“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

— C. S. Lewis

In Hebrews 13:15 we read, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name.” And in Isaiah 43:21, God commands us: “This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise.”

Notice here that God does not merely want or seek our praise, He demands it! But why? From a human point of view, this sounds strange and arrogant. Is God somehow incomplete without the praise of His creation? Is God insecure? Is He narcissistic?

These blatantly wrong-headed questions arise because of three main reasons (although I’m sure there are others).

First, we wrongly lump together God’s command for praise with man’s desire for it. And these two should not be “lumped” together as though they are synonymous. In fact, they are diametrical opposites. But how? Consider this: if another human being demanded that we praise and worship him, then we would rightly conclude that that person was arrogant or delusional or worse. Who is he that we should fall down and worship him? However, when God demands the same thing, that command is based upon truth: He is the Bright Morning Star, the Lord of Hosts, the King of kings, the Father of Light, The Almighty, the Alpha and the Omega, and the Ancient of Days. These are no vain boasts! God is simply speaking fact: “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14). God is so praiseworthy that even if we continually uttered exultations from our lips that would do no justice to the infinite reality of his blinding glory. And our failure to exert our maximal praise for the unfathomable worth of God’s glory is described in the Bible as sin. In Romans 3:23, Paul writes, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

So that, I believe, is our first answer—God commands us to praise Him because it expresses the truth of His character. Failure to do so with the maximal intensity of every ounce in our being would be a misrepresentation, a falsehood, a lie! And even if we were able to give God the greatest praise that our limited human bodies could muster, that would only portray an inkling of his vast and boundless worth.

Here is the second difference between God’s command for praise and man’s desire for it: God does not need our praise as through He was incomplete without it. He is not like a vain actor constantly in search of complements. Because God is trinitarian, there is already perfect love, community, happiness, and harmony between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is in fact totally complete and fulfilled in joy and mutual adoration even without us. It is only by His tremendous grace and amazing creativity that we are here. So when God demands praise from us, it is for an entirely different reason other than stroking His own divine ego. His self-praise and self-adoration are an expression of the glories found within the three Persons of the Trinity. His self-praise is a reflection of the Father’s exaltation of the Son’s obedience and humility, of the Son’s adoration of the Father’s goodness and might, and of the Spirit’s joy in magnifying the worth of the Son and Father. In essence, God’s demand for us to praise Him is a call to join in the joy and celebration and loving adoration found within the Trinity. It a call to join the Family. It is a call to joy!

On the other hand, while God’s self-praise is Trinitarian in nature and issues forth in a loving command to join God’s Family, our self-praise is purely selfish. We seek to magnify no other. Our self-praise has no quality of giving or sharing. Ours is vainglory.

Third, the glory of God is the greatest good in all the world. There is no higher achievement. There is no higher goal. Therefore, God’s self-praise is an exultation of that which is most beautiful, most awe-inspiring, and most excellent. Sometimes, Christians wrongly put man in the center of all of God’s efforts and affairs—as through the greatest good in all the world was the redemption of mankind from his sins. Granted, this act of God is indeed fabulously praiseworthy! However, this man-centered understanding of God’s most central passion is not accurate. The cross was not meant to display the greatness of man’s worth—as through man was worthy of garnering the death of God’s only Son. Rather, the cross was meant to display the glory of God’s love and grace—that our great God would stoop so low and “condescend” to save those who passonately hate and trample on His glory. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but this distinction is real and important. Man’s worth did not garner God’s sacrifice on the cross. Rather, it was God’s worth (which includes his unimaginable love) that garnered God’s sacrifice on the cross.

Moreover, the cross vindicated God’s glory. By His Son taking the full force of the Father’s wrath against our sins, God demonstrated his hatred towards sin, upheld his holiness and justice, and vindicated His name. The cross demonstrated God’s central passion is for His self-glory. And He is jealous of his name and will share His glory with no one else.

Now this understanding of God’s glory brings up an interesting difficulty: how does God’s self-praise and God’s humility fit together? Does God’s demand for praise somehow negate His humility? Not at all! Indeed, He has proven time and time again to be the most trustworthy, patient, humble, loving, giving, nurturing, and compassionate Person in existence. The Bible describes Jesus as the Servant King who willingly endured the shame, scorn, and pain of the cross to demonstrate these essential qualities. So rather than contradicting humility, God’s self-praise actually magnifies His humility. By contrasting God’s majesty and might with the contempt of the cross, we see the vast road that God’s humility had to traverse. It is awe inspiring! It is worshipful!

These are admittedly difficult concepts to grasp since we have no worldly point-of-reference (and for most of my early Christian life, I struggled with understanding God’s command to praise Him). So let me see if I can summarize it once more, but more concisely:

God’s demand for praise is based simply on the truth of his unmeasurable and infinite worth. Even if we spent the rest of our lives praising God, it would do no justice to the reality of who He is.
Man’s demand for praise is based upon arrogance and hyprocricy since all men are sinners who “fall short of the glory of God.”
God does not need our praise. His command for us to praise Him is not because He is lacking. Rather, within the Trinity, there is already perfect love, joy, and satisfaction. God is completely complete.
God’s command for us to praise him is solely for our benefit. It bring us joy and draws us closer to our trinitanian God. It completes us!
God is the only being where self-praise issues forth in goodness and love to others. His self-praise gives to others.

Finally, let me leave you with several well-known passages by C.S. Lewis from his book Reflections on the Psalms. Here Lewis shares his struggles regarding praising God:

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.
The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about.
My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

And Lewis later writes:

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.

God has created us in such a way that to praise football teams, amazing Olympic world records, beautiful vistas, and crimson sunsets completes us. And, in the end, the things that most completes us and brings us the ultimate joy is the knowledge and praise of God. As the Westminster Confession so eloquently says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”