Colossians 3:16; Psalm 148 – Singing Praise
One way in which the teaching and admonishing that is required may be carried out, is through the enthusiastic, thankful singing praise to God. It should be quite evident that what has gone before will clearly restrict what is thus to be used for this teaching and admonishing through singing praise, to ‘the Word of Christ’. Paul says ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly …as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs’.
The fact that many people today use this verse to justify the singing in worship of merely human compositions, does not affect the clear teaching of the verse. It is more important to ask what those words meant to Paul and to the early church.
The Bible of the early church was the Septuagint (a Greek version of the OT) and in that version, the three terms ‘psalms, hymns and songs’ were all used to refer to the 150 psalms. Sixty-seven of the psalms are called ‘psalms’, six are called ‘hymns’ and thirty-five are called ‘songs’. Not only so, twelve of the psalms use both ‘psalm’ and ‘song’, two have ‘psalm’ and ‘hymn’, and the seventy-sixth psalm uses all three, ‘psalm’, ‘hymn’ and ‘song’ in its title. When Paul used these terms he would have been fully aware of their use in the Septuagint and he would not have wanted to create confusion by referring to something else without giving a full explanation.
Not only were these three terms used for the Psalms, the word ‘spiritual’ literally means ‘given by the spirit’, and that can only refer to Scripture. Although the adjective ‘spiritual’ may seem to relate only to ‘songs’, it can, quite legitimately be applied to all three terms.
So the believer is to praise God with thankful heart, using the very words that God has given in the Psalms.
Questions
- How can you use the psalms more effectively in your personal, family and church life?
Prayer Points
- Give thanks that God has given us the Psalms.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.