• Author(s): Philip Revell
• Date published: July 3, 2018
• URL: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/are-the-psalms-gospel-centered/
• Tags:
  • psalms
  • worship
• Date accessed: March 28, 2019

This article warns about being legalistic when choosing worship songs. We should be careful not to come up with a set of rules that would exclude the Psalms, our original songbook, from our choices. It makes more sense to apply rules to the full set of songs that we sing, rather than any particular one, as the Psalms themselves are very diverse in their expression.

Quotes

• This psalm talks more about the psalmist than it does about God. It uses phrases that will be written off by many as “Jesus is my boyfriend” language. There’s a lack of the kind of specificity we’d like to see. There’s no mention of Jesus. For many of us, we would have difficulty signing these words today without some kind of qualification or explanation. And if that’s the case—if our responses to the emotive language of the Psalms are a catalyst for concern and fear, rather than praise—something has gone wrong.