Loving the Lord through the Liturgy
In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (#2)
© 2006 Daniel R. Hyde

What is the first impression we want to give to the world when they worship with us? All too often, we ask, “What is the first thing a visitor will think about us?” Yet, what if we asked, “What is the first impression people get of God?”

Christian Worship
The first impression the baptismal words of Jesus give is that our worship is Christian. The church is told whom they worship and the world is told whom they must worship – the one true, Triune God. Jesus commanded his apostles to baptize the nations “in the name” (singular) of God. The great confession of the people of God in the Old Testament what that “the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4). In baptism “the honorable name” of God is invoked upon us (James 2:7), yet Jesus says that this name is the name “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The one is three, and the three are one. Our worship is Christian, which means it is Trinitarian. This means that from the very outset of worship we are distinguishing our worship of the Triune God from every other type of false worship of false gods, for we worship God the Father, through the Son, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Son, said that the Father was to be worshipped “in spirit,” that is, in the Holy Spirit (John 4:22-24), while Paul describes the new society of the church as having access to the Father, through Christ, in the Spirit (Eph. 2:18). In this way, our Triune God is declared to be the very heart of our worship service. As the Athanasian Creed says so poetically in article 3, “And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” Also, in article 27, “So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.”

Holy Ground
The opening words also communicate reverence and holiness. When Jesus originally spoke these words, he was commissioning his apostles to preach and baptize. He did this, reminding them that “all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). When these words are pronounced, our risen and ascended Savior claims the
day, time, space, and people for his own. In biblical terms, he is “placing his name ‘there’” (Deut. 12:5, 11, 21, 14:23, 24, 16:2, 6, 11, 26:2). Since we are “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16), the Lord places his name upon us, constituting us as his kingdom. This is why our worship makes unbelievers uncomfortable in worship – they are not able to stand before our holy and majestic Savior. Nevertheless, it is precisely because our worship emphasizes the holiness and authority of Christ that some may fall on their faces and glorify God with us (1 Cor. 14).

A Daily Baptism
In baptism, God dramatically shows us that he has made us alive by putting us to death and has taken off our worn and filthy clothes of self-righteousness and has clothed us in the pure white robe of Christ’s righteousness (Rom 6:3-4; Gal. 3:27). The baptismal words of Jesus teach us that the Christian life is a continual learning of this. The Christian life, then, never gets beyond our baptism. This is what Paul tells us in Romans 6 when he says that since we have died and risen with Christ in baptism, we must continue to die to self and rise by serving God in the Spirit. Baptism is a lifelong call to “forsake the world, crucify our old nature, and walk in a godly life” since “this life…is nothing but a constant death” (Baptism of Infants, Form Number 1).

So what is the first impression we want the world to get of God when they worship with us? That God is Triune, that God is holy, and that we must come to him on his terms, that is, through Christ alone and in the power of the Spirit. And may we continue all our life to respond to the opening words with the corporate “amen,” as we ask our Triune God to graciously lead us in the lifelong learning and living out of our baptism.