In our Wednesday night bible study at our local church we have been working through the letter to the Colossians. Prior to the holidays, we finished up chapter 3 and began with a verse that is often used for a proof text to defend a few different positions on church worship. To be clear, since I’ve written so much on the doctrine of the church, I’m referring to corporate worship, that is everyone together, within a local assembly or gathering. The verse is found in Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Colossians 3:16
This verse comes near the end of the letter’s section on conduct among and within the body. The author, Paul, has worked through a number of errors that were being introduced to the young Christian body and then moves towards an emphasis on setting the mind on Christ, on things above, rather than earthly and fleshly things which lead to sin. The reminder of this inner transformation from union with Christ, which was to have practical daily implications on a believer’s walk with the Lord was then to have implications among this body of believers as they communed, fellowshipped, and regularly met with one another. Love was to be what bound them all together, not division from differences. This emphasis was highlighted in Colossians 3:15 with the statement that the peace of Christ was to rule in their hearts, to which the body was called, thereby it was a call to end the internal war of the flesh and the outward overflow of that war against each other. He then arrives at our verse which is far from open acceptance or tolerance to error and sin. Instead, it is a command to again, internalize, as he writes to let the word of Christ to dwell you richly, and then the outward expression of that in teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, with the addition of singing songs, hymns, and spiritual songs with heartfelt thankfulness to God.
Now, you may have already seen the emphasis of which direction I’m going to lean in interpreting and applying this passage, but it has been used as a defense for corporate worship and how that is supposed to look as well as a passage in defense of exclusive psalmody, or the teaching that only the Psalms should be sung during corporate worship.
Without question, we need to understand that passages like these which are written to a particular geographic body of believers are primarily instructions (or corrections) for how that body is supposed to interact with one another. Too many times, we read the epistles and personalize them. Indeed, there are personal applications, as noted above to let the word of Christ dwell in you, as well as earlier to set our minds on things above, seeking Christ who sits at the right hand of the father, and putting on the new self. These are individual applications. But the epistles of the New Testament aren’t written for personal self-improvement. They are always written to a body (except when noted) with instructions of how that body is to function when they are together. So, all of the main views on this passage are correct in looking for a “corporate” application.
First, let’s deal with the most common view, that which is espoused in the ESV Study Bible in noting that from this verse, “Corporate worship has a teaching function through the lyrics of its song. This was particularly important in the oral culture of Paul’s day.” The Reformation Study Bible notes that the first half of the verse, teaching and admonishing, is part of the one-anothering function of every member ministry while it holds the three terms psalms, hymns, spiritual songs together as functionally part of a corporate worship activity which it defers to a longer article on “Worship” written by Sinclair Ferguson in which he expounds the Regulative Principle of Worship (more on this in a minute). Some have taken this passage along the route of these study bibles to support teaching from the pulpit to the pew and congregational singing. Those from the reformed tradition, ala Sinclair Ferguson, cite this verse as an example of the Regulative Principle in support of congregational singing. As a reminder the RP states that only what God has commanded may be done in worship. It is contrasted with the Normative Principle of worship which states that everything is open for worship, except what God has expressly forbidden.
There are others, a more minority group, that use this passage in the same way as those citing the Regulative Principle of worship, but they take the singing a step farther by applying it only to the Psalms, the exclusive psalmody position. This position interprets this verse, and others like Ephesians 5:19, to maintain continuity with Old Covenant worship by holding that only the Psalms may be sung in corporate worship. No modern hymns and certainly no contemporary Christian music. In doing this, they view an overlapping relationship between the three terms. That’s not entirely wrong, but the application of this to mean only the Psalms are to be sung in corporate worship remains to be determined because the context isn’t that prescriptive or exclusive, as we’ll see. This may of course bring up a question about how God was to be worshipped prior to the first Psalm, let alone before they were compiled into a psalter (5th century BC). It appears as though they were written over a number of centuries, depending on how one dates them. Prior to this there were other songs, such as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, Miriam’s song in Exodus 15, Deborah’s song in Judges 5, as well as Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and on the list goes. In fact, of the 185 recorded songs in Scripture, 150 are found in the Psalms. This list also includes the songs of both Mary and Elizabeth. 1 Kings 4:32 states that Solomon wrote 1005 songs and Revelation records for us songs that will be sung in the presence of the Lord which are called “new songs”. It is clear that just from a brief survey, there has been a wide variety of songs written and sung for the purpose of worshipping God. While the question revolves around what songs are to be sung in “corporate worship”, perhaps the real question is, What is (corporate) worship?
We will return to our subject by looking again at the cited verse, but there is one thing that we need to mention before we do. Our modern worship practices today, including pulpit and pew, and then whether or not there is singing, regardless of the type, simply cannot be read back into Scripture and then suddenly declare as normative. Said differently, we can’t look for Scriptural evidence to support practices that we already accept and embrace. Worship, in the context of a gathering of believers, has to be built and derived from Scripture laying aside assumptions, traditions, and modern practices. It’s difficult, but not impossible to do. I’ve written a number of articles on this and I suppose I have a number still left to write. In using this approach, certainly one would arrive at Colossians 3:16, or Ephesians 5:19, and ask what do we do with these. Applying these sentiments to our topic, defining what type of music is to be sung when believer’s gather for a pulpit and pew service, is perhaps looking to put icing on a cake that is yet to be baked.
Which brings us back to our passage. It is clear that the context for this entire section in Colossians is the relationship among believers in the body that were gathering together. That much we can agree on. It deals with their attitudes towards one another, certainly with the mixed background of Jew and Gentile, but also with likely influences from the Essenes which were seeking to impose certain Jewish practices onto Christianity. So when we arrive at verse 16, we know we are dealing with a passage that relates to the gathering. Next, the internal charge to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly is to have an outward expression to one another. This is a familiar phrase in the New Testament is used over 100x offering various instructions for how believers are to relate to one another in the gathering of believers. This particular usage cannot in anyway be limited to a preaching from a pulpit with teaching and admonishing passive bystanders in a pew. No, this, as with so many other one another commands must be elevated and laid at the feet of every believer within a gathering. We have a duty, an obligation, indeed a command to be an every member ministry among our fellow Christians. This is a much neglected fact, but sadly we have relegated the ministry to the experts and the teaching to a single monologue sermon. Our verse runs counter to that, or at the very minimum runs tangential to that. We are to teach and admonish one another. This is a function of the priesthood of believers.
As to our emphasis on singing. Some have translated this passage after the use of teaching to either be and by singing or through singing. Either way, there is an inherent teaching element that is presupposed in singing. However, Paul is not laying out specific regulative practices for corporate worship, though he may be providing general guidelines, particularly as it relates to the one-anothering. If we go back and look at the examples of songs throughout Scripture we would find that they are instructive and almost always come after a work of God. This shouldn’t be surprising as the work of God in our lives should bring us to worship. Songs were not sung to prop up or prepare for a sermon. They weren’t sung to generate false emotion before the next act. They also certainly weren’t sung drudginly. They were sung as praise with thanksgiving in the heart for the work that God had done and was doing. They were a direct response back to God, just as prayer would be, having a vertical aspect, but sung in the presence of others so as to instruct, a horizontal aspect. What has the Lord done for you? How can you express that? In a song, to the Lord, in the presence of others.
In closing, before we can really even begin to apply this passage to our gatherings and fully embrace the meaning that Paul is intending here, and it’s not a worship leader, worship/praise band, vocalist or special performer, we must recapture the meaning and practice of one-anothering in the body when we gather together. We must once again return to every member ministry in which the gifts God has given each of us are allowed to be used in the way that He intended. The shackles of passivity must be shaken off and the ease, indeed laziness, of allowing a select few to “do the ministry” must be reexamined.
May we truly be churches that are semper reformanda, always reforming.
