Colossians 1:16-17 vs. “Build My Life”

Pat Barrett · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageColossians 1:16-17 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on Colossians 1 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumPat Barrett · 2018

Words addressed toJesus

Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting: no verse cited, no reference given, nothing in the recording framed as scripture
Its opening sentence about God's worth is exactly the kind Colossians 1:16-17 supports. If all things were created through Him and for Him, every song and every breath was already His
Names Jesus outright in the second verse rather than leaving the object of praise unspecified
The chorus asks rather than asserts: sight, filling and leading are all requested of God, not claimed by the singer
Widely published and indexed under CCLI 7070345 and in ten hymnals, so what it says is easy for anyone to look up and check

⚠ Cautions

Colossians puts the holding-together in a person: in Him all things hold together. The song's bridge names God's love as the foundation, which is true, though the text's own answer to what holds is Him
No reference is given anywhere in the song, so the weight behind that opening sentence has to be brought by the singer
The centre of attention moves across the song. The verses are about God, and the chorus and bridge, which repeat most, are the singer's requests and vow. Both belong in worship, and knowing the balance is better than absorbing it
The publishers index this song to Matthew 7 and 1 Corinthians 3, not to Colossians. Reading it as a Colossians song is our comparison, not something the song says

Verse Proof

Colossians 1:16-17

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

Paul and Timothy write to a church at Colossae that Paul had never met face to face (Colossians 1:1-2; 2:1). Verses 16 and 17 sit inside a compact passage about Christ that runs from 1:15 to 1:20, and the passage works by widening. It names two halves of creation, heaven and earth, then two more, visible and invisible, then four ranks of unseen power, thrones and dominions and rulers and authorities. Then it says all things twice more. The claim is that nothing in any of those categories was made apart from Christ, that all of it was made for Him, and that He is both before it and the reason it stays together.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song opens by saying God deserves every song anyone could sing and every breath anyone could draw, then names Jesus as the one who gives and satisfies, with a short first-person-plural line of response closing each verse. The chorus calls God holy, says no one compares, and then turns into requests: that the singer's eyes be opened, that the singer be filled, that the singer be led. The bridge is a vow in the first person singular: to rest a whole life on God's love, described as a foundation that holds, with trust placed in God alone and a promise of steadiness. No verse is cited anywhere in the recording, no translation is named, and nothing is framed as a quotation.

Nothing was taken from Colossians, and the song does not say it is quoting it. The listings index it elsewhere: Worship Together lists Matthew 7:24-27, 1 Corinthians 3:10, and Isaiah 28:16, and Hymnary adds Luke 6:46-49, 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, Philippians 2:9-11, and three psalms. Colossians appears on none of those lists. What the passage supplies is the ground under the song's very first sentence. The song asserts that God is worth every song and every breath. Colossians 1:16-17 says why that would be true of every song and every breath there are: all things were created through Him and for Him. The song states it. The passage gives the reason, and gives it in the widest terms the New Testament has for the word everything.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse, names no translation, and frames nothing as scripture. So the word-for-word standard does not apply. What it says at the start about God's worth is what Colossians 1:16-17 grounds. It is not something the passage has to answer.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

If all things were made for Him, every song already belonged to Him before anyone decided to sing it.

Why it matters

ChurchLeaders reported in 2019 that usage data from Faithlife Proclaim, a presentation platform used by thousands of churches, put this song at the top of its most-used list for the previous three years. That makes its opening sentence one of the sentences congregations say about God most often, which is a good reason to know what holds it up.

A total statement needs a total reason. If the statement that God is worth every song and every breath rests on how a room feels, it lasts about as long as the feeling. If it rests on Colossians 1:16-17, it is true of every breath drawn by anyone anywhere, including the ones drawn by people who never sing, because the reason given is creation and ownership rather than response.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repeats here is the chorus and the bridge, and both are voiced in the first person. The singer asks to be given sight, to be filled, and to be led, then vows to rest everything on God's love and to stand without wavering. So what a loop of this song plants is a posture of asking and a vow of trust, both of them addressed to God rather than to the room. That is a good thing to have planted. The verses, which come around less often, are the part that carries what the song says about God's worth. The dwelling tag is mixed for that reason, and the mix is worth naming: the song plants more of the response than the ground the response stands on. Colossians is the ballast. Held next to verses 16 and 17, the vow stops being a resolution the singer has to keep producing and becomes the only sensible answer to something already true of everything that exists. Loop the reason along with the song.

Helpful comparison

The two run in opposite directions, and that is the whole finding. Colossians 1:16-17 expands. It begins in Him and then keeps adding categories, heaven and earth, visible and invisible, four ranks of unseen authority, and then all things twice more, before landing on everything held together. Not one clause of it is about the reader. The song begins just as wide, with a sentence about every song and every breath there are, and then narrows steadily: to what Jesus gives, to what the singer is asking for, to one life built on one foundation. The narrowing is not a fault. It is what a congregation actually does with a truth this size, and Paul narrows too, several chapters later. The thing worth holding is that these two verses never make the turn, so a singer who has only the song has the response without the survey of everything the response is answering.

Sources

Pat Barrett — Build My Life (Official Audio) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed reports the channel as Pat Barrett)
Wikipedia — Build My Life · (writers, first release by Housefires on Housefires III in 2016, Pat Barrett single 21 December 2018, chart peaks and 2019 Dove nominations)
Wikipedia — Pat Barrett (album) · (album released 20 July 2018, produced by Ed Cash, Build My Life is track 8 with no featured artist)
Worship Together — Build My Life · (CCLI 7070345 and the publisher's own scripture references: Matthew 7:24-27, 1 Corinthians 3:10, Isaiah 28:16)
Hymnary.org — Build My Life · (five credited writers, 2016 copyright, ten hymnal instances, and the fuller reference list including Luke 6:46-49 and Philippians 2:9-11)
ChurchLeaders — Build My Life tops list of most-used worship songs · (Faithlife Proclaim data, 28 August 2019, and Pat Barrett's account to HIS Radio of writing it in pieces over several years)

Corrections

2026-09-06 This entry argued from "the publisher" when it meant worshiptogether.com. That site is the song-resource platform Capitol CMG Publishing runs, not the song's publisher, and it carries songs Capitol CMG does not publish, so a scripture list on it is the platform's rather than the songwriters'. The site had already corrected this wording on the Ephesians 2:4-6 entry on 2026-08-07. The finding is unchanged; only who published the reference.

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