The most basic Christian teaching is: “God is love.” You can find this message anywhere you look in Scripture, but two of the most obvious instances are in 1 John 4 and John 3. We probably all know these verses, but take a minute to meditate on them:
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
—1 John 4:7–12 (MSG)
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”
—John 3:16–17 (MSG)
The fullness of God’s love is the core message we have to proclaim, and our whole purpose as followers of Jesus is to be living proof of God’s love in an ever-changing world. Our job as curators of the gospel in worship is to allow the central message of our faith to be heard. I cited these verses from The Message because it speaks in a particular dialect from the late 20th century in North America. The nuances of that style were surprising at the time but are even now beginning to lose their initial punch with succeeding generations. The same can be true with hymns and worship songs.
Within any active 21st-century congregation and its surrounding culture, there can be up to six defined generations who need to hear the gospel—each with their own unique vibe when it comes to congregational song. Thankfully, a majority of hymns and worship songs can be cross-cultural, but it is interesting to see how music from different generations can convey the same truth in different ways.
An easy example of a traditional hymn that found a new tune is My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less. The text is by Edward Mote (1834). William Bradbury wrote the tune SOLID ROCK specifically for this hymn in 1864. Hillsong released Cornerstone in 2012—same hymn, very different musical impact. Other examples, a little less obvious initially, are fun to discover.
Take for example Charles Wesley’s 1738 hymn And Can It Be, That I Should Gain? based on Romans 5:8. Wesley wrote this shortly after his conversion. He had difficulty completing the hymn, feeling it somehow displeased God. He later realized that was “the device of the Enemy to keep God from receiving the glory he was due.” Compare Wesley’s expression of God’s love and forgiveness to How Can It Be, a worship song made famous by Lauren Daigle in 2015. Daigle was impressed with these words when she saw they were based on the story of God’s love revealed in Christ to a sinful woman (John 8:1-11).
And can it be that I should gain an int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused his pain? For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be that Thou, my God, should die for me?
—Charles Wesley, from And Can It Be, That I Should Gain?
I am guilty, ashamed of what I’ve done, what I’ve become.
These hands are dirty, I dare not lift them up to the Holy One.
You plead my cause, you right my wrongs, you break my chains, you overcome;
You gave your life to give me mine. You say that I am free—How can it be, how can it be?
—from How Can It Be
Or consider another well-known hymn by Charles Wesley, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, first published in 1739. This text is usually paired with the tune EASTER HYMN composed several decades earlier. We take this hymn in its current form for granted. But most hymnals have only four or five of Wesley’s eleven stanzas, and most notably in the US, “Alleluia” has been inserted at the end of each line. Different generations have altered the original hymn in different contexts, sometimes reducing the theological impact of the Resurrection. Now compare the hymn we have received with the 2014 worship song Forever by Kari Job et al. in the Bethel Music worship movement:
Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia! Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia! Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!
Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia! Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia! Where’s thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!
—Charles Wesley, from Christ the Lord Is Risen Today
The ground began to shake, the stone was rolled away
His perfect love could not be overcome
Now death, where is your sting? Our resurrected King has rendered you defeated!
Forever, He is glorified. Forever, He is lifted high.
Forever, He is risen. He is alive, He is alive.
…
We sing Hallelujah, the Lamb has overcome.
Is the vibe the same? No—but the message is, and that’s the point. The eternal biblical truth of God’s unconditional love, made most visible in Christ overcoming death, is the essential song of the Christian church. Proclaiming God’s love and embodying God’s justice will look and sound different in diverse contexts. Again, our job as curators of the gospel in worship is to allow the central message of our faith to speak clearly to every culture, every generation, every context—treasuring the traditions we receive, embracing new expressions we experience, and allowing the authentic Good News of Jesus Christ to bridge the divisions, address the suspicions, and obliterate the antagonisms that currently plague the world God loves—the world that Christ came to save. That is our Easter challenge!
