Why do we sing in worship? Singing is not mere filler, as warm-up to the sermon. Hymn singing has served a valuable teaching role in church history. Songs helped worshipers internalize the theology preached in the sermon. Many of our cherished hymns set Scripture to music. While I welcome the inclusion of praise music into recent worship, some modern songs need a healthy dose of good theology. Charles Wesley composed hymns in the eighteenth century primarily to teach theology. I’m reminded of the teaching role of hymns every time I sing his cherished carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Consider all the theology Charles packs into a single line, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity, Pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.”
Ephrem (or Ephraim), the Syrian (306-373), was a teacher in the early church whose primary teaching method was through hymns. Four hundred of his hymns still exist and are sung in Syrian churches today. In his late teens, Ephrem attended the great Council of Nicaea in AD 325, which determined Jesus the Son was “consubstantial with the Father.” He wrote hymns defending Nicaean orthodoxy and challenging the prevailing heresies of his day. Given that large segments of the fourth century population couldn’t read or write, learning hymns became a valuable learning tool. Many of Ephrem’s hymns taught core beliefs about Jesus’ full divinity and humanity. Consider the line from one of his nativity hymns, “Heaven is the throne of his glory, yet he sits on Mary’s knee; The earth is his fountain, yet like a baby he crawls beside her.” We join in a Lenten prayer of Ephrem the Syrian: