First Corinthians 14 is clear that the central purpose of corporate worship is the disciplined formation of God’s people. All things should be done decently and in order in corporate worship, for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit’s work in worship, therefore, is to bring order and discipline to the worship of God’s people.

With orderly, disciplined formation being the expectation for how the Holy Spirit will work in worship, what role does emotion and music play in worship, and how are they related to the Holy Spirit? This question is particularly relevant since emotion and music are central to the contemporary expectation of how the Holy Spirit works.

Very simply, understanding the ordinary way the Holy Spirit works in worship leads to the conclusion that emotion and singing come as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life, not as a cause of the Holy Spirit’s work. This is one of the primary misunderstandings of many contemporary evangelicals today, who expect music to bring the Holy Spirit’s experiential presence as they are filled with emotional rapture.

Emotion and singing come as a result of the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life, not as a cause of the Holy Spirit’s work.

Calvin Stapert helpfully corrects this thinking with reference to Ephesians 5:18–19 and Colossians 3:16:

“Spirit-filling” does not come as the result of singing. Rather, “Spirit-filling” comes first; singing is the response. . . . Clear as these passages are in declaring that Christian singing is a response to the Word of Christ and to being filled with the Spirit, it is hard to keep from turning the cause and effect around. Music, with its stimulating power, can too easily be seen as the cause and the “Spirit-filling” as the effect.¹Calvin R. Stapert, A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006), 19–20.

“Such a reading of the passages,” Stapert argues, “gives song an undue epicletic function and turns it into a means of beguiling the Holy Spirit.” By “epicletic,” Stapert refers to the expectation that music will “invoke” or call upon the Holy Spirit to appear. Stapert argues that such a “magical epicletic function” characterized pagan worship music, not Christian.²Stapert, New Song for an Old World, 20.

This is exactly what contemporary Pentecostalized worship expects of music. Historians Swee Hong Lim and Lester Ruth note how the importance of particular styles of music that quickly stimulate emotion rose to a significance not seen before in Christian worship. They observe, “No longer were these musicians simply known as music ministers or song leaders; they were now worship leaders.” The “worship leader” became the person responsible to “bring the congregational worshipers into a corporate awareness of God’s manifest presence” through the use of specific kinds of music that created an emotional experience considered to be a manifestation of this presence. This charismatic theology of worship raised the matter of musical style to a level of significance that Lim and Ruth describe as “musical sacramentality,” where music is now considered a primary means through which “God’s presence could be encountered in worship.”³Lim and Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus, 18. As Lim and Ruth note, by the end of the 1980s, “the sacrament of musical praise had been established.”⁴Lim and Ruth, Lovin’ on Jesus, 131.

With this theology of the Holy Spirit, rather than using music to contribute to the goal of disciplined formation, music is carefully designed to create a visceral experience of the feelings that then becomes evidence of God’s manifest presence. This results in music that must be immediately stimulating, easily arousing the senses and sweeping the listeners into an emotional experience which they interpret to be a work of the Holy Spirit.

In contrast, when we have a more biblical expectation that the Holy Spirit is a God of peace who works to order our souls in corporate worship, the role of music and emotion take on an entirely different function. Often psalms and hymns serve as God’s words to us, either directly quoting from or paraphrasing Scripture itself. As 1 Corinthians 14 makes clear, this is where biblical worship must begin: God’s Word that builds us up, that sanctifies into mature worshipers. This is why our music must be profoundly biblical and richly doctrinal.

The purpose of what we are singing is not merely to express what is already in our hearts; the purpose of what we sing is to form our hearts, to shape our responses toward God.

And second, psalms and hymns can also give us language for our responses to God’s revelation. But it is important to remember that the purpose of what we are singing is not merely to express what is already in our hearts; the purpose of what we sing is to form our hearts, to shape our responses toward God. The goal of this worship is discipleship—building up the body.

Furthermore, while the New Testament does describe certain “emotions” that rise out of the heart of a Spirit-sanctified believer, such as the “fruit of the Spirit,” these will be characterized, not by extraordinary euphoria, but by what Jonathan Edwards calls “the lamb-like, dove-like spirit or temper of Jesus Christ.” Truly Spirit-formed “religious affections,” according to Edwards, “naturally beget and promote such a spirit of love, meekness, quietness, forgiveness, and mercy, as appeared in Christ.”⁵Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, New Ed (Banner of Truth, 1978), 272.

Contrary to caricatures, this kind of disciplined formation in worship is deeply emotional, but the music is not intended to stimulate or arouse emotions; rather, deep affections of the soul are cultivated by the Holy Spirit through his Word, and music gives language to appropriate responses to the Word. As we have seen, to be filled by the Spirit is the same as “Let the Word of Christ richly dwell within you.” So that comes first: The Spirit fills us with his Word, then we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that teach our hearts to express rightly those gracious affections that have been formed in our hearts by the Spirit of God through the Word of God.

Because the characteristics of the Spirit’s fruit consisting primarily of qualities like dignity and self-control, care ought to be given in corporate worship to avoid music that would cause a worshiper to lose control.

In fact, particularly because the characteristics of the Spirit’s fruit consisting primarily of qualities like dignity and self-control, care ought to be given in corporate worship to avoid music that would cause a worshiper to lose control. Historically, Christians with a biblical understanding of the Spirit’s work recognized that although physical feelings are good, they must be controlled lest our “belly” (a Greek metaphor for bodily passions) be our god (Phil 3:19).

Rather, since the Spirit cultivates reverence, dignity, and self-control within believers, music should be chosen that will likewise nurture and cultivate these qualities and the affections of the soul like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (Col 3:12) and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:23). The fact is that qualities like intensity, passion, enthusiasm, exhilaration, or euphoria are never described in Scripture as qualities to pursue or stimulate, they are never used to define the nature of spiritual maturity or the essence of worship, and they are never listed as what the Spirit produces in a believer’s life.

The God of peace cultivates peace in the hearts of worshipers, not unbridled passion.

Author

Scott Aniol

Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief G3 Ministries

Scott Aniol, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of G3 Ministries. In addition to his role with G3, Scott is Professor of Pastoral Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas. He lectures around the world in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and he has authored several books and dozens of articles. You can find more, including publications and speaking itinerary, at www.scottaniol.com. Scott and his wife, Becky, have four children: Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and Caroline. You can listen to his podcast here.