Daily Devotional

In Colossians 3:16, the Apostle Paul writes,
“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.”

Is this a command? Yes.
● We are commanded to use songs to teach the Word of God to the church.
● We are commanded to admonish the church through songs.

While there can be disagreement from church to church on how to go about worshiping, most Christian churches agree that the primary purpose of singing in church is to worship and praise the Lord.

Occasionally we hear of other recommended purposes, like “preparing our hearts for the preaching of the Word”, or “drawing sinners to God.” While both of these things will happen when a church’s music program is healthy, both lack Scripture support as primary purposes.

That’s why I like Colossians 3:16. Paul gives us a two-fold purpose for music in the church.

As praise to God “...singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
When we sing in church, the goal is to focus on God, worshiping Him for who He is, and thanking Him for what He has done. And when we do that together on Sunday mornings, we are having fellowship, agreeing on the things we love about God, and thanking Him for what He has done for us.

Teaching and admonishing one another “...with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,” This means, as we are singing praise to God with hearts of thankfulness, we are also being taught God’s Word and being challenged to live it. Teaching and admonishing is one of the purposes of the New Testament church, and our music must follow this purpose. Music proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ. And music clarifies biblical truths.

And when done well, the worship service should flow according to the sermon topic for the morning. The songs we sing before the sermon should set-up the sermon topic and applications from God’s Word. And the song we sing after the sermon should be a response to the sermon topic. At Campus Bible Church, our worship leaders do an amazing job at this.

While music in the church can “prepare our hearts for preaching” , it is not its primary purpose. Singing in the church should be another way of making known God’s Word to the listener/singer.

And the purpose of music is not just to “draw sinners to God, ” but rather to admonish both the sinner and the born again Christian. While there will be times that our music will appeal to unbelievers, that is not the primary purpose. Hopefully unbelievers will come to our services and appreciate how well done our music is. And they will see how excited we are to sing our praise to God, and declare God’s Word in song. And through that will desire the joy we have.

Living a life of faith in Christ, even in difficult times, leads us to express our joy in song as we worship our great God. And as we sing these songs we are being warned and admonished from the Word of God to live our lives in a way that everything we say and do is an expression of worship of God.

New American Standard Bible (NASB)
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