What do you think of a person who's highest goal is self-exaltation? Any human who acts this way is rightly considered to be a narcissist, an ego-manic, a prima donna; but God doesn't fit human categories.
John Piper says,
God is the one being in the
universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of
infinite giving. The reason God seeks our praise is not because he won’t be
fully God until he gets it, but that we won’t be happy until we give it. This
is not arrogance. This is grace.
CS Lewis struggled with the “bravado” of God calling us to
praise him. Then this thought changed his perspective.
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. . . . Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us
to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
Alcorn sums it up this way,
“Why should it disappoint us that
God would be happy to receive the praise that makes us so happy when we offer
it to him?”
God is infinitely happy in himself, yet he still chose to
create us. He did this not because He was needy but because He is generous,
giving, overflowing in goodness, and desirous of drawing us into his happiness.
The foundation of our happiness is his overflowing happiness. Of course it is
good that God is completely happy with himself.
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