"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior." (Ephesians 5:15-23)

Ephesians 5:19 has been employed by the Church of Christ as its primary proof text against instrumental singing in worship for at least as long as I've been alive. I memorized the verse as a child and was taught to utilize it if ever I found myself debating with a denominationalist or perspective convert. Ephesians 5:19 was among the verses we recited as a congregation after worship service during "Family Bible Hour." In my experience, however, we always interacted with it as a standalone half sentence, and it's rarely incorporated into the broader context:I think we need to start asking ourselves whether Ephesians 5:19 should really be used as a proof text against instrumental singing. If the verse clearly proves our point then we look intelligent and informed to those we talk with, but if the verse doesn't clearly prove our point we look like we're desperate, incapable of interpreting the Bible, and weird. Most of us have had the experience of discussing a religious topic with some kind of fanatic who desperately tried to prove a point using a totally unrelated verse. I sometimes find myself wondering how much weed the person has smoked (especially when the conversation drifts into aliens and psychedelic experiences). It's not that I'm judging the person, they might be doing the best they can (or weed really does lead to enlightenment), but it makes them difficult to follow or believe. Whenever I've used Ephesians 5:19 to "prove" that instrumental music is wrong I find myself on the receiving end of the kind of look I probably give those homeless alien Jesus devotees… confusion. I’ve never found anyone outside the Church of Christ who sees Ephesians 5:19 as a reasonable line of argument against instruments. Even when I try to explain that we should "only use elements in worship that are found in the New Testament" they still don’t see how this verse relates.I think it's important for me to say that I don't believe in using instruments during the worship assembly. In fact, I've even talked a congregation out of using them that had formerly determined to introduce them. I feel like I have to clarify this up front because I've noticed that many of my fellow Church of Christ members have a tendency to think that if someone criticizes any commonly used argument in the Church of Christ then they must be "teaching false doctrine" or have a secret agenda to introduce sin into the church.I think the way we argue for our beliefs is deeply important. If we build huge sections of our doctrinal teaching on bad arguments then we've effectively been building on sand, and it's only a matter of time until the rains and floods knock over what we've built. We might have the right position about nearly everything, but if we defend those positions using faulty logic than it'll discredit our entire body of teaching. Ephesians 5:19 is a weak point in our structure, it's a proof text that doesn't prove anything, and if we continue to use it then our position will look increasingly dumb.I decided to read the entirety of Ephesians before I started writing on this topic. I felt like I needed to get the full context of the verse before criticizing our way of interpreting it. After reading it, however, I became more convinced that the way we utilize this verse is just fundamentally faulty.There's arguably nothing in the entire book of Ephesians that deals directly with the corporate worship assembly. Sure, Paul mentioned things like prayer and singing that happen to be parts of worship, but he doesn't talk about them in the worship context, and the context of his words suggest he didn't have corporate worship in mind as he's wrote.Ephesians 5:19 is surrounded on all sides by topics that have nothing to do with the corporate worship assembly. In fact, the verse is only the second third of a sentence that begins with the topic of drunkenness and ends with the topic of submitting to each other. The very next sentence is about wives submitting to their husbands. Neither drunkenness nor domestic hierarchy are topics we would traditionally designate to the corporate worship category, and yet we adamantly apply the middle third of the sentence to the topic of instrumental singing in church. I’ve heard preachers denounce denominationalists thousands of times from the pulpit for "taking passages out of context," and yet here we find the Church of Christ clearly stripping Ephesians 5:19 out of context.I think if we're honest with ourselves, most of us would admit that the verse itself doesn't even seem to be discussing corporate singing. The way the verse is worded, the way it talks about "singing and making melody in your hearts," is a rather weird way of talking about a systematic act of worship. I noticed this on some subconscious level even as a child. Why didn't Paul write something like "when you sing in church" or "during your group singing" or "when you assemble," or something like that? Why did he say "addressing one another" like he was thinking about a personal conversation? Furthermore, he said we should be doing it "always and for everything," which doesn't sound like a specific act of worship. It's not that it's impossible that Paul was talking about corporate singing but that the exact wording of the verse, especially given the context, doesn't lead one to immediately think that's what he was talking about. I grew up with the King James Version, and the way that version words it, "in your hearts," makes it sound like Paul was talking about something we should be doing inaudibly.Even if we ignore these problems, however, it's still difficult to imagine from an objective standpoint how this verse relates to instrumental music. If we use the classic scenario of "a lonely pagan on a desert island reading the Bible for the first time," it's almost impossible to imagine him reading this verse and finding an application to the instrumental music debate. I was once involved in a discussion with a Chinese house church about instruments. A person in my group brought up Ephesians 5:19 as an argument against instruments, and the Chinese preacher looked back at her with blank confusion in his eyes. He couldn't see any application of the verse towards the issue, and he never noticed any connection no matter how long she went on trying to explain it. This preacher was converted by Church of Christ missionaries, and yet even he couldn't see a connection. How much less can we expect the lonely pagan on the desert island to see it?What is the meaning of Ephesians 5:19, then, if it isn't about corporate singing or instruments? My opinion is that the context suggests it's a figure of speech about how Christians should interact with each other. Our conduct towards one another should be as if we were singing to one another towards God. In other words, we should be glorifying God through our loving interaction. Paul was contrasting the relationships we should have with each other with worldly relationships defined by drunkenness and debauchery. Unrighteous people get drunk at social gatherings and do wicked things, but Christians are sober minded and always singing to each other in communion towards our Lord. We’re submitting to each other just as we submit in cooperative singing. It’s possible, then, that the verse could have indirect application to corporate worship, but that’s not the issue Paul was talking about.I think we have to start asking ourselves some soul-searching questions after deconstructing this staple Church of Christ argument. What does it say about our loyalty to scripture, and ability to interpret it, that the Ephesians 5:19 argument against instruments has become so dominant for so long in our fellowship? Why has there been so little meditation on the verse's actual meaning and context? What is it about our identity as a people that we've employed this argument without seemingly any regard for how successful it's been at convincing outsiders? Have we become too close-minded and unconcerned with critical thought?There are more reasonable alternative ways to object to instrumental worship than Ephesians 5:19. The argument I've found most successful in debate is from church history . Instruments were never introduced into churches until seven hundred years after Christ, and they didn't become common until a millennium after the church's founding. The Eastern Orthodox churches have never introduced them. Their earliest appearances were met with horror and rejection by the common people, and the Protestant Reformation did away with them in non-Catholic churches for a while longer. There was opposition to their use even in the Catholic Church as late as the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563. Given the history, the Church of Christ can be confident in its acapella worship without resorting to desperate out of context arguments from Ephesians 5:19.