Faith in song
Text: Philippians 2:5–11
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Palm Sunday is a day with a lot of singing. Our reading from Philippians is actually an ancient hymn, so we are going to explore the place of song in the Christian life and how the Spirit works faith in us through music.
God’s people have always sung their faith
Paul writes to the Christians in Colossae: “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.” (Col. 3:16)
In recent decades, our understanding of Christian music seems to be limited to whether we should call something a song or a hymn, depending on whether it’s “traditional” or “contemporary”, and whether it is played on an organ or by a band. We have divided Christian music into those two distinct categories, often playing them off against one another and having our own personal preferences.
The thing is, there is much more to Christian music than its style or instrumentation.
Paul mentions three kinds of song: psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. These are not necessarily distinct categories, but we can define them to help us see the breadth of what music can do for our faith.
Psalms are the songs that are found in Scripture itself. These are sometimes called canticles, which we often use as part of our liturgy rather than as standalone songs in worship services. These are the songs we sing that don’t tend to follow a normal rhythm, but might be chanted or sung responsively because we keep them as close to word-for-word from Scripture as we can. Some of the songs we sing in our
If you drill down into where the words from our liturgy actually come from, much of it comes straight from the Psalms, if not from other parts of Scripture. Some of it even comes from the liturgy used in the tabernacle and the temple. I’m not sure how you imagined we got to the liturgy we use today, but they definitely weren’t just made up by a bunch of Lutherans in a dark room 100 years ago.
In the confession of sin, when we sing, “Our help is in the name of the Lord; he made heaven and earth,” we are quoting Psalm 124:8. The next line quotes Psalm 32:5: “I said, ‘I will confess my sins to the Lord,’ and you forgave the guilt of my sin”.
Another example is the Offertory (“Create in me a clean heart, O God…”), which is a direct quote of Psalm 51:10–12.
In our liturgy, we speak and sing our faith using ancient words first sung by God’s people from both the Old and New Testaments. We have inherited a great treasure that would be a great loss if we were to give it up.
We might define hymns as songs which teach us something about our faith or paraphrase Scripture rather than quoting it word-for-word. Other than when we sing the liturgy, we use this kind of song the most in our services.
We’ve been singing an old Luther hymn in our midweek Lenten services that teaches us about each petition of the Lord’s Prayer. If you have an old Lutheran hymnal at home (or you can grab one off the shelf after the service), around half of our hymns have Bible references.
Our processional hymn, All glory, laud, and honour, has a reference to Matthew 21 because the hymn itself tells the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem though it doesn’t necessarily quote that Scripture.
Our next hymn, My song is love unknown, is a paraphrase of Psalm 47. There are more recent examples of hymns as well (by this definition), like a song we sing at Gather + Grow called The Apostles’ Creed which (fairly obviously) paraphrases the creed.
It’s well-known that when we put things to song, they are easier to remember and recall. It’s why we learn the alphabet and times tables with song. We can memorise the words of Scripture and important parts of our faith, like the Creed, with song. God created our minds this way, after all. Hymns often have this function.
A spiritual song could refer to the songs we use that don’t correlate directly to a specific Bible verse or story, but certainly reflect biblical themes. To take a more recent example, Only a Holy God by an Australian group called CityAlight is very clearly inspired by our Philippians text today, particularly the last couple of verses.
A simple, memorable song like Jesus Loves Me might be considered a spiritual song, too. It’s not quoting a particular Bible verse, but it certainly speaks of God’s love for us through Jesus. Spiritual songs are probably the kinds of songs that are in the common memory of a community—no one needs the words on the screen to sing them.
Everything we sing, whether it’s from the last decade or the 16th century, is an expression of the faith sung by our forefathers, whether directly quoted or otherwise.
God’s people have always sung the faith, including on Palm Sunday. They sang, “Hosanna!” which wasn’t just a made up word, but it comes straight from Psalm 118, meaning, “Save us!”
The Spirit creates faith through song
When Paul says that the word of Christ should dwell in us richly, he says that music is a huge part of making that happen. In several places in his letters, he writes some summaries of the Christian faith that are in the form of ancient Greek “hymns”.
Our reading from Philippians 2 is one of those ancient hymns. We’re not sure whether Paul wrote this hymn himself or whether he was quoting a “hymn” that was well-known around the early Christian community. Either way, he shares it with them not just as nice words, but to use and sing themselves.
I would define this song as a hymn by our definition because it teaches us something. It summarises the whole suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ in only a few verses, but not at the expense of the message it communicates.
Christ humbled himself to the lowest of lows: his birth into this world as a human being from a small town, his entrance into Jerusalem not on a steed, but a borrowed donkey, and his death not by secret assassination but public humiliation.
He did all this to forgive you all your sin and bring you to live with him forever in his kingdom. That is the gospel, requiring nothing on your part and everything on Christ’s part.
When we sing songs that express the gospel—what Christ has done for us and the gifts of grace he gives—the Spirit works faith in two ways: he works faith in us as we sing, and he works faith in others when they hear what we sing.
Paul says in Romans 10 that faith comes through hearing the word of God. When we hear ourselves and one another singing the word of God, the Spirit creates faith. By expressing our faith in song, faith itself is strengthened. No wonder God’s people have always sung their faith.
Music is one of God’s great gifts to the church, which we use to give glory to God and to build one another up in the faith. It has never been the strength of our voices, the skill of our musicians, or the beauty of our music that has made it effective, though.
Even on Palm Sunday, it wasn’t the people’s genius to use the psalms that made their praise meaningful. It is the Holy Spirit that causes the word of Christ to dwell in each of us and inspires us to make melody to him.
The Spirit moved St Paul to give this hymn to us in Philippians 2. Through it, we hear the gospel message—that Christ humbled himself to the point of death on a cross so that he would be raised in glory and us with him. That hymn has been put to music many times throughout history, and we have our own version in our All Together music (AT 139). Let’s sing together:
Christ humbled himself
and became obedient unto death;
even death on the cross.
May the word of Christ dwell in each of us richly, so that we are brought to praise God’s name through song and, as a result, be strengthened in our faith and enlightened with the joy of the gospel. Amen.
