Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
World without end! Amen, Amen!

It promised to be a remarkable occasion from the first day. Hundreds of bishops, accompanied by elders, deacons and laymen, flocked into the grand hall in the lakeside city of Nicaea. After nearly three centuries of persecution, the representatives of churches from all over the empire were able to assemble without fear of death. Emperor Constantine, who had recently professed conversion to Christianity, entered the hall dressed in his finest robes and declared the great council officially opened. There were many minor discussions scheduled for debate, but the issue at hand was the doctrine of an Alexandrian monk named Arius. His teachings had spread through the eastern church like wildfire, bringing dissension and conflict among the hundreds of churches in the region.

At stake was the very heart of the Christian faith: the deity of Christ. Arius insisted that Christ was the first created being of God and the he was subject to the Father, who was the only true, eternal God. Christ did not exist from eternity past, Arius argued, but was begotten by the Father and sent into the world as the Logos, the message of the gospel but not divine himself. This teaching was a strike at the very heart of Christianity: that Christ and the Father were one in perfect union, along with the Holy Spirit. That Christ was God manifest in the flesh and eternally coexistent with the Father. After a month of debate the Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and his assistant, the elder Athanasius, arguing from the New Testament, and especially the four gospels that were present at the council as hand copied codices, prevailed in their defense of the divinity of Christ and the eternal existence of the Holy Trinity. The council overwhelmingly voted to condemn Arius as a heretic and his teachings as heresy and formed the Nicene Creed, which has formed the basis for all Christian belief in the Trinity for the last seventeen hundred years.

In this context we consider one of the oldest hymns known to the Christian church, the Gloria Patri. The hymn, written in Greek, has its origins dated as far back as the second century by many scholars. It is Trinitarian in nature and referred to in many high church liturgies as the lesser doxology. The Greek word kai, meaning and, is used between the three persons of the Trinity, showing their coequal status.

Glory be to the Father and (kai)to the Son and (kai)to the Holy Ghost.

Doxa, the Greek word for glory, is the first word of the hymn and the basis for our word doxology. God in his triune state demands glory from his created beings. All creation gives glory to God except for rebellious man. Man, by nature, seeks his own glory and denies God, who alone deserves glory, his proper worship and praise. In Numbers 14:21 God, speaking to Moses, says “But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD.”proclaiming that his creation will be filled with his sovereign presence. Those who worshiped God truly through the entire Old Testament gave glory to God. In the New Testament, John begins his gospel in chapter 1 by stating “and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.”A true Christian, one who has Holy Spirit dwelling within him, desires that everything he does brings glory to God. The answer to the question “What is the chief end of man?” in the Westminster catechism is “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” The chief duty of a Christian is to glorify God; thus the hymn begins giving glory to the three persons of the Godhead.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

From the beginning of earth God has ruled over the universe and his creation in sovereign power. In the beginning He spoke the world into the existence, His decree governs every part of life. As it was in the beginning, God on his throne ruling over all, is now in our time the same as it was thousands of years ago. God is immutable, he does not change and his power has not diminished through the years. As He was and is sovereign over all, so shall he ever be throughout all eternity.

World without end, Amen, Amen.

Phrase taken directly from Ephesians 3:21 “Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”The church is not a temporal institution as all other things are, it is an eternal institution that will bring glory to God forever. This glory is by Christ Jesus and his sacrifice for the church. The kingdom of God, through his church, is a world that will never end for, when this earth passes, the church will continue as the bride of Christ in the new heaven and new earth. It is a world without end and as the word Amen signifies, so be it!