Theology and praise

What springs to mind when you hear the word “theology”?

Bookshelves full of weighty and dusty tomes that, if not for reading, would make excellent doorstops or draught excluders? Thoughts of long-dead philosophers of religion from centuries past? Earnest young “TheoBros” ever eager for a feisty argument about the logical sequence of the eternal decrees of God or some such esoteric doctrinal debate? Or perhaps you’ve decided that theology is for other Christians; yours is a simple faith, it’s just not your jam. (Isn’t that what we have preachers for? After all, you don’t buy a dog and bark yourself!)

I’m pretty sure if you asked the apostle Paul the same question, one of the first words that he’d offer would be the word “praise”. Most commentators divide his epistle to the Romans by identifying the first 11 chapters as theology and the remaining chapters as application, and Paul bridges the two sections with his praise-heavy doxology of Chapter 11v.33-36.

Having taken a deep dive into the boundless themes of the universality of sin and guilt, justification by faith, the Second Adam as the answer to our sin problem, the relationship between law and grace, and predestination, Paul doesn’t race straight into application. We all know that Paul likes a good “therefore”, but he refrains from launching from theological explanation straight into a discipleship “to do” list. He could easily have said: “Ok guys, therefore (bullet-point list): Jewish and Gentile Christians play nicely together, present your bodies as living sacrifices, submit to the authorities, be holy, and look out for your weaker brothers and sisters”… but instead he launches into a paean of praise and worship. Paul’s theologising led to worship.

It’s as if Paul stops to cast his eye over all that he’s already written and, in that moment, can’t but burst into euphoric exclamation. He highlights the deep wisdom of God, acknowledges the percipience of God that surpasses our understanding, confesses our inability to repay the debt we owe, recognises God as the source of all things, and concludes by ascribing glory to Him for all time and eternity.

You never get the impression that Paul sees study as an end in and of itself. He’s not acquiring knowledge for its own sake. He ponders in order to praise. He’s thrilled by God’s knowledge and wisdom (v.33) and recognises his own comparative ignorance: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” (v.34). He recognises with awe that all that exists only does so as a result of God’s activity and power and not only is that so, but all things exist for Him and take root from His eternal plan. The ultimate purpose of everything is to glorify the sovereign God as His plan unfolds and moves towards its inexorable triumphant conclusion.

As we continue our mini series of articles looking at some of Scripture’s great doxologies, perhaps we would benefit from taking a moment to reflect on whether our theological thoughts and meditations lead us as naturally as they ought to a place of praise and worship. I said earlier that Paul doesn’t launch straight from theology into application but first pauses to praise. I was wrong. For Paul praise is the first application of what he has taught. Knowing about God results in him better knowing God, and knowing God makes worship inevitable. Let’s pray that the same might be true for us.