It includes spiritual activities, occupation, family life, social and leisure, all departments of life. It applies to words of worship and praise, and the way we conduct worship, the sincerity and the earnestness of it, in our teaching, in our testimony. But what about our reactions and responses in general life and living? Are we testy, difficult, cold, unapproachable? Are all kinds of things the matter with our responses to the daily round of provocation and testing and temptation? What do we do in the family? Is what I am doing as husband, as wife, fair on the family, the amount of time I spend with this, my very singular pursuit? Am I pulling my weight? Am I giving time and attention, love and interest to all? Some are very faithful in worship and that is about all.
‘In the name of the Lord Jesus.’ His name should always include his titles: the Lord Jesus, the Lord Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is infallible, he is pure and holy, he is to be revered and admired. We may call him ours, but he is still high and lifted up. It is theological liberals who invented the style of calling the Lord Jesus Christ only by his personal name, Jesus. They did it because they did not believe he was Lord, God and man, so they sought to minimise him, but now Bible believers were doing it too. Remember in the Gospels he is Jesus, but by the book of Acts and the epistles, he is the risen Lord – you see the metamorphosis, the difference. While he is being dealt with historically – what he did for us in his subjection, in his humiliation – he is Jesus., but now we recognise him as the risen Lord, the Lord Jesus.
This is a different principle to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. The basis we find there is that we can do things is as long as they are not repugnant to the word of God. Well, that is not good enough. They say that the church and its councils has the power to make rites and ceremonies, and to change them from time to time, and to keep them up-to-date. The Church of England gives itself permissions to devise things, and it has done it richly down the years, many times. Now it is into women priests and women bishops and who knows what is next? I may only do those things for which I have a warrant from the word of God; that is an altogether different principle.
What is the warrant, the authority, in the Bible for the singing of humanly composed hymns? One authority is right here: whatsoever you do is to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. To sing hymns, psalms and spiritual songs without daring ever to mention the name of Christ would seem a very strange way for the church of Christ to obey this verse. Christ is paramount. We do not want to hide all our praise under the types and shadows of the Old Testament as though you must not dare to mention him.