I’m currently working on a study of Ephesians in an attempt to discovery the difference between “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”. In my pursuit I came across a journal excerpt that provides some good thoughts on the nature of corporate worship.
“Drawing on the context of Paul’s exhortation to sing in Ephesians 5, I have argued that music makes its own distinctive contribution to Christian life and worship. Whatever support music may offer words, however it may highlight, reinforce or enhance the text, music itself—the music of music—is used in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Music is a suitable resource in this work, not despite, but because it engages women and men at the level of body and sense. First of all, music enlists body and sense in the praise of God, re-orienting and re-defining these fundamental human endowments, which may once have been used solely for self-gratification. Secondly, sing- ing together involves sensing and responding to others and one’s environ- ment. Throughout Ephesians and elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul likens the church to a body. In Ephesians 5, Paul urges husbands to con- sider how they sense and respond to the needs of their own bodies, and to use this responsiveness as a model for loving their wives. Corporate song is a sensory experience in which we dynamically respond to others, and so, gives these corporeal analogies greater depth and power. Finally, by virtue of the distinctive properties of musical sound, music offers a powerful aural image of life together. In particular, music articulates a kind of unity in which in- dividual distinctiveness is preserved and even enhanced.”
-Steven R. Guthrie, “Singing, in the Body and in the Spirit,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46:4 (December 2003)
