No Disinterested Praise
Often the giving of praise or glorifying of God is set over against the worshiper’s expectation of receiving anything from God in church…. Here let me say that not only is the super-spiritual-sounding assertion that “we just gather together to give praise to God, taking no interest in what we might get from him” unbiblical, it may also easily slip into doxological hubris.
For us, as creatures of God, there can be no such thing as “disinterested praise.” We simply cannot love or praise God for who he is apart from what he has given us or what we continue to receive from him. We are not his equals. The notion that pure love and worship of God can only be given when it is unmixed with thoughts of what we receive has no biblical grounding. To be sure, it sounds very spiritual and pious. It even comes across as self-denial. In fact, however, there is no such worship in the Bible for the simple fact that we cannot approach God as disinterested, self-sufficient beings. We are created beings. Dependent creatures. Beings who must continually receive both our life and redemption from God.
Our “worship” of God, for this reason, necessarily involves our passive reception of his gifts as well as our thanksgiving and petitions. We cannot pretend that we do not depend upon him. We will always be receivers and petitioners before God. Our receptive posture is as ineradicable as our nature as dependent creatures.
We must be served by him. Recognizing this is true spirituality. Opening oneself up to this is the first movement in our “worship,” indeed, the presupposition of all corporate worship. It is faith’s posture before our all-sufficient, beneficent Lord. Praise follows after this and alone can never be the exclusive purpose for our gathering together on the Lord’s Day (Jeffrey J. Meyers, The Lord’s Service [St. Louis: Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1999], pp. 7-8. I’ve made a couple of corrections in punctuation and added some paragraph divisions for easier reading).