I attended a conference at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship last year, during which time author Laura Winner, addressing the attendees from the stage, said “When do non-Christians sing?”

It’s really something, if you think about it.  Christianity is a singing faith.  At least once a week, Christians generally gather and sing outloud together.  In this age of iPods with ear phones, of everyone having their own car and driving separately, of privacy fences, small porches and declining periods of music education, Christians are one of the few people-groups who regularly have sing-a-longs with each other.

What’s more remarkable is that we’ve been doing this for thousands of years — as long as there has been a Christianity — and that this tradition extends back into the Old Testament as well, to the prophets, David, the sons of Asaph, Miriam and others.  We don’t sing in a vacuum, and the history of Christian hymnody goes back so much further than the latest cool worship CD.

And there is a reason why we sing: because the Bible tells us to, and it tells us that the people of the Bible did. Their corporate worship singing had both vertical and horizontal dimensions, as Sojourn Worship Pastor Mike Cosper exposited (among other things) in his sermon last year on worship and music: they sang praises to God, and they also addressed, taught and admonished one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. 

Here is a short list of New Testament passages dealing with commands to sing together or descriptions of hymn singing:

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

— Matthew 26:30

And do not be drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the holy spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

— Ephesians 5:18-19

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

— Colossians 3:16

Is there one among you who is suffering?  Let him pray.  Is any cheerful?  Let him sing praise.

James 1:13

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