Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col 3:16)Now, was that what you expected? I ask because it's not what I normally experience. Normally we sing to worship, we sing to express our love for God, we even sing to feel good toward God, but to sing to teach and admonish? That's not what we normally do. I mean, how often does the person leading the singing teach and admonish in that singing? That just isn't the norm.
Notice, however, that the notion of teaching and admonishing with music isn't a standalone idea. The text is in the midst of two other ideas.
First, it is premised on an ongoing condition: "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you." Does that describe your experience? Does God's Word dwell in you? Richly? You see, this is the premise. Conditioned on this mode of operation -- the rich indwelling of the Word -- it makes perfect sense that our singing and our lives would be one of teaching and admonishing. We would want to use every tool available to share the Word that dwells in us, and singing would be an excellent one.
There is a second notion here. This singing includes "singing with thankfulness in your hearts." Okay, so the idea is to teach and admonish with songs and hymns and spiritual songs. The premise of this process is that we have the word of Christ richly indwelling our lives. The result of this process is gratitude.
Does this describe you? I know I fall short. I think we -- you and I -- need to make this a focus, a priority. Our use of music should primarily be for the purpose of teaching and admonishing. That requires applying reason to our singing. What reason? The reason derived from the Word living in us. The more we do that, the more we sing with God's purpose. To what end? To be grateful. So that "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." (Col 3:17) Or something like that.
5 comments:
I believe that we are teaching and admonishing in song every Sunday, just not intentionally. Whenever I sing in church, I'm considering the lyrics. And what the lyrics frequently say, reflect how that church believes. Do they dress nice and teach about Scripture, you're likely to find hymns praising God for who He is. Do they come as they are and teach about something in daily life from maybe one passage, or sentence, or fragment of a verse. You'll likely find worship songs that praise God for loving us and making us feel nice. We're so inundated by music in our daily lives that we've forgotten to be critical about what we're listening to. But listen closely to the music in your church and you'll hear what they're trying to teach.
You're saying we are teaching and admonishing all the time, either actively or passively?
Active, passive, positive, negative. The way we conduct our church services is teaching us one thing or another. That's why it's so important to pay attention to all of it. The pastor may be teaching Good things, but the rest of the service could be teaching something else. I think too many people just blindly "feel God" during the music without realizing what they're actually saying.
Such clinical descriptions of an otherwise spiritual expression/experience, is like trying to explain the punch line of a joke. If you need to explain it, the whole point is lost. you just don't get it...
However, if the spiritual isn't rational, then it's not good, and easily discarded like much of modern "Christianity".
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