5 Reasons Why We Should Sing Psalms and Hymns in Church
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We want to ensure that our songs are God-centered, Christ-focused, Bible-based, accessible to the congregation, with texts appropriately wedded to singable tunes, and so much more. What should we sing in church?
This important question deserves a much longer answer than the one I will briefly present in this article. Here I want to take up one particular aspect of this question, which will undoubtedly be asked at some point in the life of a Reformed church: should we only be singing the psalms? Certain church orders grant no leeway, dictating the use of the Psalter exclusively. Other church orders give preference to the psalms, while others remain silent on the issue. In this brief article, I want to offer up a balanced approach and give five reasons why we should be singing both psalms and hymns.
1. Psalmody is our heritage.
By this I am not only referring to the fact that exclusive psalmody was essentially the sole practice among Presbyterian and Reformed churches up until 1740.[1] I mean much more than that. I am referring to the fact that by faith we are grafted into the people of Abraham, into Israel, and the psalms are literally our history as well as God’s own hymnal. Beyond its relatively recent historical pedigree in our ecclesiastical circles, this fact should commend the singing of psalms to our churches.
Moreover, the psalms belong not only to us but to Jesus Christ Himself. This was His songbook, written by Him, sung by Him, and it is meant to be sung for Him as well. In an age where the church’s music is predominantly marked by man-centered words and performances, there may be no better remedy than to return psalm-singing to a prominent place in the corporate worship of God’s people.
2. Psalms ensure a representation of the entire range of Christian experience.
The repertoire of many churches is emotionally uneven: the majority of the songs sung are upbeat and joyful. But life does not play out always in the major key, so why should our songs? The psalter gives us a proper balance of emotive music: songs of praise as well as lament, songs of adoration as well as confession.
Handling these more sensitive subjects can seem awkward, but when we look to the psalms, we know the appropriate way to do it. As we sing these inspired words, we can have full confidence that we are pleasing our Lord. As Calvin said, “There is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God.”[2]
3. Hymnody is our heritage, too.
While hymn-singing took a prominent place in Christian public worship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (thanks in part to the likes of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley), it would be incorrect to assume it was non-existent before then. On the contrary, there is a rich history of Christian hymnody reaching all the way back to the early church. In a letter to Emperor Trajan, Roman governor Pliny the Younger (c. AD 61-113) observed a Christian worship service and noted that the people “meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god.”[3]
We have today, and many churches still sing, hymns by Ambrose of Milan (c. 339-97), Gregory the Great (540-604), Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153), Bonaventure (c. 1217-74), and Thomas Aquinas (1225-74).[4] To dismiss hymnody out of hand by claiming it is novel would be ignorant. As children of the Reformation, it is impossible to deny the tie we have to hymnody. Hymnody was a hallmark of the Reformation and a vital aspect of its propagation—consider the widely popular songs of Martin Luther, as one example. In this regard we should cherish hymnody and be proud of its history in the church.
4. There is evidence in Scripture for extra-psalm worship songs.
More important than the rich tradition of the church is the witness Scripture itself gives to the use of hymns. For one thing, we have Paul commanding the church to sing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19 and Col. 3:16). But more than that, Paul himself seems to quote what many scholars agree are portions of ancient Christian hymns in Colossians 1 and Philippians 2.
More explicit are the canticles we find at the opening of Luke’s Gospel. These are all instances of New Covenant hymnody included in the Canon of Scripture, not only for our edification but also for our worship.
5. A full salvation deserves a full song.
Throughout the Bible we find God’s people often lifting up their voices to praise the Lord at key revelations of His salvation and work. Israel sang immediately in response to their safe passage through the Red Sea (Exod. 15), Deborah and Barak praised God in song for His rescue (Judg. 5), and Mary sang in response to the news that she would bear the Christ-child (Luke 1:46-55).
This side of the cross, are we not also compelled to lift up our voices in praise to God for the work of Jesus Christ? Our singing should reflect—fully and explicitly—the work that God has done on our behalf through Jesus, as demonstrated by the songs of Revelation 4 and 5.
This article is adapted from Jonathan Landry Cruse's chapter “What Every Elder Needs to Know about Congregational Singing" in Faithful and Fruitful: Essays for Elders and Deacons (Reformed Fellowship Inc., 2019), edited by William Boekestein and Steven Swets, and was originally published at Beautiful Christian Life on October 18, 2019.
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Faithful and Fruitful: Essays for Elders and Deacons, edited by William Boekestein and Steven Swets
Notes:
[1] See D. G. Hart’s chapter “Psalters, Hymnals, Worship Wars, and American Presbyterian Piety” in Sing a New Song: Recovering Psalm Singing for the Twenty-First Century, eds. Joel R. Beeke and Anthony T. Selvaggio (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 61-77.
[2] Sing a New Song, 18.
[3] Pliny, Letters, 10.96
[4] See Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 40-42.
