A Theology of Singing (Colossians 3:16)

The Divine Liturgy Pt. 4 – A Theology of Singing
Sunday, April 20^th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Colossians 3:16

Prayer

O Father, we thank You for the new life you have given us in Christ. Teach us to put off the old man with his sinful ways and put on the new, as elect of God, holy and beloved. We ask for your merciful Spirit to be among us now, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

Every Lord’s Day we sing ten songs in our worship service. Ten. And I think, that’s a lot of singing because my voice is usually tired by the end (or depending on the songs sometimes halfway through). But then add to those ten songs our monthly Psalm Sing. On the first Sunday of every month, we sing ten songs here in the service, and then we go over to the Fellowship Hall and Joe teaches us to sing some new songs, we sing old favorites, and sometimes we even try to learn parts (emphasis on the try)!

• Recently the teenagers and the children have decided that all this singing is not enough, and so they have requested (and been given permission) to have another Psalm Sing of their own. And so these Psalty Youngbloods, as they are called, meet in the sanctuary after service and sing some more.
• Add to that also the CKA school choir, their morning Capella, the men’s Reformation Roundtable, and even our Ladies Fellowship has some singing at it. When the elders gather every Tuesday morning for our elder meeting we begin with a song.
• Why all this singing? Why so much of it? The answer is: Because we are Christians. And Christians are the people who have resurrection hope. We were dead and now we are alive. And so really the question ought to be: How can we not sing given all that God in Christ has done for us?!
  • It says in 1 Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
  • It says in Psalm 30:11-12, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, To the end [for the purpose] that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.”
• And so, when God’s mercy grabbed hold of you in your pitiful miserable state, His mercy begot you again to a living hope. And so for the Christian, the question is not Why all this singing?, the question is, How can we not sing given all that God has done for us in the past, is doing for us in the present, and has promised to do for us in the future?
  • It says in 2 Peter 1:3, “According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.”
  • Paul says in Romans 8:32, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
  • So when you have been given and promised everything good in the whole universe, and when you have the Supreme Good in whom all other goods live and move and have their being, you cannot help but sing to the Lord with joy and thanksgiving and praise.
  • And so, because singing is such an essential element of our worship, and an essential quality of the Christian life, it is most fitting that on this Resurrection Easter Sunday, as we are in the middle of our series on worship and liturgy, I give to you A Theology of Singing. The what, the why, and the how of singing Psalms unto the Lord.

Outline

• 1. First, I will answer the question What is singing? And more specifically the singing of Psalms.
• 2. Second, we’ll consider the Why of Psalm Singing, why do we prioritize the singing of Scripture and the Psalter instead of other songs we might sing.
• 3. Third, we’ll consider the How of Psalm Singing. In what manner does Scripture tell us to sing psalms unto the Lord?

Question #1 – What is singing?

• At the most basic level, singing is glorified speech. It is words elevated and set to music.
  • And so just as our words when directed to God are called prayer. So also, music and singing that is directed to God is prayer glorified, prayer set to music.
  • St. Thomas defines a song as “the exultation of a mind, dwelling on things eternal, breaking forth aloud.” So just as prayer is the ascent of the mind to God, so singing is the ascent of the mind, together with music, breaking forth in praise.
  • David sings in Psalm 141:2, “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense.” And so to apply this image to singing, our words are like the spices, and the music and singing is like the fire that causes those spices to ascend to God as a pleasing fragrance.
• Now recall from last week that our whole worship service is a back-and-forth dialog between God and man, between Christ and the Church, between Minister and Congregation. And since all our worship is initiated by God and a response to what God does first, that means God is a singing God. God is singing to us as we are singing to Him. Indeed, this is what the Scriptures explicitly tell us.
  • God says in Zephaniah 3:14, 17, “Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; Be glad and rejoice with all the heart…The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”
  • Likewise in Hebrews 2:11-12, the risen Lord Jesus is identified as the cantor (or Chief Musician) in the church. It says, “For both he that sanctifieth [referring to Christ] and they who are sanctified [you and I] are all of one: for which cause he [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them brethren, Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.”
  • And so Jesus Christ is the one who sings to his brothers within the congregation, and we are his instruments. And so just as it is Christ who preaches through the minister, so also it is Christ who is singing through our Chief Musician, and in all who respond to his voice “in Christ.”
• Earlier in Hebrews 1:3, it says that Christ is “the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of his person, and [he is] upholding all things by the word of his power.” And so if singing is words glorified, and Christ is the word of God and the Lord of Glory, it is most reasonable to imagine that it is God’s singing that is presently upholding all things in their being. The whole cosmos has been formed by the divine logos, and that logos is the glorified and sung Word from the Father.
  • It is interesting that both C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, Christian authors who created fictional worlds, Narnia and Middle-Earth respectively, both describe the creation of their worlds as being sung into existence.
    • Tolkien describes this I think very beautifully in the Silmarillion where the Ainur-Holy Ones (angels) sing the themes that Iluvatar-The One (God) assigns to them. And then evil comes when Melkor (the chief of the Ainur), starts to interweave his own thoughts and ideas into the music that was assigned to him. And so evil is described as a kind of musical discord between angelic beings, it is a war of sounds. And the people who are good are those who know how to sing their part assigned by the Creator. They are participating in the music if God.
    • That is very helpful way (I find) of thinking about singing. It is learning to sing in tune with the angels, rather than following the discord of the devil.
  • God says to Job at the great climax of that book, Job 38:4-7, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
    • And so if God says there was singing from the angels at creation, when the foundations of the earth were laid, it should not surprise us that the same Spirit that created the world, is now recreating us through singing.
    • Recall that prayer is how our will becomes conformed to God’s will (not my will but Yours be done). And therefore, glorified prayer, singing, is where we say in essence, “not my song, but Yours be sung.” Conform the melody and music of my heart to Yours O God. Tune my heart to sing thy praise.
• Summary: So singing the psalms is prayer glorified, it is a re-creative, regenerative action of God’s indwelling Word and Spirit. Moreover, singing is how we participate in God making all things new. We sing God’s thoughts after Him.
• So if that is the what of singing, let us consider further the content of our singing, why do we sing the psalms more than anything else?

Questions #2 – Why sing the psalms?

Colossians 3:16
¹⁶Let 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.

Ephesians 5:18-19
¹⁸And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
¹⁹Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

• Notice there is this triad in both Ephesians and Colossians of, “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” And while you might be tempted to think that the psalms refers to the 150 Psalms, and then hymns refers to Christian hymns like Amazing Grace, and then spiritual songs refers to, I don’t know, Bethel, Hillsong, modern worship music, that simply cannot be what either of these texts are talking about, and this can be proved with great certainty.
  • First of all, note that Paul says in Colossians 3:16, “let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly” and then the rest of the verse is an explanation of how the Word of Christ gets inside of us, it is by singing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
  • And so whatever this triad refers to, it has to be inspired by God such that it can be called “the Word of Christ.” In other words, you have to find these songs in either the Old or New Testament.
    • Now Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians while imprisoned in Rome in AD 60, about 30 years after Christ’s resurrection. And yet you will notice that in the New Testament, there is no new book of songs for us to sing. There is no book in the New Testament called, “Hymns for Christians and Spiritual Songs.” And so Paul has to be referring to the Jewish Psalter which the Colossians could actually sing, and not to songs that are yet to be written for another 1800 years.
  • Indeed, we find within the Old Testament book of Psalms, the same three Greek words that Paul uses, ψαλμοῖς (psalms), ὕμνοις (hymns), and ᾠδαῖς (odes/spiritual songs), in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Psalter.
    • To give you just one example, the heading of Psalm 76 reads in English, “To the Chief Musician. On Stringed Instruments. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.”
    • In the Greek translation of Psalm 76, it says: “Εἰς τὸ τέλος, ἐν ὕμνοις, ψαλμὸς τῷ Ασαφ, ᾠδὴ πρὸς τὸν Ἀσσύριον” Literally, “to the end, in hymns, a psalm of Asaph, a song against Assyria.”
    • So for Greek speaking Christians (like the Colossians and Ephesians) who used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Psalter, here in Psalm 76 we have what is called, “a psalm, hymn, and spiritual song.” And that is what Paul is commanding them to sing.
      • Now it is not for redundancy that these different titles are used, psalm, hymn and spiritual song. Each of those words emphasizes or signifies something different.
      • For example, it is most likely that a Psalm refers to song that is to set to the psaltery, which was a stringed instrument.  
        • For example, it says in Psalm 81:2, “Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, The pleasant harp with the psaltery.” And Psalm 33:2 says, “Praise the Lord with harp: Sing unto him with the psaltery, an instrument of ten strings.”
        • And because music set to the Psaltery is most common and prominent, the whole book became known as the Book of Psalms, as Peter calls it in Acts 1:20.
        • So a “psalm” in the most proper and narrow sense is a song set to the psaltery, an instrument.
      • A hymn on the other hand most likely refers to a song of praise. So while “psalm” signifies the music or instrument that accompanies the words, a “hymn” signifies the contents or mood of the song, which is to emphasize praise of God.
        • For example in Psalm 40:3 it says, “He has put a new song in my mouth—Praise to our God.” And the Greek psalter translates the Hebrew word for “Praise” (תְּהִלָּה) as “hymn” (ὕμνον).
        • In the gospels we read that Jesus and the disciples, “sung an hymn” together after Passover meal, before going to the Mount of Olives (Matt. 26:30). Most commentators think that what they sang was either the Hallel/Praise songs of Psalm 113-118, or Psalm 145, which is called, “A Praise of David,” and then goes on to extol God as King.
      • As for a “spiritual song/ode,” this most likely refers to a song of rejoicing in future hope, or one that has elements of exhortation and history as its content.
        • For example, the title of Psalm 66 is “To the chief Musician, A Song. A Psalm. (Εἰς τὸ τέλος, ᾠδὴ ψαλμοῦ).
        • Psalm 92 is also a Song/Psalm. It says, “A Psalm. A Song (Ψαλμὸς ᾠδῆς) for the Sabbath Day. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, And Your faithfulness every night, On an instrument of ten strings, On the lute, And on the harp, With harmonious sound.”
• So just as we have different categories in English to organize the different songs we sing according to mood, occasion, tempo, instrument, so also the Psalter itself has its own musical instruction for instruments, occasion, content, and the spirit in which that song is to be sung.
  • So that is the textual-biblical reason for why we sing so many Psalms in our worship service, because God tells us to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and that is a reference to what we call The Book of Psalms.
  • However, there is another reason for us singing the Psalms, and that is simply that the Psalms are superior to anything that you or I could ever come up with from our own heads.
    • Unless you want to claim divine inspiration equal to the Prophets and Apostles, God’s Word is always going to win out because He wrote the Psalms, He inspired the Scriptures, and therefore whatever we sing ought to be as close to Scripture and as faithful to Scripture as can be.
    • For most of the history of the church, this looked like chanting the Psalms straight of the Bible, rather than singing metrical versions that rhyme, because in order to make most Psalms rhyme, you have to tweak the translation a little bit. Which is okay, and we could settle for that, but if we want to grow and mature in our singing of God’s Word to one another, we need more through-composed songs that are us singing straight Scripture.
• So those are two major reasons for why we sing the Psalms, or at least songs taken straight from the Bible (The Lord’s Prayer, The Sanctus, etc.), because 1) God wrote them and therefore they are superior to anything we could write, and 2) God commands the church to sing these songs.
  • And just to illustrate this point about God being a better songwriter than us, consider Psalm 15.
  • We recently learned a through-composed version of this Psalm (Lord, who may abide in Your tabernacle), and what this song teaches is that you cannot dwell with God if you backbite with your tongue, if you do evil to your neighbor, or put out your money at usury.
  • Now who amongst would ever think to write a song and include a line about good lending practices in it, not taking interest on a charitable loan. None of us! And now that we learned this song, I get to hear my 4-year-old singing about usury. “God’s ways are not our ways” indeed!
• And this leads us to the reasons Paul gives in Colossians for why sing the Psalms in particular, he says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs…”
  • So singing is not only prayer, and for the expression and stirring up of our own private devotion, it is also for teaching and correcting one another.
  • When we sing the psalms, we are singing to God, yes, but we are also singing to one another. God does not need to be reminded of what He wrote down in His Word (he did not forget), but we need to be reminded, we need to be taught, we need to be admonished.
  • And the way that God says teaching and correction happens within the church, is by us living in the Spirit, with the Word of Christ dwelling within us, using psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
• And so for good reason, the church has found the Psalter to contain the entirety of Christian doctrine. Everything in theology is in the Psalter: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, Consummation, Christ, Sacraments, Morals, History, Comfort, Grief, Joy, Sorrow, the whole range of possible human emotions, everything is in the Psalms. Theologians call the Psalter, the Bible in miniature.
  • So add to the fact that God told us to sing psalms to one another, that all that we need for life and godliness is found in them.
  • If you only had one book of the Bible that you could bring with you on a desert island, this is the one to bring. Maybe one of the gospels, but the Psalms are longer.
  • Third and finally…

Question #3 – How should we sing the Psalms?

• Paul says in Colossians, “singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” And in Ephesians, “singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.
• And so while God tells us elsewhere to “sing with understanding” (Ps. 47:7), and to “play skillfully” (Ps. 33:3), more important than musical skill, or the ability to sing well, is that your singing is done with grace in your heart.
• And that means having God Himself as the Soul of your soul and the Life of your life, who animates your words, actions, and desires.
  • Jesus rebukes those who are hypocrites in their worship saying, “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me” (Matt. 15:8).
• And so if you want to get near to God, if you want your heart near to His, then begin all of your prayers and singing with gratitude.
  • Right before Paul tells the Colossians to sing to one another he says, “be thankful” (Col. 3:15).
  • In Ephesians, he appends thanksgiving directly to the singing when he says, “making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:19-20). And then immediately following is the charge for wives to submit and husbands to love, like Christ and the Church.
    • In other words, a marriage that is abundant with prayer and singing to God is a marriage where you will find respect and submission, love and sacrifice.
    • So husbands are you leading your home by praying and singing? Wives are you submitting and following the direction your husband is leading?
    • If not, you are humming the devil’s tune, you are subverting the beauty and harmony God intends for your marriage.
    • We have a motto in our church that if you cannot sing good then sing loud. Where did we get that motto? From these verses in Paul where he prioritizes grace in the heart over skill with the voice.
    • Whatever the sounds we are making, we aspire to be good and in tune and pleasant, but God sees the disposition of your heart, and he knows whether the songs you are singing are hypocrisy and lies, or whether they proceed from a humble and willing heart.
  • And so if you want grace to reside within you, always begin with thanksgiving. This is the essential how of singing, and the soil in which all the other fruits of the spirit grow.
    • Psalm 136 says, “O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good, for his mercy endureth forever.”
    • Psalm 100:4 says, “Be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
    • Psalm 119 declares, “Seven times a day do I praise thee Because of thy righteous judgments.”
      • And then it goes on to list some of the gracious benefits that follow: “Great peace have they which love thy law: And nothing shall offend them. Lord, I have hoped for thy salvation, And done thy commandments. My soul hath kept thy testimonies; And I love them exceedingly… I have longed for thy salvation, O Lord; And thy law is my delight. Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; And let thy judgments help me. (Ps. 119:164-166, 174-175).

Conclusion

Why do we sing the psalms with grace and thanksgiving?

• Because we have longed for God’s salvation, and have received it through Christ.
• And so remember the resurrection hope and inheritance (the all things) into which you were reborn. And then join the song of heaven, the song of new creation, the song of God Himself, who concludes His inspired songbook saying in Psalm 150:6, “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.”
• So may we! In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.