Is old music better than new music? We all know the joy and freshness of learning a new hymn or hearing a new song of praise, but at other times we feel hesitant and uncertain about being too new or too edgy. Add to the mix the fact that churches and families are made of people with a variety of opinions and ideas about music. It certainly seems like the safe thing to do is just to stick with the old, proven hymns that we’ve been using for years. The safe and easy option, however, is not necessarily best. God teaches us that we should create and sing new songs of worship.

The Scriptural references to singing a new song are widespread. Around 1000 BC, David testified that God had “put a new song in [his] mouth” (Ps. 40:3) and that he would “sing a new song” to God (Ps. 144:9). Three hundred years later, Isaiah preached, “Sing unto the Lord a new song” to the nation of Judah (Isa. 42:10). Throughout that time, several anonymous psalms called God’s people to sing a new song to the Lord (Pss. 33:3; 96:1; 98:1; 149:1). In the New Testament, it is possible that several passages in Paul’s letters are parts of ancient hymns (perhaps Phil. 2:6-11 and 1 Tim. 3:16). The apostle John looked forward to the new song that the twenty-four elders and four heavenly creatures would sing to the Lamb (Rev. 5:9), and he saw 144,000 redeemed people singing a new song that only they could learn (Rev. 14:3). Throughout Bible history, each generation of God’s people wrote new songs to express their praise.

What does a “new song” entail? If we were to look at that phrase in the Hebrew or Greek, we’d notice that it literally means “new song.” There’s nothing fancy, surprising, or revolutionary about what the words mean. It was common for a time to make a sharp distinction between “new in time” and “new in quality,” but a detailed study actually shows that those two ideas overlap more than they differ. Those who promoted the split definition usually went on to argue that the music of a Christian should sound different from the music he listened to before he was saved. For some Christians, that’s true. But what about people who listened to classical music before they come to Christ? Or children who grew up in a home where they were protected from harmful music? It is not universally true that one’s music must change stylistically at the occasion of his conversion. I would suggest that the “new song” we’re talking about is new in both time and quality, but primarily in time. Simply stated, the Scriptures call us to write and sing new songs.

Why does God desire that we write and sing new songs? Is our song new because He is changing? Certainly not! He is the same praiseworthy God yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Should we use new songs because the content of our praise is substantially new? Again, no. Take Psalm 33 as an example: the “new song” praised God for creating the world (vv. 6–9). The content can’t get much older than that! Has the record of God’s marvelous work in history changed? No, the historical events of our deliverance (Christ’s life, death, and resurrection) have not changed.

We must sing our new songs because we are new people. We are not the same people who were saved during the third century. We are not the same people who were saved during the Reformation or the Great Awakening or even the 1910s. God wants us to articulate our praise in our own words and our own songs! Here we find an inconsistency in many churches. We rightly stand against ritualistic prayers and stolen sermons, yet some insist on exclusively singing a bygone generation’s praise.

There’s a balance here, of course. Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn at the Last Supper (Matt. 26:30), and that hymn was most likely a psalm. Paul exhorts singing psalms (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). We have a hymn heritage that is rich and profitable, and we should certainly take from it the many songs that are doctrinally rich, devotionally expressive, and musically good. But we should not rely solely on the praise of saints who have gone before us; we must put our hearts and minds to the task of creating new songs of worship!

This is a slightly longer version of the article I recently wrote for SoundForth‘s Accents newsletter.