Songs connect with us emotionally in ways that no other form of expression can. Songs reverberate around our heads more than plain words do. Music is powerful; it affects and reflects the state of our hearts and minds far more than we often give it credit for. We are what we sing. ‘All you need is love, love’ was the anthem of the swinging sixties; ‘I was born this way’ captures something of the zeitgeist in the present century.

Roughly three thousand years ago, the most powerful collection of songs were written with a different emphasis: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!’ (Psalm 103:1). Today, we’re mostly used to reading the Psalms or hearing them preached. But the Psalms are songs, designed to be sung. They orient us towards God in a way that no other songs can.

Previously, we looked at the Psalms as the songs that speak about Jesus. In this post, I want to argue that if we want to be more like the Lord Jesus Christ and live more like Him, then we need to sing the Psalms just like He did.

Jesus: Psalm-singer

Before the Lord Jesus reached the climax of His earthly ministry on the cross, having just instituted the second sacrament of the New Covenant church, it is recorded that ‘when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives’ (Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26). Jesus and His disciples could have sung any number of Psalms that fateful Passover night, but it is generally reckoned that He sung the Hallel Psalms (113-118), which were generally sung around the Passover. I think it’s noteworthy that at this most pivotal moment in the entirety of history, Jesus turned to the Psalter. The Psalms held a special place for Jesus, as I’m sure they hold a special place for many of us too.

In Hebrews 2:11-12, Psalm 22:22 is quoted as Jesus’ words:

That is why he [Jesus Christ] is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying:

“I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” (Emphasis added).

Christians across the world now join in this great chorus, fulfilling verses like Psalm 117:1: ‘Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol Him, all peoples!’ Not only do we sing to Christ, but we also sing with Christ present with us by His Spirit as our elder Brother, Worship Leader and King. ‘In biblical Israel [it] was the king who led the whole service [and] called the assembly to worship’.1 Christopher Ash imagines Christ as ‘the Choirmaster’ from the Psalm superscriptions.2 ‘Father, glorify your name’ is Jesus’s cry (John 12:28), and it is our privilege to take up the refrain.

Augustine’s understanding of the Psalms takes things deeper still. He speaks of ‘the whole Christ (totus Christus)’, which, Ash says, means, ‘Christ the head but also, and inseparably, Christ the body, the church’.3 The Puritan Thomas Goodwin gives all who suffer with Christ the wonderful encouragement that they’re not alone in their suffering:

Christ is the head of the body, which is the fountain of all sense and feeling in the body.4

What we sing in the Psalms applies to both Christ and those in Christ, therefore,

acknowledge both truths, that ‘Christ speaks here,’ and that ‘I speak here’. Say nothing apart from him, as he says nothing apart from you.5

This is how we should sing the Psalms as well. We sing about Christ and we sing about ourselves in Christ.

Could Jesus have sung all of the Psalms?

However, this consideration of the Psalms as the songs that the Lord Jesus sung raises a tricky question: what about the Psalms that speak of guilt, sin and repentance? Jesus Christ was ‘without sin’ (Hebrews 4:15). How can He have prayed or sung these penitential Psalms?

Words of penitence are contained in many of the Psalms which are otherwise happily applied to Christ.6 Consider Psalm 40:6-8 (including the famous line ‘Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me’), which is clearly talking about Christ (Hebrews 10:5, 7). Yet a few lines down, the Psalmist pleads for deliverance from his sins (Psalm 40:12):

my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head

Was Jesus somehow putting Himself in our shoes, or is there something deeper going on here?

As is often the case with Scripture, a difficult question leads to a glorious answer. I think this helps us to uncover a profound truth about Jesus’ humanity. The Heidelberg Catechism states,

all the time He lived on earth, but especially at the end of His life, He bore, in body and soul, the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race7

As Ash says, this is ‘holy ground’.8 Citing 2 Corinthians 5:21, ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us’ (NIV), Bonhoeffer argues that,

Jesus prays for the forgiveness of sins, yet not for his own but ours, which he has taken upon himself and for which he suffers. He puts himself completely in our place9

There is rich food for thought here. More than merely putting Himself in our shoes, the eternally begotten Son of God became one of us and died bearing the weight of all our sins. Because of this, we can say that the Lord Jesus prayed (and sung) the penitential Psalms vicariously as our covenant representative and sin-bearer. When we confess and repent of our sins, marvellously, we follow the lead of Him who ‘was numbered with the transgressors’ (Isaiah 53:12).

Sometimes when we read the Psalms (or even better sing them), we can be tempted to gloss over these penitential statements (‘Yeah, I get it, I know I’m a sinner. Now onto the chorus.’). But Jesus would never have been able to skip over these lines. As He sung them, the realisation would’ve struck Him again and again – only too painfully – what it would cost Him.

Let’s sing the Psalms like Jesus did

Many Christians, including Reformers like John Calvin, used to only sing the Psalms. Today, most of us would argue they were missing out (for example, this would mean never singing the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ). As time has gone on, many of us seem to have largely gone to the opposite extreme: we sing anything but the Psalms! If Calvin and those who hold to exclusive Psalmody are missing out, then I would argue we are missing out even more! I believe this is one of the greatest tragedies of the twenty-first-century church. Why should it be an either-or?

When King Hezekiah instituted his reforms and revived true worship, restoring the place of the Psalter was central (2 Chronicles 29:30). If we wish to revive biblical worship in our churches today then we need to sing the Psalms as Jesus did. The apostle Paul exhorts the Ephesians to speak ‘to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in [their] heart to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:19). If we want to ‘be filled with the Spirit’ (Ephesians 5:20), then we need to sing the Psalms like Jesus did.

There is a Psalm for every occasion, every emotion: songs of praise to be belted out or songs of lament best sung in minor key. If over the course of a Sunday, morning and evening, your church sings half a dozen or more hymns and songs, then why not give a slot to at least one Psalm each week?

Many have said that the rediscovery of the Psalms as the songs of Jesus will lead to something great. Bonhoeffer writes:

Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.10

We may sing many great hymns, ancient and modern, but we must not forget that the Psalms ‘are the church’s only inspired hymns, and they are the church’s only Christ-led hymns’.11 You are what you sing. If you want to become more like the Lord Jesus Christ, then you could do worse than sing those timeless songs of His called the Psalms.

Resources to help you to sing the Psalms
▶ Footnotes
  1. Lefebvre, Michael, Singing the Songs of Jesus: Revisiting the Psalms (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2011), chap. 2 in ePub edition. Lefebvre cites 2 Samuel 6:1, 15 and 1 Chronicles 15:3, 25-28 as examples of this ‘sacral kingship’. ↩︎
  2. Ash, Christopher, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary – Volume 1: Introduction (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 1:280. ↩︎
  3. Ibid., 222. ↩︎
  4. Goodwin, Thomas, The Heart of Christ in Heaven, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin (1861-1866, repr., Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006), 4:142). ↩︎
  5. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, trans. Maria Boulding, ed. John E. Rotelle and Boniface Ramsey (New York: New City Press, 2000), 4:220, in Ash, Psalms, 1:223. ↩︎
  6. For example, Psalms 6:1-8; 31:5, 10; 40:6-8, 12; 41:4, 9, as cited in Ash, Psalms, 1:158. ↩︎
  7. Ursinus, Zacharias, The Heidelberg Catechism (1863, repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2013), Q37. ↩︎
  8. Ash, Psalms, 1:160. ↩︎
  9. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Psalms: The Prayerbook of the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1970), 172, in Ibid., 1:160. ↩︎
  10. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Psalms, 162, in Ibid., 1:160. ↩︎
  11. Lefebvre, Singing the Songs of Jesus, chap. 2. ↩︎