Just how good do you have to be to get into heaven? I so often hear people talking about being good people, as though being good could satisfy a Holy and Righteous judge. Psalm 15 starts with a question about who is qualified to be in God’s presence. And then the writer, probably King David, gives us examples of what this type of person would be doing in real life. He fleshes out what holiness looks like in several different realms.
David starts his list of qualifications for entry into God’s presence with two statements, two overarching principles of holy living. If we take these two statements as actual qualifications, it would be impossible for anyone to enter God’s presence. And I think that is David’s point. We aren’t qualified on our own, and we never will be. No one deserves heaven, no matter how good they are, or think they are.
The first overarching qualification for entry is that our lives are lived in a blameless way. I like to think of blameless in this way. If you are blameless, no one could point their finger at you and show a fault or failure. If your record could be examined with a fine toothed comb, there would be nothing that would reflect poorly on the character and nature of God. So a way to think about this is that if the LORD would be doing those things, would it be in line with His holy, righteous character.
I don’t know about you, but I know there are some things that I have done and still do that miss this standard. I know that if people could examine my life, even to the degree that I examine it, they would be able to point their fingers at many things that don’t reflect well on the LORD. And I suspect that the same would be true in your life.
The next overarching qualification that David lists is that the person who enters the LORD’s presence must do what is right, be righteous. But what does that mean? Being righteous means that you do what is right according to the standard. This might be hard for some in our world to accept, at least that is their stated belief, that there are no universal standards. Some even say that there are no standards other than individual standards which can vary from person to person and be right for that individual.
The main problem with not believing there are universal standards is that everyone believes they exist when their toes get stepped on. When they are the object of the wrong, they get all upset. But if they really believed what they say, they wouldn’t be upset at all. They would merely say that the other person had the right to their action, that it was right for them. But this is not what people do. What they really mean is that they don’t want someone else imposing a standard on them that they don’t like, that will make them uncomfortable with their choices.
But our Psalmist says that we must do what is right. And since we want to enter the presence of the LORD, it is the LORD’s standards that must be met. Now I know there are some who might run down the rabbit trail of one of the obscure Levitical laws dealing with washing or this or that, or avoiding this or that, and that those standards (and therefore all Biblical standards) are ridiculous and outdated. I want to give them a big kick in the shins with my steel toed boots and ask them if what I just did was acceptable, but I refrain myself. (There are no prohibitions against kicking with steel toed boots in the Scriptures!)
The LORD holds us to His standard, and not the other way around. He won’t let us off because we chose to live our lives by ours, rather than His. And therefore, we all fail. None of us meets the standard all the time, in every circumstance, without qualification.
But there is good news. Jesus did! And we can get credit for what He did.
The Arnold Journey 