Colossians 3:16-17: God’s Word and Our Worship

Colossians 3:16-17: God’s Word and Our Worship

We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and today the next passage we come to is Colossians 3:16-17. Hear now the words of the Living and True God:

¹⁶ 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. ¹⁷ And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, we find it written that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Help us to view your word that way this morning—not merely as an interesting subject for study or as a helpful resource for various situations but as our very life. May we experience it as that, through the ministry of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

One of the most difficult places to conduct scientific research is the deep ocean—because the deeper you go, the more intense the pressure gets. Eventually, the pressure gets so intense that it destroys the vast majority of man-made vessels. Only a small handful of vessels have ever been able to reach the deepest parts of the ocean. And for a long time, scientists thought that no fish would be found at those depths. After all, how could any fish possibly survive the tremendous pressure?

Yet marine biologists eventually discovered that there actually is a certain species of fish that lives in the deepest parts of the ocean. And these fish aren’t even protected by steel plates or anything; they just have normal scales. So, how do these fish survive? Well, the answer is that the pressure on the inside of these fish pushing outward is just as great as the pressure on the outside pushing inward, so that the pressure essentially evens out and the fish are able to survive.

And there’s a lot we can learn from that about living faithfully as Christians in the midst of the many pressures that are pushing in on us. Every day, we face pressures from the world in which we live and the sins that frequently tempt us, and these pressures are sometimes so great that they threaten to crush us. Yet the way to survive these pressures is—just like that deep sea fish—to have pressure on the inside pushing out that can handle the pressure on the outside pushing in.

And in order to have that internal pressure strengthening us, we need to be taking in the Bible regularly and in a meaningful way. It’s not enough to just casually read the Bible once in a while. We have to make it a habit to get into the Word until the Word gets into us. In our main passage of Colossians 3:16-17 Paul refers to it as letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly. That’s what’s necessary in order to withstand the immense spiritual pressures that are pushing in on us.

And here’s the thing: when the word of Christ truly dwells within us richly, it doesn’t just stay in our hearts but overflows into every aspect of our lives—as Paul makes clear in these verses. So, the main idea Paul’s communicating here is that the word of Christ should so saturate our hearts that it overflows into every aspect of our lives. Again, the word of Christ should so saturate our hearts that it overflows into every aspect of our lives.  

Picture a bucket that’s full of water. What’s going to happen when more water is continually poured into that bucket? Well, of course, it’s going to continually overflow. It has to overflow—because there’s nowhere else for the excess water to go. And that’s the degree to which the Word of Christ should fill our hearts.

Now, before we go any further, let’s actually back up a few steps and make sure we’re correctly understanding what Paul means in verse 16 by “the word of Christ.” He says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” but what exactly is “the word of Christ”? At the most basic level, it refers both to the actual words Jesus spoke during his earthly ministry as well as the authoritative teaching about Jesus subsequently conveyed by the apostles.

This teaching included the divine and human natures of Jesus, as well as his perfectly righteous life, his sacrificial death, his triumphant resurrection, his heavenly ascension, and his eventual return. So, that’s the most narrow meaning of the “the word of Christ.” Yet most Bible interpreters agree that it’s appropriate to expand this to everything contained in the Bible—since the entire Bible is, in essence, a word about Christ. Jesus is the centerpiece of biblical revelation. So, it’s perfectly legitimate to equate the “word of Christ” with the Bible.

And Paul says we’re supposed to let the word of Christ “dwell” within us. The Greek word translated “dwell” refers to someone living in a house and being at home in that place. So, Paul’s telling us to let the word of Christ take up permanent residence within us and make its home in our hearts. 

This is something we do by not only reading the Bible but also meditating on the things we read. Now, unlike Eastern meditation, which involves emptying the mind, biblical meditation involves filling our minds with the Bible and taking time to contemplate what the Bible teaches.

It’s sometimes compared to the way a cow eats grass. And I have to warn you that some of you may find this a little gross, but at least you’ll remember it. Listen to this description of what cows do with grass: “Cows eat the grass, chew it up, and send it to their stomachs pretty quickly. There it lies in the stomach, soaking up [various] acids and chemicals. Then, after a while, the cow burps it back up with a new and renewed flavor, chews on that grass and some other grass, and then does the whole process over again. Cows repeat this several times. They get every ounce of nutrition out of the grass.”

And guess what the technical name for this process is? It’s called “rumination.” And that’s more or less what meditating on the Bible involves. You can think of biblical mediation as mentally “ruminating” and digesting the things we read in the Bible. Just as a cow’s rumination helps the cow get the maximum amount of physical nutrition from the grass, biblical meditation helps us get the maximum amount of spiritual nutrition from the Bible.

And it’s almost impossible to overstate how important this is for us to do. Psalm 1:1-3 states, ¹ Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; ² but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

A Puritan pastor named Thomas Watson once wrote that, “The reason we come away so cold from reading the [Bible] is, because we do not warm ourselves at the fires of meditation.” We’re in such a rush to get through the material and get on with our day that we don’t meditate on the things we read and therefore only experience a fraction of the benefit we’d have otherwise experienced.

Watson also writes, “Without meditation the truths which we know will never affect our hearts… As a hammer drives a nail [into the wood], so mediation drives a truth [into] the heart.” And elsewhere he states, “Meditation is like the watering of the seed, it makes the fruits of grace to flourish.”

In addition, not only is it important to meditate on the Bible, it’s also important to memorize the Bible. Memorization is another crucial component of doing what Paul teaches in our main passage—letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly. Also, in Psalm 119:11, the psalmist says to God, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” This shows us that memorization is foundational for sanctification—or the process of growing in godliness.

And I’d just like to add that I personally have experienced greater spiritual benefits from memorization than from perhaps any other spiritual discipline. At various points over the past 20 years, I’ve memorized about a quarter of the New Testament and plan to memorize more. And I’ve done that because of how beneficial I’ve found it to be. There’s just no spiritual discipline that I know of that offers more “bang for your buck,” so to speak, than memorization.

This is also why, whenever I’m leading a men’s discipleship group, we devote the first 20 minutes of every meeting to reciting whatever we’ve memorized since our last meeting. And each guy memorizes whatever he desires, whether it’s two verses or twenty verses over a two-week period. By the way, I’d love to see more of those groups start up, so if you’re interested in facilitating one, just let me know. A discipleship group consists of about 3-5 men or women and is extremely easy to facilitate. And of course, the groups do other things in addition to memorization. Yet I believe it’s fair to say that memorization is really the backbone of the groups I facilitate—because of how vital it is for our spiritual growth and transformation. Memorization is the key way we get into the Word until the Word gets into us.

So, this is how we can follow Paul’s instructions in verse 16 to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.” And I love how he says “richly” there. That word really drives home the extent to which the word of Christ should reside in our hearts. Just as water saturates a sponge, the word of Christ should saturate our minds and hearts.

And as we continue on in this verse, we see that the word of Christ dwelling in us richly should overflow in two ways: “teaching and admonishing one another,” which are more or less two sides of the same coin, and “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” So, everything Paul mentions in the rest of verse 16 grows out of that first foundational clause of letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly.

So, the first way Christ’s word within us should overflow is in us “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.” “Teaching” refers to helping one another understand what the Bible says about what we should believe and how we should live. And “admonishing” refers to warning someone about the consequences of unbiblical beliefs or behavior. So, as I said, these are essentially two sides of the same coin. Teaching is positive, while admonishing is negative.

And both are to be done, Paul says, “in all wisdom.” This means that we don’t just drop truth bombs on people. Instead, we should seek to demonstrate “wisdom” by saying the right thing, at the right time, in the right way. Our conversations with people should result in them feeling loved rather than feeling like they’ve just been the victim of a spiritual mugging.

In addition, “wisdom” also refers the biblical accuracy of what we say in our “teaching and admonishing.” The things we share with people should reflect a level of insight that’s higher than anything we could come up with on our own. Instead, our words should reflect the timeless wisdom found in the Bible. Remember that, according to the structure of Paul’s sentence here in verse 16, “teaching and admonishing” should be an overflow of the word of Christ dwelling within us.

And keep in mind that Paul’s speaking to every Christian here. He’s telling not just Christian leaders but every Christian to be active in “teaching and admonishing” others. So, is that something you’re seeking to be faithful in doing? And you know, to be candid with you, I just don’t see how it’s possible to do this consistently and in a meaningful way if the only involvement you have with our church is on Sunday mornings. It seems that something beyond Sunday mornings is necessary in order to be obedient to this command of “teaching and admonishing one another.” And at our church, of course, the most obvious solution is to be a part of a Community Group.  

Then, continuing on in the verse, Paul tells us that the word of Christ dwelling within us should overflow not only in the form of “teaching and admonishing one another” but also in the form of us “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Now, there’s some discussion about what exactly “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” refer to. Some believe that these are different kinds of songs found in the Old Testament book of Psalms.

Others believe that only the actual word “psalms” refers to Old Testament psalms, while “hymns” focus specifically on Jesus, and “spiritual songs” are more spontaneous musical compositions prompted by the Holy Spirit. Yet I think it’s fair to say that all of these distinctions involve speculation. So, I believe the most we can say with confidence is that we should sing a variety of songs in our worship gatherings. That’s the point Paul’s making. We shouldn’t just sing one kind of song but should sing various kinds of songs when we gather for worship.

Yet the most important observation about this verse I’d like to emphasize is that singing these songs should be an overflow of letting the word of Christ dwell within us richly. This means that meaningful worship in song begins with us grasping biblical truths about God. Meaningful worship begins in our minds, spreads to our hearts, and then overflows out of our mouths. Our minds comprehend truths about God, our hearts then rejoice in those truths, and our mouths then express that joy.

So, I think it’s quite unfortunate that so many modern Christian songs are so shallow and superficial. Sometimes, I’m not even sure whether a song that’s billed as “Christian” is about God or somebody’s boyfriend or girlfriend. Perhaps this is why many churches feel the need to “prop up” these superficial songs with a concert-like atmosphere. That kind of music and atmosphere might be able to stir people’s emotions—just like secular concerts often stir people’s emotions—but they don’t produce true worship.

Because understand that true worship involves a lot more than merely being emotionally stirred. Taylor Swift can do a concert and cause people to be emotionally stirred, but true worship and the inward joy it expresses reach so much deeper than that. They’re not the kinds of things that can be whipped up or manufactured through human methods. Instead, as I said, the inward joy that’s behind all true worship arises from our minds grasping biblical truths about God—such as how glorious he is and the wondrous grace he’s shown. So, in order to rejoice, there has to be something we’re rejoicing in beyond vague sentiments. There has to be something specific about God that’s fueling our joy.

We can see this modeled throughout the psalms, where singing is repeatedly tied to specific aspects of who God is and what he’s done. Just to give a few examples, David says in Psalm 18:49-50, ⁴⁹ For this I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing to your name. ⁵⁰ Great salvation he brings to his king, and shows steadfast love to his anointed, to David and his offspring forever. Also, Psalm 59:16 says, “But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.” In Psalm 89:1, the psalmist declares, “I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.” And there are, of course, many other examples I could give.

The point, though, is that, throughout the psalms, the joyful worship of the psalmists doesn’t arise out of a theological vacuum but rather is a response to specific truths about who God is and what he’s done. In many ways, worship is similar to fire. As I’m sure we’re all aware, fire needs fuel in order to burn. And so does worship. Meaningful worship requires the fuel of substantive biblical truth. Without substantive biblical truth, there isn’t sufficient fuel for the fire of worship to burn. 

And I believe the greatest fuel the Bible gives us for worship is related to God redeeming us from our sins through his Son Jesus. The Bible teaches that all of us stand rightly condemned in our sins before a holy God and are therefore destined to face eternal punishment. Yet God saw our wretched condition and determined to show us mercy instead of the punishment we deserved. So, in his mercy, God the Father sent Jesus into this world on a rescue mission to save us. Jesus accomplished this rescue by living a perfectly sinless life and then dying on the cross to make atonement for our sins. God’s justice required that our sins be punished, yet Jesus functioned as our substitute and suffered that punishment so we wouldn’t have to.

And his sacrifice is the greatest demonstration of love this world has ever known. Although many people have been willing to sacrifice themselves for their children or others who are close to them, Jesus sacrificed his life for rebellious sinners who were living as his enemies. Yet that’s not the end of the story, because Jesus was then raised from the dead three days later as the climactic display of his triumph over sin and death. And he now offers to save everyone who will turn away from their sins and put their full trust and confidence in him alone for the rescue they so desperately need.

And it’s this gospel message that gives us the clearest window we have to see God’s character and therefore that serves as the greatest fuel for worship. And that’s confirmed in the Bible itself. How many times do the psalmists praise God specifically for his salvation that they experienced in various ways? Not only that, worship in heaven focuses on the redeeming work of Jesus on the cross. Revelation 5:9 records the inhabitants of heaven singing what’s referred to as “a new song” to Jesus and crying out, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” So, if Jesus’s redemptive work on the cross is the focal point of heavenly worship, should it not be the focal point of our worship presently as well?

So, even though I’m sure a church survey would reveal a variety of preferences about the style of songs we should sing, our main concern isn’t the style of our songs but rather making sure we sing songs with biblically substantive lyrics. And if you’re concerned about style, let me just say that that’s a wonderful opportunity to follow Paul’s instructions in Philippians and put the interests of others above your own interests. Philippians 2:3-4 says, ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. ⁴ Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And I think that the style of songs we sing in church is one of the most obvious ways we can put that into practice.

As I said, our main concern is selecting songs that contain substantive truths about God and, in that way, fuel our worship. I once heard it said that if lyrics aren’t substantive enough to make them worth praying as a prayer, they’re probably not worth singing as a song—and I couldn’t agree more. Remember from our main passage that singing is the overflow of the word of Christ dwelling richly within us.

I’d also like to say that not only does worship arise out of us comprehending theological truths, we also need to make sure that the theological truths we comprehend do, in fact, lead us to worship. A theologian named John Stott once wrote, “There is something fundamentally flawed about a purely academic interest in God. God is not an appropriate object for cool, critical, detached, scientific observation and evaluation.” Theological knowledge isn’t meant to be something we pursue as an end in itself or because it makes us feel smart but rather something we pursue as a means to worship. To put it another way, the purpose of theology is to inspire doxology—that is, the study of God was meant to inspire the worship of God.

So, if your knowledge of the Bible doesn’t overflow into worship—and often into musical worship—something’s wrong. Paul’s quite clear here in verse 16 that the word of Christ dwelling within us should lead to singing. And I’m pretty sure he’s referring not to barely audible singing in church but to singing wholeheartedly in our church gatherings.

Now, maybe you say, “Well, I’m just not a very expressive person.” Listen: I’m not naturally a very expressive person either. Just ask my wife. There’s a running joke in our marriage that I just don’t have emotions. I’m a very rational and even-keeled person. But when we gather together as a church and sing songs extolling God for who he is and what he’s done, I can tell you: it stirs my heart and leads me to sing wholeheartedly as an expression of worship to God. I mean, do we or do we not have something worth singing about? Do we or do we not have a God worth singing to?

To be candid with you, I just don’t see how someone can be vividly reminded of truths about God and their heart not be stirred. And I don’t see how our hearts can be stirred without making us desire to express that in some way—most naturally through song. Now, of course, if you’re not a Christian, we don’t expect you to join us in singing. But if you profess to be a Christian and yet you don’t feel led to engage wholeheartedly in worship through song, you should probably examine your heart and ask yourself, what is it that’s hindering you? Are you self-conscious, which, in reality, is a form of pride? Are you just too “dignified” to sing wholeheartedly? What is it that’s keeping you from singing your heart out to God?

 By the way, in case the reason for you not being very engaged in singing is because you’re not familiar with the songs, keep in mind that, at the bottom of our church announcements email that goes out each Thursday, we actually list and link to the songs we’ll sing that upcoming Sunday. So, there’s really no reason why everyone shouldn’t be familiar with the songs.   

I’d also like to point out that there’s a reason why the Order of Service listed in our bulletins refers to the singing as “Congregational Singing.” Do you see that? It doesn’t say “Musical Performance,” does it? It says, “Congregational Singing.” That’s very deliberate. Those who are up here on stage aren’t performers, with the rest of us as their audience. No, all of us are “performers,” as it were, with God as our audience. It’s not people on stage singing for us but rather all of us singing for God. The people up here on stage are just helping us sing to God better. By the way, that’s why we don’t dim the lights during the music. Why would we have the vast majority of our vocalists [motion to the congregation] sing in the dark? We sing as a church in order to bring glory to God—and that involves all of us.

And not only do we sing to bring glory to God, we also sing to edify one another. Notice in verse 16 how singing is grouped with “teaching and admonishing one another”—with all of these activities being presented as ways the word of Christ within us should overflow. So, just as the teaching and admonishment are a ministry to one another, the singing should be understood as a ministry to one another as well.

In addition, Paul uses extremely similar language to the language of this verse in Ephesians 5:19. He tells the Ephesian Christians to “[address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” These two verses in Colossians and Ephesians respectively are obviously parallel to one another. You might think of them as twins. Yet it’s in Ephesians that Paul explicitly brings out the fact that the songs we sing are intended to be a form of ministry to “one another” in addition to being worship to God.

A Scottish author and politician named Andrew Fletcher once said back in the seventeenth century, “Let me write the songs of a nation—I don’t care who writes its laws.” His point was that songs have unique power to shape our thinking, stir our hearts, and motivate us to take action in tangible ways. That’s why God would have us minister to one another through song. 

Then, moving forward in our main passage, Paul concludes this section of the letter in verse 17. He writes, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Doing everything in the name of Jesus is an incredibly all-encompassing directive that includes doing everything as his representative and therefore in a way that’s pleasing to him. It also means doing everything for the glory of his name. Paul says basically the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10:31, where he states, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Not only that, this also is a way in which the word of Christ dwelling within us should overflow into our lives. Verse 17 of our main passage isn’t a break from verse 16 but a continuation of verse 16. This this why I said that the main idea of these two verses is that “the word of Christ should so saturate our hearts that it overflows into every aspect of our lives” The word of Christ should affect the entirety of our lives—as verse 17 makes clear—not just the aspects of our lives Paul specifically mentions in verse 16.

And the driving force behind it all is thankfulness. At the very end of verse 15, Paul wrote a very simple sentence: “And be thankful.” Then, in verse 16, he tells his readers to sing “with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” And here in verse 17, he says that everything we do is to be done “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Three times in three verses we’re told to be thankful. At the end of the day, we as Christians are motivated to do the things we do not because we’re trying to earn God’s favor or earn eternal life but rather because we’re so profoundly thankful that we’ve already received it.