Who may worship in your sanctuary, LORD? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill?
Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts. Those who refuse to gossip or harm their neighbors or speak evil of their friends. Psalm. 15:1-3 NLT
Those of us who know the Bible well may read the verses above with something of a “ho-hum” attitude. Yes, yes, that’s the Bible alright. But we shouldn’t respond that way. Why not? Because these statements are remarkable in the context of the ancient world.
In the ancient world religion and ethics did not go together. Religion was about keeping the gods happy with you through prayers, offerings, and ritual worship. Ethics were about keeping the king “off your back.” You did not steal because the king said so, and the king’s officers would do bad things to you if you did. But not stealing did not have anything to do with your relationship with the gods.
In the Bible all that is changed. It is changed because the law code is put into the context of a covenant, a covenant with the sole God of the universe who has come down and delivered you from bondage. You don’t steal because you love the God who doesn’t steal. Suddenly, religion has come to be ethical living.
So, who is fit to come into God’s holy house? Somebody who has done a lot of rituals and made himself “clean.” No! To be sure, there was ritual behavior to be done, like not eating pig meat. But that was all intended to teach spiritual/ethical truth. How do you make yourself unclean in God’s presence? Jesus said it (Matt 15:11): it’s by not dealing with the corruption in your heart and letting it spew out by spreading slanderous gossip about your neighbors.
So are you and I clean enough to enter God’s house? What do our ethical lives look like? Like the life of our Covenant Lord?
Called To Be Transformed 