love that the Father has for Him. Perhaps both! One thing is certain; we are included in this unique relationship between the Father and the Son.

The Role of the Spirit

All of these benefits come to us by way of the operation of the Spirit. He is the one who unites us to Jesus by faith. You can recall John 14:17, the Spirit comes to dwell in us. He also unites us to Jesus by baptizing us into His body by uniting us to His life, death, resurrection and ascension (1 Cor.12:12; Romans 6:3-6).

He applies the life of Christ to us and bears witness with our spirits that we are God’s adopted children (Romans 8:15,16), as He is the agent who has brought about our adoption as sons of God. As He works the life of God in us, we bear fruit (Galatians 5:22-26) that show we have crucified our flesh by union with Jesus. Paul also says that He intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray (Romans 8:27). From this, it is intimated that even our prayer life is part of the Trinitarian fellowship.

Yet, you may be wondering how all of this is applicable to the Christian life. Good question. Let me offer a few ways in which this is relevant to how you go about your daily discipleship.

1. This is the Christian life.

This is the essence of what it means to be a Christian. This is why Paul would say in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” He is not saying his personality is erased, or his personhood swallowed up, but rather that the Christian life is the life of Christ lived out by Christ in and through the people of Christ. And the life of Christ is at its very core a life of perfect communion with the Father in the relationship of the Trinity from all eternity. He allows us to participate in that communion with the Father.

2. This is the basis for the exhortations of Christian living.

For example, Paul would base his appeals to righteous living on these matters as he does in Romans 6 and Colossians 3. The reason it is in this order is that our life flows from the Godhead, by which we participate by the Spirit through the humanity of Jesus in His life, which is a life of communion with the Father.

3. This makes us focus our discipleship efforts on the work of God in us.

We are not people who simply live for God. We are people who God lives in and through. This makes us more aware of our need to rely on Him and find our life, meaning, significance and strength in Him. Discipleship is not something we do for God, it is primarily something He does in us.

4. This raises our awareness of the greatness of this gift of life we have been granted, to participate in God’s triune life.

To be swept up in the Divine dance between the Father, Son and Spirit. To see ourselves as living in this joyful, intimate relationship, to be in awe and wonder. To see the true significance of what it is to be a Christian, to raise our view of our lives in light of all this. To be ultimately at a loss for words and enter into a deep felt, overwhelming posture of worship as we contemplate these mighty truths.

Fairbairn, Donald. Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009. Kindle.

Seamands, Stephen A. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005.

Torrance, James. Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.