The Church's Voice

We are made for community and sin is the destruction of community. Therefore, when God creates “new humanity” (Eph. 2:15) this also means remaking community—“making peace” and “putting to death [their] hostility” (Eph. 2:15-16). When the church sings together, it announces the new community the Spirit has created in Christ. But the church’s singing not only announces this new community, it enacts it. When the church sings together, the creation of “one new humanity in place of the two” (Eph. 2:15) becomes an aural reality—something Paul’s readers could hear with their own ears. When they sang together in songs, hymns, and spiritual songs, they would have heard one voice composed of many voices. They would have heard a single melody arising from the mouths of men and women, Jews and Greeks, slave and free. If the church is the new humanity, then here is its voice. —Steven R. Guthrie, Creator Spirit: The Holy Spirit and the Art of Becoming Human, 80