Unmoved: How Psalm 15 Clarifies What It Really Means to Follow God

What does it mean to be a righteous person? How do we get the benefit of being on the ‘winning team’? These are the questions that should be in your mind after reading the first two Psalms.

The first Psalm revealed that the world is strictly divided into two groups of people, the ‘righteous’ and the ‘wicked.’ In the second Psalm, we learned that God is effortlessly in control of the world, and all the opposition ranged against him is powerless to prevent the designs of the Zion-king.

So again, we are left with the question, who are the righteous? Who are those who will enjoy the fruits of God’s victory over evil? The answer, found in Psalm 15, is those who ‘sojourn’ in his ‘tent’ and ‘dwell’ on his ‘holy hill.’

When David penned this Psalm, there was no temple built in Jerusalem. There was likely only a tent that housed the Ark of the Covenant. David set out the requirements for dwelling on the ‘holy hill’ in this Psalm, with eleven stipulations. Of course, David wasn’t thinking in terms of a geographical space – the actual environs of Jerusalem. He had no ‘morality police’ to remove ungodly people from his capital. In this sense, the ‘holy hill’ in Jerusalem is only a metaphor for the moral place where people are close to God.

As New Testament believers, we may look at these eleven stipulations and wonder whether they remain in effect. Does God really care about them anymore? Isn’t the real stipulation much simpler – belief in Jesus Christ? Doesn’t Jesus fulfill the other requirements for us?

The answer, in short, is ‘no.’ God does actually care about these stipulations. And while it is totally true that faith in Christ is what God calls us to, the evidence of that faith is seen in living a Christ-honoring life. This means that we can’t rest on the fact that Jesus has fulfilled these requirements for us.

Hear me clearly, because I’m not saying that you are accepted by God based on your obedience. I’m saying that you are accepted by God because of your faith in Christ. At the same time, your faith in Christ means you will live a certain way. You can think of it like a passport. Technically, having a US passport does not make you a US citizen. On the other hand, having a US passport is valid identification to show that you are a US citizen. Similarly, the righteous person is the one who has faith in Jesus (he is a citizen of heaven) – but the way we can verify that citizenship is by checking the passport – seeing that a person has these righteous characteristics.

Does this mean that the righteous person lives out these characteristics perfectly? In a sense, yes. The core of the ‘righteous person’ is these characteristics. That is who he is, ultimately. He is ‘righteous,’ because he is ‘in Christ.’ But that does not mean that he always lives according to that core identity. Sometimes he sins, but the blood of Christ covers those sins. And, at his core, he remains one who is ‘washed,’ ‘sanctified,’ and ‘justified’ by God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

At this point, it may seem like I am spending a lot of time providing a New Testament interpretation of an Old Testament Psalm. Perhaps so. But my reason is so that you will understand this Psalm in the way that you should. Far too often, we read a passage like this and skim over it, acting as if it is no longer relevant because the New Testament has made it obsolete. That is not the correct way to read this Psalm. The New Testament calls us to holiness also, and Psalm 15 is a powerful reminder that even now, faith in God leads us to live a certain way.