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What Does It Mean for Worship Music to Be “Good”?
The Fulfilling Fruit
In worship, music and offerings are often inextricable. We may have soloists sing while passing the offering plate or feature times of “musical offerings” apart from monetary giving. For years, I wondered, If music is our offering to God, shouldn’t everyone be singing? But just as tithing supports church operations, our music is a gift to the Lord because it is also a gift to the church. We offer our music—like our finances—to God as we use it to build up his people. Goodness invites us to reframe every aspect of musical worship as an offering: an opportunity to enjoy and use the gifts of God to do good to “those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10).
Just as we use good in English to mean delicious, pleasant, acceptable, polite, reliable, and beautiful, good and goodness are used broadly throughout Scripture to refer to charitable deeds, useful things, well-made items, and upright people. As a fruit of the Spirit, “goodness” (agathōsunē) involves all of these concepts but essentially boils down to generosity. More specifically, it is God’s generosity working through us to promote the welfare of others.1 Spiritual fruits such as goodness testify to God’s generosity as he fills us with his Spirit and enables us to produce godly fruit where we formerly practiced fleshly works. Whereas the works of the flesh led us to hoard things for ourselves, the fruit of the Spirit builds up the body of Christ as God shares his character with us and calls us to treat others with the same generosity—to fill them as we have been filled.
Spirit-Filled Singing
Ryanne J. Molinari
Drawing from Galatians 5, Spirit-Filled Singing provides a biblical framework for intentional worship, exploring how singing and the fruit of the Spirit both work to glorify God and edify his church.
In addition to the fruit of the Spirit, God gives individuals specific gifts for the building up of the church (Rom. 12:3–8; 1 Cor. 12:1–31). These fruits and gifts are not meant to be enjoyed in isolation. God’s generosity is not meant to be contained but to overflow. Just as an overfull cup cannot help spilling onto the surfaces around it, God’s overwhelming goodness toward us compels us to live and sing generously toward others.
Agathōsunē appears only a few times in the New Testament, Greek translations of the Old Testament, and in writings about or dependent on Scripture. It is in this sense a uniquely Christian word. R. C. Trench cites agathōsunē as an example of how “revealed religion has enriched the later language of Greece.”2 This observation offers insight into the nature of goodness as a fruit of the Spirit; it enriches everything it touches, from languages to lives.
Envy’s Enemy
The fruit of the Spirit is listed in opposition to the works of the flesh, and goodness is the archenemy of envy (Gal. 5:21). In stark contrast to lifegiving, satiating generosity, envy is rotten and unsatisfying. It consumes its victims from the inside out, spoiling and withering everything it touches.3 It causes us to obsess over what we do not have as we seek our own gain. Goodness expels envy as it guides us to use what we do have to benefit others. Ironically and wonderfully, self-giving goodness leads to fulfillment, whereas self-serving envy leads only to a vicious cycle of anxiety and emptiness.
In theological terms, envy renders us incurvatus in se: “curved in” on ourselves. Author and worship leader Zac Hicks describes “curved in” worship as worship that makes us think more and more about ourselves—how we are feeling, doing, appearing, and so on.4 Such “curved in” worship is more likely to breed envy than to generate goodness as it tempts us to look inward rather than upward and outward.
If, like me, you struggle with envy and anxiety, you may be looking in the wrong direction. Great musicians overcome their fear by focusing on sharing their music—reveling in its beauty and presenting it to their audiences as a gift. They cannot waste time and energy worrying over the pieces they have not learned or the nuances they have yet to master. For their time on stage, their best bet is to set aside self-consciousness in favor of self-giving. Only by looking beyond ourselves can we play and sing with openness and enjoyment.
Whether we serve smaller churches in rural areas or megachurches with massive platforms, the questions we must answer are the same: Will we give what we have or grieve what we don’t? Will we waste away with envy or pour ourselves out in generosity? Will we be jealous of others or zealous to use whatever gifts God has seen fit to give us to his glory?
Filled with All Knowledge
Among the authors of Scripture, Paul alone uses agathōsunē for goodness. Theologian Marvin R. Vincent suggests that this is to identify this type of goodness as a “zeal for truth which rebukes, corrects, and chastises, as Christ when he purged the temple.”5 This certainly seems to be the case when Paul praises the Roman believers for being “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Rom. 15:14). These Christians are ravenous for the word, eager to understand their faith and teach it to others correctly. To be full of goodness, we must be continually filling ourselves with knowledge of the truth. Goodness is not just about getting our doctrine basically right; it loves the truth ardently. Good worship songs should be saturated with Scripture. Like a hearty meal, our singing should satiate people with the meat of God’s word.
Good worship songs should be saturated with Scripture.
Sometimes I think we phone it in when it comes to our lyrics. So long as they are not untrue, we let them slide and, well, put them on the slides. But is this fulfilling in the long run? If goodness is generosity, shouldn’t we give our people lyrics that will fill them up? Scripture invites us to use singing to teach the word with “all wisdom” and let it dwell in us “richly” (Col. 3:16).
Not just acceptably—richly.
Like the women who send me home with containers full of leftovers after church potlucks, we should be hospitably determined to provide solid lyrics for our people to chew on and digest throughout the week.
I’m not suggesting that every song needs to be a systematic theology. Some of the most powerful, truthful songs I know are relatively simple. As with gift-giving, simplicity is not the problem; stinginess is. Indeed, simplicity may at times be more generous, for it allows more worshipers to sing with understanding and renders lyrics easier to remember throughout the week. In any case, whether the words we sing are simple or complex, they must communicate the riches of God’s word.
When we sing truth-filled lyrics, we aren’t just showing off our knowledge or memorizing Scripture arbitrarily. It is not a theoretical exercise, but a way of preparing us to apply our theology in our lives. It’s a way of internalizing the word so that we can draw on its wisdom and comfort in our darkest hours. Before she passed away, my husband’s grandmother suffered extreme dementia. And yet, she remembered her favorite hymns. Their melodies kept God’s promises hidden in her heart when her mind faltered. Through memorable music, good worship songs work their truths into the deepest recesses of ourselves. Like hearty protein, they provide sustenance throughout our lives and to the moment of our deaths.
Worship leader, give your people what they need most: a way to reflect on God’s word now and to recall it in their darkest hours.
Notes:
- Frederick William Danker, ed., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 2000), 2–4; hereafter BDAG.
- R. C. Trench, Trench’s Synonyms of the New Testament, ed. Robert G. Hoerber, et al. (Baker, 1989), 247.
- BDAG 1054–55.
- Zac Hicks, “What Worship Curved in on Itself Looks Like,” Zac Hicks (blog), November 19, 2013, https://zachicks.com/.
- Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. 3 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887), 35.
This article is adapted from Spirit-Filled Singing: Bearing Fruit as We Worship Together by Ryanne J. Molinari.
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