But a number of modern songs get in a bit of a muddle about this. In my most recent Christianity Today column I mentioned an obvious example:

Bethel Music’s “No One Like the Lord” begins: “There is one on the throne / Jesus, holy.” It continues:

Worthy is the Lamb
Who was slain and seated on the throne …
And the elders, creatures bow,
Giving praise to him and him alone

The song is powerful, sweeping, and melodic. I am confident the songwriters believe in the Trinity and are trying to reference the glory due to God. The problem is that Revelation 4–5 say something quite different. There is indeed one who is seated on the throne, but he is clearly distinct from the Lamb who was slain (5:7). The elders and living creatures bow down and praise the one on the throne as worthy (4:9–11), and they also bow before the Lamb (5:8–14).

But the two persons are not identical. This is vital to our view of God. We do not praise the Lamb “alone”; we praise Father, Son and Spirit. Revelation chapter 5 concludes with all creation saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever!” (v. 13, emphasis added). When songs are doing the liturgical heavy lifting—as they often are in low-church evangelicalism—this is a problem.

This is not an isolated instance. Admittedly, you could read the chorus of “Who Else is Worthy?” as referring to Jesus’s worthiness to open the scroll, as opposed to his worthiness to receive worship—although I’m not sure most people singing it think that’s what they’re declaring. But you get something similar in “Worthy of It All,” which has one of my favourite choruses introduced by a puzzling line:

All the saints and angels bow before your throne
All the elders cast their crowns before the Lamb of God and sing:

You are worthy of it all
You are worthy of it all
For from you are all things
And to you are all things
You deserve the glory

The problem is that they don’t. The elders cast their crowns and sing worthy to the One seated on the throne (4:10-11), well before the Lamb has even entered the picture (5:6).

To which you might well say: who cares? Surely the members of the Trinity are not jostling between them over who gets sung to by whom? Presumably not. But it does not help us worship our Trinitarian God if we so freely confuse the persons of God and Lamb, Father and Son. Nor does it help us understand Revelation 4-5. Nor does it help us defend against Oneness theology when it pops up (as it occasionally does, and increasingly will if distinctions like this are lost in a fog of congregational confusion). And it misses out on the extraordinary Christ-exalting drama of the moment when the Lamb receives worship along with the One on the throne (5:13-14), and is then seen at the centre of the throne, shepherding his people as the Father wipes away their tears (7:17).

We don’t have to sing hymns every week (although at the moment, in or church, we do). We don’t even have to mention all the members of the Trinity each week (although I think we probably should). But as long as our songs are doing the liturgical heavy lifting in our churches - which I suspect they are for most readers (see Sacrament, Spirit and) - we should try and get the Trinity right. Here is how I concluded my column:

To some this will all sound insufferably pedantic, if not mean. To others it will sound indefensibly sloppy, if not heretical. I hope it is neither. I have no doubt that these songwriters believe in the Trinity. Yet their lyrics unintentionally undercut that belief in ways that will confuse those who sing them. And the more popular the song, the more that matters.