I was still a young Christian when I realized that there were many passages in the Psalms that told everyone to praise the Lord, again and again. And so I thought, “Why does He need to hear it so many times?” He is God, and nobody compares to His power and glory. “Hindi ba parang insecure si God at kailangan Niya pa na ma-affirm ng mga papuri sa Kaniya ng mga nilikha Niyang tao?”
I didn’t know how to answer my own question then. I only had a feeling that that thought was wrong. And it took me years, and a lot of reading and praying, to finally understand why that was wrong. This article is my attempt to put that answer down in writing.
Here it is in one sentence: the thing God loves most is His own glory, and that is the best news you and I could ever hear. Sounds narcissistic of God? Let’s see.
The verses that bothered me
Before I explain, let us read what God Himself says. These are not obscure verses. They are right there in our Bibles.
“For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” (Isaiah 48:11)
“It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.” (Ezekiel 36:22)
If you grew up being told that you are the apple of God’s eye, these verses can sting a little. God is saying, I am not doing this because of you. I am doing this because of Me.
We are not used to hearing that. Almost everything around us tells us we are the center. The ads on our phones, the self-help videos, even some sermons. So when God says He acts for His own name, our first reaction is to flinch.
C.S. Lewis flinched too. Before he became a Christian, he said all the commands to praise God in the Psalms sounded like “a vain woman wanting compliments.” I thought I was the only one who felt that way, but it seems I was in good company.
Why it is wrong for us, but right for God
The objection usually goes like this. When a person keeps talking about himself, we call him hambog o mayabang. We avoid him at parties. So if God keeps pointing to His own greatness, isn’t He doing the same thing?
The problem is that this compares two things that are not alike at all.
When I seek glory for myself, I am claiming something that is not mine. My mind, my health, my talents, even the breath I used to say “look at me,” all of it was given to me. Taking credit for it is like a student copying his classmate’s homework and then asking the teacher for a medal. It is borrowed, and we act like we own it.
God is different. Nothing He has was borrowed. He is the only one in all of reality who is good in Himself, not because someone made Him good.
So think about it this way. To be righteous means to value things according to their true worth. If God valued anything more than Himself, even us, He would be getting it wrong. He would be saying there is something more beautiful and more worthy than God. That would be a lie, and God cannot lie. If God loved the creature more than the Creator, God Himself would be guilty of idolatry.
For God to love His own glory above all is not pride. It is simply telling the truth.
We don’t add to His glory, we show it
The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?” and answers, “To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” But what does it mean to “glorify” God? Can we make Him more glorious than He already is?
No. Older theologians helped me here with a simple distinction. There is God’s essential glory, which is everything He is: His power, His wisdom, His holiness, His love. That glory does not grow when we sing louder on Sunday, and it does not shrink when the whole world rebels against Him. You cannot add a cup of water to the ocean and say you made it bigger.
Then there is His declared glory, which is that same glory being seen and spoken of by His creatures. That is where we come in.
Psalm 29:2 says, “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name.” Notice the word ascribe. We don’t give God glory He lacks. We recognize the glory He already has. We are like a mirror catching the sun and throwing its light into a dark room. Or like a telescope, which doesn’t make the stars bigger but helps us see how big they really are.
God does not need us. But in His kindness He lets us join in.
Not a lonely God
Here is where the “insecure” charge really falls apart.
An insecure person needs other people to tell him he is okay. But God existed before anything else, completely full and completely happy in Himself. The Puritan Stephen Charnock argued that God cannot depend on His creatures for His worth or His joy. A God who made the world because He was lonely or needed validation would not be the God of the Bible.
And God was never lonely, because God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Before there were mountains or oceans or people, there was love flowing between the persons of the Trinity.
Listen to Jesus pray the night before He died:
“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you… I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:1, 4–5)
The Son honors the Father. The Father honors the Son. And Jesus says of the Spirit, “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:14). Each person of the Trinity is delighting in the others. That is not a man staring at his own reflection. That is a family where everyone is happiest lifting up someone else.
Jonathan Edwards described God as a fountain that keeps overflowing. Creation is not God filling an empty tank. It is God’s joy spilling over.
The cross is where His glory shines brightest
If the whole world is a stage for God’s glory, where is the spotlight strongest? At the cross.
We usually think of the cross only in terms of what we get: forgiveness, heaven, a clean record. All of that is true, and I thank God for it every day. But Paul shows us something deeper in Romans 3:
“…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Romans 3:23–25)
There was a real problem in the Old Testament. Think of David. He took another man’s wife, then had that man killed. Yet when David repented, Nathan told him, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die” (2 Samuel 12:13).
If a judge in our courts let a murderer go free just because he said sorry, we would not call that judge kind. We would say he is corrupt, maybe even nalagyan. We would say he doesn’t care about the law or the victims.
So for centuries, it looked like God was letting sin slide. That would mean His holiness was cheap and His name didn’t matter.
The cross is God’s answer. He did not sweep sin under the rug. He poured out His full judgment on His own Son. Every bit of justice that sin deserved was paid. And at that same moment, the door of mercy swung wide open for sinners like David, and like you and me.
Paul says God did this so that He might be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). Justice and mercy, wrath and love, all shining at once in one place. The cross is not God setting aside His glory to save us. It is the highest point of His glory.
So what does this mean on a Monday?
Maybe you are reading this tired. Bills are due, someone at home is sick, there is a conflict at work you keep replaying in your head. Why should a big doctrine like this matter to you?
Because it is not just for seminary libraries. It is an anchor for ordinary days. Let me give you three reasons.
1. It makes your salvation secure
Imagine if God saved you mainly because of something good in you. What happens on the days you are not good? When you fall into the same sin again, when your prayers feel dry, when you disappoint Him for the hundredth time?
If your salvation depended on how lovable you are, you would lose it by lunchtime.
But God said, “It is not for your sake… but for the sake of my holy name.” Read Ephesians 1 and notice how often Paul repeats one phrase. God chose us “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6). He redeemed us “to the praise of his glory” (v. 12). He sealed us with His Spirit “to the praise of his glory” (v. 14).
If God saved you for the praise of His own grace, then His name is on the line. He will keep you, not because your grip on Him is strong, but because His grip on you is tied to His own glory. I don’t know any safer place to stand than that.
2. It frees you from yourself
Be honest. It is exhausting to be the center of your own world. We guard our image. We feel a little sting when someone else gets praised. We replay what people said about us. We worry about hiya and what others will think.
When God takes His rightful place in the middle, all of that loosens. You don’t have to defend your name so fiercely, because you are living for His. Your neighbor stops being competition, and you can actually love them and point them to the God who satisfies.
The best kind of freedom is forgetting yourself because you are amazed by someone greater.
3. It is the source of real joy
Some of us love God mostly for what He gives: peace, provision, a way out of trouble. Those are good gifts. But if we only want the gifts, we are treating God like a vending machine. Insert prayer, receive blessing.
God is better than His gifts. He is the most beautiful and satisfying reality there is. So the most loving thing He can do for us is not to make much of us, but to help us make much of Him. That is what we were made for. When we lose ourselves in His greatness, we become most fully ourselves.
John Piper summed up Edwards this way: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
So, was God insecure?
If I could sit down with my younger self, this is what I would tell him.
God is not insecure. He is the only one who has every right to be at the center, and He is generous enough to invite us in. His love for His own glory is the rock our salvation stands on. It is what puts our tiring pride to death. And it is the spring of a joy that will never run dry.
So let us not shrink back from this truth. In our homes, at work, in traffic, in the hospital waiting room, and in church on Sunday, let us live for one thing: to the praise of His glorious grace.