This beautiful hymn is a Trinitarian hymn; that is, it gives praise to the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Holy Trinity are coequal and coeternal. For a very in-depth description of the mystery that surrounds the Holy Trinity of the One, True Triune God, read the “Athanasian Creed.” That creed scrapes the surface of our understanding of the Holy Trinity as God has revealed Himself to us in His Holy Scriptures.
In 1783, Reginald Heber was born in the city of Cheshire, England. His parents were fairly well-to-do and this allowed him to receive a very high-end education. Like many, Heber could have taken his upbringing for granted, but he did not. For him, failing in school would have been equivalent to telling God that His gifts to him were undesirable. Instead, Heber worked hard and learned a great appreciation for God’s gifts to himself. He received top marks throughout his schooling.
Heber eventually was ordained into the Anglican Church as a pastor in the small town of Hodnet, England. There, he had an outstanding reputation with his congregation for two things in particular: being a devout man of God and being a gifted poet. Those two criteria are typically the perfect recipe for creating legendary hymns.
In 1823, at only 40 years old, Heber was called to serve in India. His title was advanced to “Bishop of Calcutta,” which made him the leader over missions in India, the Island of Ceylon, and all of Australia; a daunting task for most. While fulfilling this role, Heber worked diligently, refusing to squander his gifts of work ethic from God. One of his chief ambitions was to build a seminary for local clergymen in order to provide the area ministers long after he would be gone. He also traveled across India spreading the Gospel message to all who would hear it.
Over the years, the extreme obligation, Heber’s concentrated response to it, and the intense climate began to wear down his health, yet he never yielded in his efforts. He gave such effort, that one Sunday, right after delivering an outdoor sermon to a large group of Indians, Heber dropped dead, most likely due to heatstroke.
Even in his death, however, Heber’s work for the Kingdom of God carried on. During his time at his small church in Hodnet, apparently, he had written a number of hymns, yet never sought publication for any of them. After Heber’s death, his wife saw the beauty in her husband’s work and put a collection of her his hymns together and had them published. The collection numbered 57 hymns! Even more, all of them are still being used today, including today’s song: “Holy, Holy, Holy.”
This hymn praises each person of the Trinity as “Holy” – God the Father is Holy, God the Son is Holy, God the Holy Spirit is Holy – Holy, Holy, Holy! The lyrics of this beautiful hymn speak for themselves. They proclaim the Lord Almighty’s power and might, as well as His unfailing love for us. The hymn is simple, yet it exclaims from the mountaintops that the Lord Almighty is HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! The melody that the hymn is set to is also simple, yet amazingly beautiful. And Audrey Assad does a great job singing her rendition of this hymn.
In the English language, when we want to emphasize the importance of something, we use exclamation points and all capital letters. In Scripture, the emphasis is delivered with repetition as well. For example, whenever Jesus would say “truly, truly,” it was like He was highlighting something that is very important for us to remember. Or when Jews would greet one another with “shalom shalom,” it didn’t just mean “peace to you,” it meant “perfect peace to you.”
So, if to repeat something twice in Scripture is the equivalent of an exclamation point in English, to repeat it three times would be equivalent to waving your arms and jumping up and down, screaming the emphasis. Out of all of God’s attributes revealed to us in Scripture, there is only one in the Bible where the attribute is repeated three times: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8 ESV). What John was portraying in that verse, was that all three coequal and coeternal persons of the Holy Trinity are indeed perfectly and emphatically holy.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Philip Frank
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