Introduction: Carrie Jane closed her door to the car; I closed mine. And the question of whose music we’d listen to commenced. She said, “We need to fill our souls. Let’s listen to the Gettys.” She got no argument from me.

Then Keith Getty’s piano sounds streamed from the speakers, and Kristyn’s angelic voice poured like aural honey from the honeycomb. That is the power of music. I don’t know of a more unifying, powerful instrument to capture the core of a person or group.

Among my loves supreme is language. Scripture, the ultimate book, has much to say about language and the supremacy of the Word incarnate, and also of the power of language: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Pr 25:11 ESV). I’m much more at home with a copy of O’Connor’s short stories or with A Tale of Two Cities than I am most other things, but I concede that there is nothing quite like the power of some music to wield a nearly-divine effect upon our emotions. The first chord–sometimes just the first note–sounds the strings of our souls.

Question: Why do I raise this issue of the power of music? Is it worthy of such augmentation? Yes and amen. Why? Perhaps I can best explain my view via illustration.

Illustration: Today at church, after I had fumbled my way through trying to dive into the first verses of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, I needed to be redeemed. I felt I had totally blown it in terms of teaching on such a magisterial text. I got choked up publicly. So many of my hours of study washed over me as I unpacked words so familiar to me. My years of reading of how Luther wept over his own sin while studying his NT in Greek, then translating it for his fellow Germans, of how he rediscovered the gospel of grace, of how he’d been caught up in Roman Catholicism as an Augustinian monk, of how he had the biblical courage to take on Roman Catholicism’s pomp and popery, overtook me, and the tears came, etc. For all his faults, Luther understood what it meant to be a sinner redeemed by the sufficiency of Christ alone. Any system was man-centered. The gospel was and is God-centered, and on behalf of sinners, and that distinction is at the heart of redemption.

So many hours of reading how Luther and other Reformers wrestled with the text of Scripture itself, and of how they came to understand the text by virute of what it clearly taught: it is God’s unmerited favor towards sinners and Jesus’ vicarious, substitutionary atonement for his people, and of our repentance of our sin and faith in Christ alone, that redeems us. It’s not saints, or Mary, or works, and most certainly not any self-professing vicar of Christ adopting the nomenclature of vicar or substitute or mediator. No, it is Christ alone. He is the only mediator. Popes are sinners; Christ is God made sin on behalf of his people; that difference is crucial and non-negotiable.

Then it happened … Today was so special in the morning service after Sunday school. We weren’t artificially divided by age or demograhic. There wasn’t a ‘traditional’ vs. a ‘contemporary’ service. I entered corporate worship service with saints of all ages, of all skin tones, of all maturity levels, of babes in Christ, and of seasoned saints. And we all sang together.

I was one of many with gray hair who sang adjacent to people much younger. And we lifted our eyes and we followed the talented musicians and singers in front of us. And they, too, were a congregation of called-out ones–men and women, boys and girls, black, white, brown, and yellow. Short and tall, thick or lean, they all sang. Why? Because they were the called-out ones, and they were gathered together in an assembly. That’s what the word denotes: called out and together. Congregation means just that: an assembling together, union, society.

We sang of the God-man, Christ the Lord, who was the promised seed of Jesse who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. We sang of what it means to have walked in darkness but then to have been granted the ability to see the great light because the Light has shone on them.

We sang, in short, together. As a body. As a diverse body who comprised a congregation. We were not divided like slices of pie into children, youth, young adults, senior adults, etc. No. We were a body of ransomed believers singing to our Redeemer together.

Encouragement: What I am aiming for is surely evident. Songs sung by the body of the redeemed are precious and foundational. Young, old, and all of us in between. Girls, boys, men, and women–sinners all, but redeemed ones, singing of their common Redeemer. This is the biblical congregation–a song embodied.