Should we raise hands?

Question 11030.

Whether Christians should be raising hands in worship is a question I have been asked more often by people who feel awkward about it than by people who want permission, and that itself tells you something about how tangled the issue has become.

In some churches raising hands is so normal that not doing it marks you out. In others it would empty half the pews. Both instincts are cultural rather than biblical, and Scripture is a good deal more relaxed than either camp.

What Scripture says about raising hands

The practice is all over the Bible, and not as an exotic extra. Psalm 63:4 says “so I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.” Psalm 134 tells the servants of the Lord to lift up their hands to the holy place and bless the Lord. Solomon spread out his hands to heaven at the dedication of the temple.

It is not confined to the Old Testament either. Paul tells Timothy that he desires men in every place to pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling. That is apostolic instruction in a pastoral letter, written to a church, about how men should pray.

The Hebrew behind the gesture, yad with verbs of lifting, carries the sense of both appeal and surrender. Open hands are the posture of someone asking and someone yielding, which is exactly what prayer is.

What raising hands actually signifies

A raised hand is a body doing what the heart is saying. It signals dependence, since that is how a small child asks to be picked up. It signals surrender, since that is what a person does when they have stopped fighting. It signals appeal, reaching towards someone who can help.

Given that I hold human beings to be unified creatures made in God’s image rather than souls temporarily housed in inconvenient bodies, this matters. We are not disembodied worshippers. Kneeling, standing, bowing, lifting hands: Scripture treats all of these as ordinary expressions of inward reality, not as theatrical additions to it.

Which is why the question is not really about hands. It is about whether we think the body has any business in worship at all.

Why raising hands makes some Christians uncomfortable

For many British believers the discomfort is temperamental and cultural rather than theological. We are a reserved people. Public physical demonstration of anything feels excessive, and there is no shame in admitting that.

For others the hesitation comes from association. Raising hands has become a marker of charismatic worship, and Christians who have watched genuine excess in that direction understandably become wary of the signals. I share real concerns about charismatic excess and about the New Apostolic Reformation, which I set out where I discuss honouring the Spirit while avoiding excess.

But an association is not an argument. If a practice is commanded in Scripture, the fact that some people have abused it is a reason to recover the practice properly rather than abandon it. We do not stop preaching because some preachers are frauds.

The line between expression and performance

Paul’s qualification in 1 Timothy 2:8 is the one that gets ignored. Holy hands, without anger or quarrelling. The condition attached to the gesture is moral, not aesthetic. God is not impressed by an elevated hand attached to an unforgiving heart.

Jesus warned about religious acts performed to be seen by others, and hands are visible. If raising hands has become a way of demonstrating spiritual seriousness to the row behind, the gesture has curdled into exactly the thing Jesus condemned.

Equally, refusing to lift a hand because of what people might think is the same sin wearing the opposite coat. Both the demonstrator and the self-conscious abstainer are watching the room rather than the Lord.

Is raising hands required?

No. Scripture nowhere commands a uniform posture for the gathered church, and no one should be made to feel second-class for standing still. The Bible also describes kneeling, prostration, standing, dancing, clapping and sitting, which suggests considerable freedom.

This falls squarely into the territory Paul addresses in Romans 14. One person regards a practice highly, another does not, and each is to be fully convinced in his own mind without despising or judging the other. The sin is not in the posture. The sin is in the contempt.

So a church should neither pressure people into raising hands nor create an atmosphere where doing so would be considered eccentric. Both would be adding a rule Scripture has not given.

Other postures Scripture describes

Raising hands is one item in a much longer list, and seeing the list helps put it in proportion. Scripture describes kneeling, standing, bowing the head, falling on the face, clapping, dancing, lying prostrate, and sitting before the Lord. Solomon knelt with hands spread out. Ezra fell on his knees. David danced. The disciples fell down and worshipped.

The variety is the point. God has not prescribed one bodily posture for his people, which tells us that the body is genuinely involved and that no single expression is mandatory. A church that permits only stillness and a church that expects only enthusiasm are both narrowing what Scripture leaves broad.

It is also worth noticing that many of these postures are involuntary responses to encountering God rather than techniques for encountering him. When Isaiah saw the Lord he did not adopt a posture; he came apart. Revelation 1:17 has John falling at Jesus’ feet as though dead, which was not a decision.

Raising hands in prayer as well as in song

One curious feature of modern practice is that raising hands has become almost exclusively musical. In Scripture the gesture belongs primarily to prayer. Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 2:8 is about men praying, not singing. Psalm 141:2 has the lifting up of hands as an evening sacrifice, in the context of petition.

Recovering that would do us good. There is something about open, raised hands during intercession that reminds a person what they are actually doing, which is asking someone stronger for something they cannot obtain themselves. The body teaches the heart here rather than the other way round.

It might also relieve some of the self-consciousness. Raising hands in a quiet prayer meeting carries none of the performance risk that raising hands during an amplified chorus does, and many who could never do the latter find the former entirely natural.

What we owe each other on this

The New Testament principle for matters of this kind is set out at length in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8. The strong are not to despise the weak. The weak are not to judge the strong. Each is to be fully convinced in his own mind, and love is to govern the whole arrangement.

Applied here, that means a demonstrative believer should not treat a still one as spiritually cold, and a reserved believer should not treat a raised hand as showing off. Both judgements are about the heart of another person, which is precisely the territory Scripture forbids us. We were made in God’s image and we consistently misread each other.

A church leadership can help by teaching the biblical material openly rather than letting practice drift by unspoken pressure. Where people know what Scripture says and know that liberty is genuine, raising hands stops being a marker of party and becomes what it always was, a natural thing for a creature to do before its Maker.

Perhaps the most useful thing a church can do is stop treating this as a marker of anything at all. A raised hand tells you almost nothing about the person raising it, and a still one tells you just as little. God is reading something we cannot see, and he has not asked us to referee.

One last observation. In my experience the churches most anxious about raising hands are rarely anxious about anything else in the service, which suggests the discomfort is about visibility rather than theology. Nobody objects to a bowed head, because nobody can see it. That is worth pondering before we make raising hands into a matter of principle.

So, now what?

If you have always wanted to and never dared, you have full biblical warrant. Nobody is watching you nearly as closely as you fear, and the God you are worshipping is not embarrassed by bodies he designed.

If the whole idea leaves you cold, do not manufacture it. Worship offered because it seemed expected is not worship. Kneel instead, or sit and pray, or sing with your hands in your pockets. God reads hearts, not gestures.

What I would ask of both is this. Stop assessing the person beside you. The Christian who lifts hands and the Christian who does not are both commanded to love one another, and neither posture has ever fed a hungry person or forgiven an enemy. Which of those is God more likely to ask you about?

“Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!”

Psalm 134:2 (ESV)