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David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
v. 1 Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?
We normally understand the difference between godly (Psalm 15) and ungodly (Psalm 14) by the standard of the law. The godly obey the law; the ungodly disobey it. David himself had grown up with that until he realized that one is godly only by grace. Who shall abide in thy tabernacle? The one justified by grace, not the great king who conquers his enemies and extols God’s tabernacle.
However, this Psalm concerns only the effects of justification and doesn’t explain how the holy man got there in the first place. David is not teaching us how an unholy man becomes holy, but only what the holy man does once he is already holy. That is, the Psalm tells us of the fruits of faith, not how to get faith. Without this understanding, people attribute godliness to free will and remain ignorant of God and his way of operating outside the law. David’s answer to “who abides in God” is therefore a “strike in the face” (as Luther puts it), especially to his fellow Jews who imagine they are godly because they are the seed of their fathers. Remember that Ishmael was fully a seed of Abraham’s as well, but he was not the chosen. Nor were the Jews God’s children on account of receiving the law from Moses, or because they took glory in the nation of Israel, or even the glory of the Tabernacle.
To dispel false trust, David surprises them with his question, “Lord, who shall abide in your tabernacle?” It surprised David too, but God is no “respecter of persons,” nor is he a ceremonialist. God is not impressed with the sacrifices of the tabernacle, nor with race, nor the righteousness of the law. This is difficult to grasp until you yourself have been made a child of Abraham from the stones—from nothing. God’s holy hill and the resting, abiding, and inhabiting God himself do not refer to where your body is. Rather, they refer to the conscience, which is the proper place of faith.
An abiding conscience is secure in complete assurance. Who shall abide, and who shall dwell in God’s holy hill and tabernacle? Not the man who has obeyed the law, but the one whose conscience rests in certainty of God’s favor. God abides with a settled, sure conscience that knows God from his promise of salvation. This is David’s “Peter and Paul” moment, when he realizes that God makes a man godly by faith alone, not by works. Peter never did quite get over that fact. Faith is confidence in God’s favor, which comes by a gospel word that does not tell you what to do but says what God does to forgive you.
v. 2. He that walks uprightly, and works righteousness, and speaks truth in his heart.
Now, from this point, David teaches us the fruit of this certain, abiding faith. “Walking uprightly,” “being spotless,” and “works righteousness” are not a catalog of legal expectations. Instead, it is as Jesus said: “You will know them by their fruit.” Yet, no man can work backward from the fruit to find the righteousness. We call such men “fruit inspectors” who think they can pick out faith because they are so expert in fruitiness. But David is working forward to fruit, not backward from it. So, once he assures you that abiding with God is faith, not works, then he can ask what faith “does.” That is, once faith has made you righteous, David is not testing faith by “works righteousness” but is giving faith full assurance.
In this sense, we can say with Luther that there are two “kinds” (or better modes) of righteousness: one that is of God by which I am made to dwell with him forever, and a second that is the fruit by which my faith now “lives among men.” Works finally pour out because of the gospel. The law never got a single good work produced from me—no matter how much I think it has preserved life or enhanced the world. The work of righteousness is therefore God’s gift of grace; the righteousness that works is the fruit of that act of God.
v. 3 He that does not slander with his tongue, or do evil to his neighbor, or take up reproach against his neighbor.
Jerome said, “he that is not slippery with his tongue.” Again, throughout the psalms, these are not the things that gain righteousness before God, but the things God promises the righteous will do—since the law doesn’t ever succeed in producing any of these things. Luther even mentions the famous Ethics of Aristotle, which claims that ‘the law of revenge” is a natural impulse in all humans—which can only be met with a higher law that takes away the need of a man to revenge himself and gives the power of punishment to the state. That seemed to Aristotle and reason to be the only way to stop the inevitable cycles of revenge that “take up reproach against a neighbor.” But Luther knew, along with David, that the real limit to revenge is not handing it over to the local judge; it is being made new by grace.
v. 4 In whose eyes a maligner is maligned, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears an oath to his neighbor even to his own hurt and does not change.
Of course, God’s law tells us that the bad man must be treated badly, and the one who fears the Lord must be honored. But we also know that the exact opposite happens in real life. Yet, once again, David assures us that the world that has turned justice upside down will, in fact, come to an end. But God sees to this “beautiful contrariety,” by which the upside-down world is finally righted, not by judges and law courts, but by preaching the gospel. Even keeping an oath—the great nemesis of this old, evil world—will happen when men are finally given their faith. After all, what is so problematic about all the oaths that men make in this world? They don’t keep their promises.
No wonder the Anabaptist enthusiasts who broke out in Switzerland and Southern Germany during the sixteenth century made the refusal to take an oath one of their proofs of holiness. But a true Christian, who is so by faith alone, may often make oaths—especially to the poor and oppressed—but the difference between them and the oath-breakers isn’t that they refuse to take an oath, but that they actually keep their vows. Even the Pope can be criticized for making so many vows in the church, not because vows shouldn’t be made, but because he makes them on his own authority.
How does faith actually make the fruit that allows you to make an oath on behalf of your neighbor? It’s when you learn that God makes an oath to you in the promise of baptism that you can even be tenacious in your own promise to your neighbor. So a Christian can not only swear an oath, but they will actually be made to keep them—even when it costs their life.
v. 5 He who does not put out his money to usury, nor takes a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.
Usury and bribes are the bedrock sins of a failing society—to say nothing of the basic sins of an active sinner. Even at the relatively early date of 1519, Luther warned his Evangelical friends that the whole church had become a system run by usury and bribes. Simony, celibacy, wealthy church properties, and obsession with canon law all remained––so that Luther complained of the bribes “against the innocent,” even among the Lutherans, “who instead of being Christians are become Romanists, workers instead of believers, decretalists instead of evangelists, ceremonialists instead of spiritualists.”
David isn’t giving us a list of legal or moral acts we must perform to win a place in God’s tabernacle or to sit with him on his holy hill. David is assuring us that faith, unlike any act of the law, is the one that “does these things.” Good fruit will be produced, and is even now being produced, from the free, faithful Christian—despite the cries of fruit inspectors.
David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
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