speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting with your heart to the Lord;
The command comes in the verse before: do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. Singing is the first thing that spills over, which raises two questions: what should we sing, and where does the song start?
One writer draws a sharp line between what every believer has and what few enjoy:
It is one thing to be indwelt by the Spirit, and another to be filled with the Spirit. All believers are indwelt; but how few, sadly, are filled! ... To be filled with the Spirit is to be under the direct energy of the Spirit's action. It stands here in contrast with the forced, natural cheerfulness that wine causes. Instead of that, the believer should have the joy and happiness that the Holy Spirit pours into his heart. This will find its suitable outlet in expressions of joy; not the foolish songs of the world, but the psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs.
Another writer pictures the change as one vessel refilled:
There is a vessel filled with the Spirit. It is the very same vessel, only changed. It was once filled with wine; now, in a spirit of thanksgiving, it is bubbling up with melody to the Lord.
The verse names three kinds of song. One writer sets out what each word covers:
The word psalm means a sacred song sung with a stringed instrument. Hymns are songs of praise to God, and the word clearly covers many of the psalms too. Still, not all psalms are hymns, and hymns are not always psalms. Spiritual songs covers more than praise. It includes songs of spiritual experience, songs celebrating events in Scripture, and songs of meditation on its various truths.
Commentators differ over whether "psalms" here means the Old Testament book. Some say it does. Others reject that, for reasons drawn from those psalms themselves:
The Old Testament Psalms cannot carry true worship. In them worship goes to Jehovah, and not to the Father and the Son. A finished redemption was not yet known. And the psalms that call down judgment are quite out of keeping with the spirit of the New Testament. So the psalms of Ephesians 5:19 cannot be the Psalms of the Old Testament. They must be psalms written for Christian worship.
Another writer notes that the New Testament gives Christians no book of songs, and sees a reason for it:
There is no supply of psalms, hymns, or spiritual songs written by inspiration for the Christian; for the Jew there is a very large one. Do you wonder at this? ... The Jew needed such praises made for him; the Church does not. The Christian and the Church have the Holy Spirit, which the Jew did not have, and so have within them a full spring for making melody in the heart.
One writer sets the order between speaking to each other and singing to the Lord, and warns what happens when the words outrun the heart:
Personal worship is the first effect of being filled with the Spirit, and the fellowship of believers naturally follows it and carries it on... Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are the audible expressions of a melody that begins in secret, in the heart where Christ dwells. When we are in the Spirit and speak to ourselves, we speak of Jesus; when we answer one another, it is in the Lord's song... There is no melody for Christ if our hearts are still far from Him, even though the words we use may have come from His Spirit.
The heart is not an alternative to the voice. The verse asks for both at once:
Believers here are told not to sing only, and not to make melody in the heart only, but to do both. No amount of melody with the voice can take the place of melody in the heart.
One writer adds comfort for those who cannot hold a tune:
Singing is audible, but making melody in your heart is more vital. This is surely an encouragement to those who have trouble carrying a tune!
The verse aims the song at one hearer:
We should always make sure our hymns and songs of praise are directed to God. Faith and the energy of the Spirit turn the heart straight to Him. Most religious singing today is probably aimed at people instead.
- Filled — the Spirit lives in every believer. But this song flows from being filled: from the Spirit's direct energy, not the lift wine gives.
- Overflow — the vessel that once held wine now bubbles up with melody. What fills it has changed, not who is filled.
- Three songs — psalms and hymns carry praise to God. Spiritual songs reach wider: experience, events in Scripture, and meditation on its truths.
- Source — commentators differ on whether "psalms" means the Old Testament book. Several hold that Christians need no inspired hymnbook, because the Spirit within is a spring of song.
- Direction — the verse asks for voice and heart together, both turned to the Lord. Without melody in the heart, the finest words are only sound.
giving thanks at all times for all things to him [who is] God and [the] Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
The apostle has just told the Ephesians not to get drunk on wine but to be filled with the Spirit. This verse names one mark of that life, and it raises a hard question: how can anyone thank God always, and for everything, when some of it hurts?
The chapter has just set wine against the Spirit. That contrast reaches down to where a believer's joy comes from.
The world's joy expresses itself in a physical way; it is mere natural excitement, such as that caused by wine. The believer's is to be the opposite of this. It is not the lift given by natural causes, but the deeper delight ministered by the Spirit of God. It is one thing to be indwelt by the Spirit, and another to be filled with the Spirit. All believers are indwelt; but how few, sadly, are filled!
The command can sound like pressure. One writer says that misses its tone.
This is not a mere duty. I need not say we cannot deny the duty part. But it is clear the Holy Spirit assumes the saints will feel and understand this: it directs the heart rather than demanding something from it... Our hearts are naturally so legal that we tend to turn the words of our God to us into a law we must bend to. That happens even with the knowledge of God we have. Instead we should see that this is the good portion God has given us. Thanksgiving always for all things is then the natural expression of the heart taught by the Holy Spirit.
Other commentators press the duty side:
Thanksgiving is not optional on our part. The apostle declares that it is "the will of God in Christ Jesus" that we should "give thanks in all circumstances."
The phrase reaches further than thanking God for what we do. It reaches what He allows to happen to us.
It is not giving thanks in everything that we do. It is more. No matter what God does, or permits to be done, I am entitled by faith to receive it as a blessing to my soul. So I give thanks for it. Whatever the trial may be — disappointment, scorn, distraction, the thousand influences that come from an evil world — I am not to thank Him for these. I thank Him for the blessing that God designs for me through them.
Only someone sure of what he has been given can talk this way.
A man must know he has a good portion who can rejoice always in all things, who can give thanks always for all things. The natural man cannot receive such a word as this... God seems to say in this passage, My child, you will never be in any circumstances, or in any position, in which you have no cause to give thanks... This giving of thanks is not one or two links of a chain, then broken off; no, it is continuous and unbroken and lasting.
The Lord Himself did this at the worst moment of His rejection.
He could and did give thanks in the hour of deepest trial. In Matthew 11 and Luke 10 we see Him rejected by men... The dark shadows of the cross were already falling across His path. Then we read: "At that time" — mark it well. At that time, when all was darkest and He had unspeakable anguish ahead, "Jesus rejoiced" and said, "I thank you, Father." Oh, for grace to imitate Him in this — not only in subjection to the will of God, but in receiving the heaviest trials from the Father's hand, knowing that all is for eventual blessing.
Job is the opposite case. One writer traces his failure to one thing:
He was occupied with circumstances, and not with the God of circumstances.
Thanks here rests on something already done. What arrives does not set its level.
Redemption has set the believer in a position of eternal obligation to the God of grace... Everything, then, is to be acknowledged thankfully. The thing received, whether good or bad, matters less than the hand that gives it... Notice the deliberate precision in the language of this verse. Its many-sided purpose is to keep us from falling below the true level of spiritual worship when we give thanks.
Thanksgiving does not stay private. It changes how believers treat each other.
This constantly thankful spirit will have both a preserving and a fruitful effect. It will make submission to one another in the fear of God simpler for us. So we will recognise God as being in control, rather than the will of man dominating.
- Source — Thanksgiving here is not willpower. It is what a heart filled with the Spirit does naturally, in place of the world's borrowed excitement.
- Freedom — The words direct the heart; they do not squeeze thanks out of it. Yet other writers stress it is also God's declared will.
- Reach — "For everything" includes the trial. You thank God not for the pain, but for the blessing He is designing through it.
- Ground — Thanks go to the Father, through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The precision keeps our praise at the level of worship, valuing the Giver above the gift.
- Result — A thankful heart lives above circumstances, not inside them. It yields to others, because it treats God as the One in control.