Who May Enter God’s Presence? (Psalm 15)
The attitude of most people today is that of flippancy toward God. That is not what one finds throughout the pages of Scripture and especially here in Psalm 15. God struck down Nadab and Abihu in the temple for flippant attitudes about worshipping the Lord. God struck down Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant. God is holy and righteous and has purer eyes than can look upon evil (Habakkuk 1:13). God who created us is completely and totally holy and pure and that should cause us to tremble. Go flippantly before this God and you may find yourself struck with His wrath and a final sense of just how holy and righteous, He is.
God is holy, and only the righteous may enter His presence.
God’s Holiness Leads Us To Wonder Who Can Enter His Presence?
This question is one that our society does not understand in the slightest. Such is the pompousness of our era that this question does not even register. “Of course I can enter God’s presence,” says the arrogant modern not in the least bit realizing that they have earned for their self, sin and death and Hell. But that is not the posture of the Psalmist. He thinks of things much, much differently than the modern man and rightly asks, “O LORD, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” (Psalm 15:1 ESV)
God is holy. That point was already made in the introduction. And it is here that we must begin.
There is a famous passage of Scripture in Isaiah 6. It is a vision that Isaiah sees of the Lord. And it is a vision that should haunt us if we understood God rightly. It definitely shook Isaiah to his core.
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1-5 ESV)
This vision left Isaiah where it should leave us. It should leave us understanding that we are ourselves unclean. We have fallen short of God’s standard and are deserving of His justice. We are unclean and God is perfectly pure and holy.
How different is this than most people’s attitude toward God today?
What a far cry this is from even the age Christian today!
What we need to understand is that God is holy and we are not. We have fallen short of God’s standard of righteousness and that should terrify us. It should make us ask the question that is posed in Psalm 15:1.
Christian, even the most holy of believers on Earth feels this deeply. In fact, most of the time they feel it more than most. And that just means that we are rightly understanding the truth of God’s holiness.
The Person Who Can Enter (Psalm 15:2-5)
There are really two people in mind here and it is the person who thinks they can enter and the person who really can enter. So, I would argue that we should be thinking about this with regards to the hypocrite, that is the person who thinks they can enter, but has not had a change of heart or change of actions in their life. And the other is the Christian.
The Hypocrite thinks that he can enter but cannot. He probably has little to no understanding of God’s holiness or care to think of it. And the hypocrite likely does not care that he is a wretched sinner in rebellion against God.
And so, the list of characteristics here stands as a corrective to their thinking. The person who can enter. I have separated these out as bullet points and made comments where needed. These are listed in Psalm 15:2-5 in the ESV.
- “walks blamelessly and does what is right”
- “speaks truth in his heart”
- “does not slander”
- “does no evil to his neighbor”
- “nor takes up a reproach against his friend”—the language here is a little more difficult but it is simply not doing evil to friends or those closest to us.
- “in whose eyes a vile person is despised”—this is simply thinking rightly about sin. So this person calls sin what it is and does not honor those who are wretched sinners.
- “who honors those who fear the LORD”—this person honors the righteous.
- “who swears to his own hurt and does not change”—he keeps his promises even if it works to his detriment.
- “who does not put out his money at interest”—though loaning money and taking interest is common practice today so we think little of it. This has to do with trading on people’s misfortunes (Deuteronomy 23:19, Leviticus 25:35-38).
- “does not take a bribe against the innocent”
It becomes obvious, even in a cursory reading of this chapter, that there is a level of righteousness that is required of those who will see God. And so, the hypocrite will find himself cast out and unable to see the Lord.
Can anyone see the Lord?
Yes, the Christian can. The Christian has these characteristics in their life, though they are not perfectly there. And the reason is that the Christian has been transformed by their relationship with Christ.
The Christian has been born again. I often turn to Ezekiel 36:22-27 when considering this topic. The Christian is born again or regenerated. They are made new. They are made people who, by the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives desire to follow the Lord.
And, not only that Christians continue to be transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. Passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 2 Peter 3:18, and Philippians 1:6 point to the reality that God is working to make the Christian more and more holy. And we also understand that the life of the believer will be characterized by holiness.
“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Hebrews 12:14 ESV)
Character matters in the Christian life. And God is developing it in us. And the person who has these character traits, “shall never be moved” (Psalm 15:5 ESV).
There is a standard of righteousness and holiness that must be met to see God. The problem is that you have not met it. We fall short of God’s standard of holiness. Who among us can say that we meet that standard?
Christian, we are advancing in holiness in this life and there are real characteristics that are found in the lives of those who will see God in the New Heavens and New Earth. But you are probably feeling a tremendous tension as I write this.
There Is Only One Who Perfectly Met These Requirements And He Did It For You
The good news that we preach is that God the Son took on human flesh and lived perfectly, fulfilling all righteousness. That is, Jesus did everything that a human is supposed to do. Jesus met the requirements and in Him the Christian does as well. Jesus also paid the punishment for our sin. And in Him the Christian’s sins are paid for on the cross.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
This is the good news that we preach. There is only one who has achieved perfect righteousness and He did it on behalf of those who believe. There is only one person who ever truly walked blamelessly and did what was right. There is only one who did not slander or did evil to his neighbor and treated those closest to Him as He should have. There is only one person who has judged completely righteously between the upright and wicked and honored and feared the Lord as He should. There is only one who has always kept His promises. And even though most people that read this or hear me say it will never put money out at interest to the harm of others, it is only because we didn’t have the money to do so. And I would hope that I would not take a bribe against the innocent, and would never have done so. But here is the point. Jesus lived completely righteously. He fulfilled all of the requirements.
And here is the good news. Jesus credits that righteous life to His people so that we might become “the righteousness of God”.
But that is not all. Paul also says that, God “made Him to be sin who knew no sin”. Even though Jesus had not ever sinned, He took our sins upon Himself and paid the punishment for them on the cross.
Martin Luther had an incredible section on this in his treatise, “On Christian Liberty”. He is talking about the great benefits that we are given by faith. Here he discusses the glory of being united to Christ by faith.
“The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh (Eph. 5:31-32). And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage—indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage—it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly, the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as His own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, He must take upon Himself the things which are His bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are His. If He gives her His body and very self, how shall He not give her all that is His? And if He takes the body of the bride, how shall He not take all that is hers?…Christ is God and man in one person. He has neither sinned nor died, and is not condemned, and He cannot sin, die, or be condemned; His righteousness, life, and salvation are unconquerable, eternal, omnipotent. By the wedding ring of faith He shares in the sins, death, and pains of Hell which are His bride’s. As a matter of fact, He makes them His own and acts as if they were His own and as if He Himself has sinned; He suffered, died, and descended into Hell that He might overcome them all. Now since it was such a one who did all this, and death and Hell could not swallow Him up, these were necessarily swallowed up by Him in a mighty duel; for His righteousness is greater than the sins of all men, His life stronger than death, His salvation more invincible than Hell. Thus the believing soul by means of the pledge of his faith is free in Christ, its bridegroom, free from all sins, secure against death and Hell, and is endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of Christ its bridegroom. So He takes to Himself a glorious bride, “without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her by the washing of water with the word” (cf. Eph. 5:26-27) of life, that is, by faith in the Word of life, righteousness, and salvation. In this way He marries her in faith, steadfast love, and in mercies, righteousness, and justice, as Hos. 2 (:19-20) says….Here the rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all His goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by Him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and Hell and say, ‘If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all His is mine and all mine is His,” as the bride in the Song of Solomon (2:16) says, “My beloved is mine and I am his.” This is what Paul means when he says in 1 Cor. 15:57, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” that is, the victory over sin and death, as he also says there, “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:58)”[1]
Here is what we should see and appreciate after thinking through this text. You have not met the standard, but someone else did so. And He did it so that you could have fellowship with God and one day sojourn in the tent of the Lord.
Christian, God is working on us in this life and we will grow in holiness, but it will always be the case that we fall short and are trusting in Christ.
Conclusion
Who shall dwell on God’s holy hill? Well, Christians can. They are credited with the righteousness of Christ and have had their sins paid for by the blood of the Lamb. They are also being transformed into the likeness of Christ throughout their lives. It is they who can dwell on God’s holy hill.
R. Dwain Minor
[1] Martin Luther, “On Christian Liberty” or “The Freedom of a Christian”, found in “Three Treatises” Fortress Press, 1970 , Pp. 286-287