Trinity

“Come Thou Almighty King." Unlike some hymns, we don’t know who wrote this old favorite—all we do know is that it has been in use for over 300 years. This should come as no surprise; “Come Thou Almighty King” does a marvelous job of teaching us about the Trinity. Verse one speaks of the Father; verse two treats the Son; verse three dwells on the Holy Spirit; and verse four reminds us that together, these three divine persons are united in one holy Godhead. Today, I’d like to take you through this hymn and discuss what it teaches us about our incredible, magnificent God.

Verse one begins, “Come Thou almighty King.” God the Father is almighty; that means there is no one and nothing more powerful than Him. We are not God’s equals. We cannot create matter or energy or time, as He did when He brought the universe into existence. Nor can we create life; babies are conceived only at the Father’s pleasure, and no medical treatment can keep us alive when the Father summons us from this world. We depend on the Father for our food, our families, our homes, and our jobs; we depend on Him for our very lives. It is humbling to realize this, because each of us wants to have control over our lives. At the same time, however, awareness of the Father’s might gives us comfort, especially when things around us appear to be spinning out of control.

Of course, Satan doesn’t want you to believe that the Father is almighty; the devil would like you to think that he and the Father are equals, each offering a different path to success and happiness. But Satan is nothing but a liar; the Father alone is almighty. When Satan rebelled against the Father’s sovereignty, Scripture tells us that he lost his place in heaven; Isaiah chapter 14 says, How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart…“I will make myself like the Most High." But you are brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit. God the Father is almighty—He has no equal, no one who can oppose His holy will. His is King over all that is.

Verse one goes on to say that the Father is “all glorious, o’er all victorious.” The glory of the Father is His absolute perfection; no one is worthy to gaze at Him. Even angels shield their eyes in the Father’s presence, as Isaiah saw in a vision of the heavenly throne room (Isaiah chapter six): Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." The Father is perfect in every way—perfect in power, perfect in wisdom, perfect in love. And because of these traits, He has been victorious over everything that opposes Him—sin, death, and Satan.

The first verse ends by referring to our almighty King as the “Ancient of Days.” This poetic language comes from the book of Daniel chapter seven. In that chapter, Daniel saw two heavenly beings. The first was the Ancient of Days, who sat on a throne; Daniel describes Him this way: His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool…Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The Ancient of Days is old beyond human understanding—indeed, He is eternal, having no beginning or end. Whiteness also testifies of His absolute purity.

Then, a second person appears; Daniel goes on to say, there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Who is this person Daniel refers to as son of man? This is the Son of God, who would be born of Mary into human flesh. Jesus often referred to Himself as the Son of Man; one example is found in the Gospel of St. Luke chapter 24: The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.

And so we find ourselves in verse two. It begins by calling the Son of God the “incarnate Word.” Ordinarily, words have no physical substance. You can’t see a word floating through the air (except in a comic strip), nor can you catch it and hold it in your hand. Words express thoughts; they are intangible. But the Son of God is a glorious exception. The Son of God reveals the Father’s thoughts to us. The Son of God took this responsibility so seriously that He became incarnate—that is, He dressed Himself in human flesh and blood so that we could experience God’s Word in a personal way. The Gospel of John tells us (chapter one), In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. This Word of God incarnate was named Jesus. Jesus came to us physically so that we could receive the words of God through a person we could see and understand; our Master said, These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me (John 14:24).

Verse two speaks of Jesus girding, that is strapping on a “mighty sword.” This refers to God’s word. Hebrews chapter four says, the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Jesus is the living Word of God, and all that He does conforms to the Father’s thoughts and desires. He uses God’s Word as a surgeon uses a scalpel, cutting through the infection of sin so that healing can begin. Sometimes the treatment hurts; we get so used to sin in our lives that Jesus’ efforts to cut it away are painful and frightening. But Jesus has been called the Great Physician with good reason—when He uses methods that seem needlessly painful, we need to trust that what He is doing will remove the cancerous tumors of sin that would otherwise kill us eternally. And so we ask Him to give His “Word success” in changing our lives.

“Let Thy righteousness on us descend.” We are not saved by our own righteousness. Isaiah says (chapter 64), all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. We can only be freed from sin through the gift of Jesus’ righteousness. We receive this gift when we fall at Jesus’ feet and admit that we are sinners whose only hope lies in His merciful love for us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This is only possible because the Father laid our sins on His Son, who suffered and died as a result; Paul writes, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him the righteousness of God might be ours (2 Corinthians 5:21). The reason that Jesus was able to make satisfaction for all our sins is because in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2:9).

Verse three speaks of the “holy Comforter.” This is another name for the Holy Spirit, the divine person who brings comfort to our trembling hearts. What He gives us is His “sacred witness”, reassurance that everything the Bible says is true. Jesus said, When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard…He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me (John 16:13-14). The witness of the Spirit is this: Jesus is the Son of God, and you can have eternal life by placing your trust in Him. The witness of the Spirit creates faith in our hearts, faith that saves and faith that comforts.

“Thou who almighty art” reminds us that the Spirit is every bit as powerful as both the Father and the Son; the three are co-equal in majesty. And so, just like the Father and the Son, the Spirit can work miracles. The greatest miracle He works is the placing of faith in hearts that do not know God. Whenever the Word of God read, the Spirit is at work chipping away at stubborn unbelief, because without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). It is a terrible thing to die without faith in Jesus, because Salvation is found in no one else (Acts 4:12). Our Lord said, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life…Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son (John 3:16, 18). We don’t want anyone to miss out on the offer of eternal happiness, so in verse three we ask the Spirit to “rule in every heart.” Of course, if we are serious in making this request, we must be ready to speak of our faith with unbelievers at every opportunity and to support mission work to the best of our ability. Then we add, “and ne’er from us depart”; if we want the Spirit’s influence to live in us strongly, then we must seize every opportunity to hear God’s Word and be strengthened through the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

Verse four speaks of a great mystery: God is “One in Three.” Although Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons in the Godhead, Scripture teaches us that God is one being, not three. In Deuteronomy chapter six Moses said, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. In Deuteronomy chapter 32 the Almighty says, There is no god besides me. Yet this one God is composed of three persons, as we clearly see during the creation (Genesis chapter one): Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness"…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Notice the mixture of singular and plural. Father, Son and Holy Spirit discuss making humanity, but it is He, not they, who create Adam and Eve in His own likeness. God is simultaneously both three and one.

Confused? It’s not surprising. No one has ever been able to explain how God can be both Three and One. Yet it is the teaching of the Bible, and we believe these words because they are the Father’s thoughts given voice by the Son, which are verified as true by the witness of the Holy Spirit. We will never understand the wonder of our God until we are summoned to stand before Him, and so we make one last request in this final verse: “Thy sov’reign majesty, may we in glory see, and to eternity love and adore.” Paul writes, Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully (1 Corinthians 13:12). While in this world, sin blinds our ability to see the truth and understand God’s perfect wisdom. We won’t be completely free of our spiritual blindness until we assume new life in heaven. Only then and there will we see God as He truly is; until then we live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). But it is comforting to know that God is bigger than our limited minds can understand, because that means He is also bigger than our problems and our limitations.