Here’s one way of looking at God’s glory: it is his nature of self-sacrificial love. God glorifying himself is him revealing his self-sacrificial love. We glorify him by revealing his love. We worship him by revealing his love. When he does things for his glory it means that his self-sacrificial love might be revealed and experienced.
We praise him for being like this and for all the ways we experience his love. We thank him that he is like this and for all that his love does for us.
There are no ulterior motives in God. He is absolutely pure which means his motive is one, and everything he does has this one ultimate aim: it is to reveal his glory — his self-sacrificing nature of love — that all creation might experience fullness of joy. That’s it.
That is what it means when he acts “for his own sake.” That is, he acts to fulfill his intention that we come to know him as he is.
