Praise in the Life of the Church

There are many ways by which believers can praise God together: we do so through the reading and preaching of the word of God, and we do it together in prayer.  But perhaps the most obvious way the church praises God together is in song, and few verses speak more directly to this than Ephesians 5:19.  And it tells us that this is to be done in the context of community. For we are to sing to one another (the KJV “speaking to yourselves,” although a possible translation, is not quite on the mark; it ought to be translated, as it is in most versions, “speaking to each other”). This is what we want to consider briefly.

What then does this verse teach us about corporate praise? First of all, it teaches us something about the content of the music the church sings. Every one of the words that Paul uses – psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs – were used to describe the Old Testament Psalms in the Septuagint, often in the titles of the psalms. Also, the word translated “making melody” in the KJV literally means “psalming,” and is an unmistakable reference to the Old Testament practice of singing the Psalms. Now, I don’t think, as some do, that this means the church should only sing the Psalms. But it does point to the Psalms as a model for the kind of songs the NT church is to sing.

And when we look to the Psalms, we see that they were filled with doctrinal content as to the character of God and His redemptive purposes. They were not light and airy compositions with little or no doctrinal substance. Some of the very best descriptions of the nature and attributes of God come from the Psalms (take, for example, Psalm 145). The hymns that we sing today therefore need to have words that teach us something about God, that point our hearts and minds to truths about him. We will never worship God in spirit unless we also worship Him in truth. The most important thing is not whether a particular melody moves the soul, but whether the words which are carried upon the melody move the soul and heart. They need to point us to the greatness of our God, just like the Psalms of old. Again, just because a song moves you, does not mean it is worthy of the corporate worship of the church. You need to look at the lyrics. Do they point you to the God of the Bible? Do they teach you something about him? Do they reorient your heart toward God: Father, Son, and Spirit?

Another thing instructive about the Psalms is the different ways they do this. Many of the Psalms are prayers which are sung directly to the Lord. We ought therefore to sing songs just like that. At the same time, there are also many Psalms (like Psalm 78) which are instructional and are directed to the people of the Lord. As the apostle put it, we sing to the Lord, and we sing to each other. There ought to be a sense in which truth is being preached to us when we lift up our voices in song. In this connection, the parallel passage in Colossians is enlightening: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord” (Col. 3:16). Here “teaching and admonishing” has replaced “speaking” in Eph. 5:19. By the songs we sing, we need to be teaching each other Biblical truth.

Another thing that I think is instructive about the comparison with the Psalms, is that the Psalms encompass the full range of human emotion, and I think we ought to allow space in our singing together for just that. In other words, if every song that the congregation sings together supposes that they are all on the mountain top with no worries, then something is wrong. There ought to be place for hymns like Psalm 42: “O why art thou cast down my soul/ and why so troubled shouldst thou be/ hope thou in God and him extol/ who gives his saving help to thee.”  You may not be lamenting but someone else in the church may be, and it will not hurt you to sing a song that expresses the lament of their heart – after all, we are to weep with those who weep, and we can do this in song just as well as we can do it with tears. Psalm 88:18 sits right beside Psalm 89:1 in the canon, and I thank God for that.

One may ask in this connection whether these words describe also the mode of our singing. Does the Bible prescribe one particular way to do this? The Psalms were clearly sung with musical accompaniment, and had the Divine sanction for the practice (see 2 Chron. 29:25). In fact, the very word “psalm” originally had reference to the sound of a stringed instrument. So an argument could be made that the very language of the apostle supposes that our hymns should be sung with musical accompaniment. However, by the time of the apostles, it could also just refer to a hymn of praise, whether accompanied by musical instruments or not (cf. Jam. 5:13). So it may be impossible to be dogmatic either way from the language of this verse.

That being said, it is interesting that the early church – the church of the first four centuries – did not look with favor upon the idea of using musical instruments in the church. The church fathers virtually unanimously voted in favor of acapella singing in the church. They felt that using musical accompaniment during worship was too Old Testament on the one hand and Pagan on the other. In other words, they wanted to distinguish the practice of the Christian church from the practice of the Jewish synagogue and the Pagan temple, and so they banned musical instruments altogether.  Now this is not a Biblical argument, and the early church clearly got some things wrong. We don’t want to follow them blindly. But it ought to give us pause when in our day musical instruments are thought to be absolutely essential to worship and to remember that the early church wouldn’t use them at all and it did just fine!

Personally, I think there are some real dangers with introducing musical instruments of which we should be aware. One of the dangers is drowning out the voice of the people and turning the worship time into a concert. The dynamic of Christian worship ought to be congregational, and the use of musical instruments ought to support this, not replace it. But the introduction of musical instruments often ends up eclipsing the singing of the congregation, and this is extremely unfortunate (even if the singing is bad!). The apostle is describing corporate, not private, worship, and our worship time ought to reflect that.

However, whether this verse describes a mode of worship that uses musical instruments or not, we do need to note that an essential element to true worship is singing with the heart: “singing and psalming in your heart to the Lord.” Whether or not musical instruments accompany our voices, the fact of the matter is that we are to worship God in our singing, and the only way we can truly do this is if our hearts accompany the sound. We do not want to be counted among those who worship God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him. It ought to be impossible to remain unmoved when singing truth to God and about the God of our salvation.

There are many things we could say about praise in the life of the church.  Let us end with the observation that corporate praise is the result of being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) who mediates to us the presence of the risen Christ.  Those who know the Lord in the fulness of His glory will not only want to praise Him in private, but will want to praise Him in the congregation of the saints.  It is in a real sense the completion and overflow of our joy in Him.