Spiritual Songs? I thought...

If psalms are psalms, and hymns are also psalms, then spiritual songs are songs about spiritual things, right? According to the superficial reading of the Ephesians and Colossians passages, yes. This is what I thought until I read the passages in the Greek, and I found that the Greek word for "spiritual" refers to "of, or by the Spirit." This indicates that the songs the apostle commands us to sing are inspired songs, not songs about spiritual things merely.

This is huge. This really led me to embrace exclusive psalmody (even though I'm not arguing for such in these blogs). If we are to sing psalms, which are inspired by the Holy Spirit and songs inspired by the Holy Spirit, then whatever we believe hymns are we are to sing primarily inspired material. Since we know where to find psalms, where do we find spiritual songs (the commands assume that there are a bevy of spiritual songs ready to sing; this is not a commandment to compose them)? We find in them in the Holy Scriptures. A spiritual song is the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, Deborah's Song in Judges 5, and there are other inspired songs in the Holy Scriptures outside of the Book of Psalms. Habbakuk has a song, and there are songs throughout the prophecy of Jeremiah in addition to the Book of Lamentations. Could Paul have been pointing us back to those? I don't know. The bottom line, however, is that it is clear that the Church of Jesus Christ is to sing inspired songs in its praise. All of the above mentioned songs in Scripture came from inspired people.

I'm calling National Baptists back to the psalms! I have a nice collection of hymnals, and what I have found is that the Lutherans have a psalter section in the Lutheran hymnal, and the United Methodists have a psalter section in the 1989 hymnal. What do we Baptists have? Other than lots of psalms in the Baptist edition of Trinity Hymnal, Baptists are hard pressed to find plenty of psalms in their hymnals. National Baptists have a few psalm settings in their hymnals.

We need to sing the psalms! Are the songs of Andrae Crouch, Kirk Franklin, Lucie Campbell, Clevant Derricks, Charles A. Tindlay, Thomas A. Dorsey, and our slave forebears greater than those written by David, the sweet psalmist of Israel? Did not Jesus tell the Eleven that the psalms speak of him in Luke 24? Do we believe that there are Spirit-inspired "psalmists" today? Traditionally, National Baptists do not. Let's sing the psalms!