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Does God Need Our Praise?
We might ask that question another way: Is God dependent upon His creation in order to be God?
by Christopher R.J. Holmes

The triune God does not need our praise. But we need to praise God in order to be fully human. Let’s think about that together.

If God needed our praise God would not be the sovereign, utterly free and self-sufficient One to whom Holy Scripture gives witness. Indeed, if God needed our praise God would be dependent upon His creation in order to be God.

Praise is a fitting response by those who know the ways and works of God...

For this reason the classical Christian tradition has rightly emphasized God’s independence with respect to His creation. That is, God is uncreated Being, the source of Himself, and does not need or require anything outside of Himself to be the One that He is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It follows that God’s creation of the world and of humankind was also not something He needed to do: God freely creates on the basis of the love that God is in Himself.

Praise is a fitting response by those who know the ways and works of God, especially by those who know the risen One who stands at the centre of Scripture and all of God’s works. As 1 Corinthians 1:30 tells us, praise is the particular response appropriate to the saving activity of Jesus Christ “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

Looking at it another way, we can also say praise of God is the act of the Christian Church most appropriate to the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Ultimately, praise on the part of the Christian and, in turn, the Christian Church is an act of obedience that stands at the forefront of our reason for being. The praise of the people of God pleases God, brings glory to God. And yet God, while not needing our praise, is clearly glorified by such praise since He created us to praise. Indeed, there is nothing that makes us more human than our confession of and obedience to the One in whom we live, move and have our being.

At the centre of the Christian message is the glory of God. The Church ought to be continually amazed that God became a human being and that God’s glory is disclosed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Creator of the heavens and the Earth bestows Himself in this human being and asks that we contemplate Him there.

Is God glorified when we look for Him in the place where He wills to be found? Yes! For when we see Him in that very scandalous place, the cross, we are confronted by the God who is for us and for this world even unto death. The most fitting way of responding to this astonishing event of grace is praise.

And so praise expressed in both word and deed is our true end. It is the act of gratitude required by those in fellowship with the Father and the Son who has made Him known. Through the Spirit of the risen Son, the Church is conformed to the words and deeds of the Son by way of its praise.

Praise glorifies God and, in the glorification of God, we humans fulfil the end for which we were created. That our life is in the hands of God is all the more reason to praise and serve Him, all the while mindful of the place where God gives Himself to be found, namely, in the crucified and risen Lord who is present in, with and among us through His Spirit.

Christopher R.J. Holmes is assistant professor of systematic theology and ethics at Providence Theological Seminary in Otterburne, Manitoba.