2.3. PROCESO LECTOR DESDE EL ENFOQUE INTERACTIVO
2.4.9. ESTRATEGIAS DE COMPRENSIÓN LECTORA
Finally, after wrestling with the text with a narrow-angle lens, it is time to zoom out. We have already begun to move in this direction in the last paragraph or two in the above section. After standing under the full weight of this psalm’s summons to the redeemed, we remember that the irreducible core of the Bible and the terminus of all of human history is Jesus Christ and his work of redemption—his
work of redemption. Paul said the OT was written so that “we might have hope” (Rom 15:4) and to make us “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15). As necessary as sound doctrine is, there is something deeper that makes a reading or a sermon truly Christian: there is a certain tone, an aroma, an oxygenating reality. This is a subjective assertion so I proceed with caution. But it is vital to Christian preaching. What makes a reading of a text fundamentally Christian is that it gives hope,36
taking our eyes off of the limits of our own resources and lifting them to look upon the saving work of the Triune God. Such a hermeneutical instinct is not wishful thinking but rather is mandated by Christ himself (John 1:45; 5:39–46; Luke 24:25–27, 44–47). Truly Christian handling of the Bible, even a text such as Psalm 15, lifts, helps, strengthens. There is a certain buoyancy that is given to hearers of gospel preaching.
A Christian handling of Scripture sets itself off from every other handling of Scripture by focusing fundamentally on what has been done on our behalf in Christ. This does not mean we downplay the high moral summons of the text but that we place such summons in a framework of redemption.37 A
faithful treatment of Psalm 15 must make plain that there is only one person who ever really enjoyed the blessings of verse 1, and only one person who ever really walked the walk of verses 2 through 5. In other words, an understanding of a text such as Psalm 15 that would be palatable in a Jewish synagogue is not a Christian understanding.38
As we wrestle with an Old Testament text in this way, however, we must work hard not to be trite or predictable. The connections we draw between the text and Christ must not be facile or flimsy or merely based on word-associations. In Psalm 15, for example, noticing the word “hill” in verse 1 should not prompt us to associate this with the “hill” of Calvary on which Christ died, for such an association is merely verbal and lacks any historical grounding; it does not plot onto a coherent and meaningful trajectory. Such a reading would therefore be fairly criticized as allegorical. Instead we should proceed
36An emphasis in Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005).
37Although we are dealing directly with an Old Testament text in this essay, these comments apply equally to
the New Testament, which can be handled in just as Christless a way as the Old Testament.
38Cf. Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical
in a textually responsible and convincing way, really working at the text and using our original language resources as deeply as we are able. Explore with a concordance; do some thoughtful searches in whatever digital software is available to you. Here are a few discoveries that arise to the surface with a text like Psalm 15, discoveries that could be leveraged in a context-specific way wherever we find ourselves reading or teaching the text.
Verse 1 speaks of sojourning in God’s tent, which as we have seen refers to the temple. Verse 1 also speaks of dwelling on God’s holy hill. Strikingly, this exact phrase is used earlier in the Psalter in what is according to the NT one of the most christologically charged psalms, Psalm 2. In Psalm 2:6 Yahweh says: “As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill” (
י ִשׁ ְד ָק־ר ַה
). In Psalm 2, though, God is not asking who will dwell on this holy mountain. He is declaring whom he has himself set there—a man the New Testament (especially Hebrews) identifies as Jesus Christ (Heb 1:5; 5:5).39Who shall dwell on God’s holy hill? Jesus. And, in him, both representatively (by imputation) and then actually (by his Spirit), believers.40 That is, Jesus did Psalm 15 in our place, as the last Adam, the
fully true human, the supreme keeper of the covenant. United to him, that record becomes reckoned ours. But it is also true that by virtue of our union with him and thus indwelt by his Spirit we now, in our stumbling ways yet truly, begin to reflect the virtue outlined in Psalm 15.
It is not a question, then, of whether Christ is the one who does Psalm 15, or whether we are; the answer is both, and in that order. To unpack that a bit more: We have said that to dwell on God’s holy mountain means to abide in the temple, remembering that throughout the Bible the mountain holds special significance as the place of God’s dwelling, first on Mount Sinai and then on Mount Zion, the latter of which is the site of eschatological fulfillment (Isa 2:2; Mic 4:1). But Jesus did not simply come to the temple (Mal 3:1); he came as the temple (John 1:14; 2:19–22). Jesus dwells on God’s holy hill not by entering a humanly-made building to meet with God but by entering a divinely-made body to meet with us. He “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14). He is what the temple was meant to do—restore man to God, rejoin earth to heaven, bring the “walking together in the cool of the day” of Eden back to sinful humanity once more.
But the New Testament then goes on to explain that believers are themselves part of that temple, of which Christ is the cornerstone (Eph 2:19–22; 1 Pet 2:4–8). It is not, then, simply that we now go to Jesus the temple rather than a temple building. United to him, we are ourselves part of the temple. We are, with him, the sacred intersection of heaven and earth, sacred and profane, a temple made up not of stones but of redeemed souls. The point in all this is that one cannot read Psalm 15:1 mindful of the whole Bible without seeing that the question about who shall sojourn in God’s tent and dwell on his holy hill is using temple language and categories that are only answered in Jesus and those in him—in an inaugurated way through his first coming and in a consummated way through his second coming in
39We remember here that when the apostles quote the OT they have in mind a broader OT context than the
explicitly quoted portion of text; what is quoted is often the tip of the iceberg, and its use in the NT cannot be fully understood apart from consulting the broader OT context. The classic argument for this is C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Substructure of New Testament Theology (London: Nisbet, 1961); more recently Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.
40Peter Bolt usefully distinguishes between “inclusive” and “exclusive” place-taking by Jesus—there is an ex-
clusive substitution for us that Jesus does in our place so that we need not, but there is also a derivative inclusive placetaking in which we follow him (Peter G. Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark’s Gospel, NSBT 18 [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004], 70, 132, 141).
which no more temple is needed as all that the temple meant to do will have been achieved in him and his people (Rev. 21:22).
Verse 5 merits particular attention in reflecting on how to handle Psalm 15 in a christocentric way. The conclusion to the psalm is: “He who does these things shall never be moved.” The verb “be moved” (
טוֹמִּי
) here is the same verb (טוֹמ
) in the same form (niphal) as “be shaken” in the very next psalm, at Psalm 16:8. “I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken [טוֹמּ ֶא־ל ַבּ
].” This is the very text Peter quotes in Acts 2 when arguing for Christ’s resurrection (Acts 2:24–28). A careful reading of what Peter does with Psalm 16 in Acts 2:24–33 indicates that Peter views Christ as the ultimate one of Psalm 16 who is “not shaken.” Right there in the immediate context of Psalm 15, then, is apostolic sanction to associate the notion of not being moved or shaken with the work of Christ. We should not read Psalm 16 into Psalm 15 (though recent scholarship on the Psalms is helping us to see the unity and coherence to the Psalter as a whole41). But we remember that theapostles coach us in reading the Old Testament not only by the specific texts they cite but by giving us parameters and a trajectory by which to interpret any text in the Old Testament. Taking our cues from how the apostles themselves understood the notion of being shaken in Psalm 16, we are encouraged to connect the notion of not being shaken in Psalm 15 ultimately with Christ.
The conclusion to which a Christian reading of Psalm 15 must finally bring us is therefore: Jesus did Psalm 15. He enacted it, recapitulated it, walked it out. And in that glad knowledge we the redeemed, in union with the true temple, are freed from the burden of doing Psalm 15 perfectly and at the very same time summoned into the life of light-filled joy and integrity portrayed in verses 2–5. United to and walking with Jesus, the friend of sinners, we will begin to manifest the humaneness of this psalm. So doing, we will never be moved.
3. Conclusion
Is Psalm 15 Christ-centered? No. The Bible is Christ-centered, and Psalm 15 plots onto a unified whole-Bible trajectory that culminates in Christ.
Various sub-themes surface in this psalm that could be meaningfully plotted onto a whole-Bible trajectory, including our use of the tongue, the heart, God’s mountain, or the temple.42 The purpose of
this brief article is not to eclipse other strategies for approaching Psalm 15 in a whole-Bible way but to offer one way to handle this text in our reading of it and especially in teaching and preaching it. Even the approach offered here is only a suggestive outline. The Bible is endlessly rich and there would be multiple valid ways to handle the text or to fill out this approach, not least due to the diverse contexts in which it will be read and preached. But it is good to keep thinking together as the church, in these days
41E.g., Gordon Wenham, The Psalter Reclaimed: Praying and Praising with the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Cross-
way, 2013).
42Though we do not have space to explore this at length, another approach to reading Psalm 15 in a whole-
Bible way would be to consider the five major themes of the Bible that Dumbrell identifies: new Jerusalem, new temple, new Israel, new covenant, and new creation. Many and perhaps all of these five themes pass through Psalm 15 and could provide fruitful ways to plug Psalm 15 into the message of the whole Bible (William J. Dumbrell, The End of the Beginning: Revelation 21–22 and the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Lancer, 1985]). The question could be asked of Charles H. H. Scobie’s four macro themes of God’s order, God’s servant, God’s people, and God’s way that he explores in one of the few truly comprehensive biblical theologies attempted in our time, The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
of renewed interest in biblical theology and gospel-rich hermeneutics, about how to read the Bible as Jesus would have us, including texts that may seem to resist such treatment.