I can’t stand; we all can stand
by Maria Rudolph
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Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent? Who may live on your holy mountain? (Psalm 15:1)
Back in the day when King David wrote Psalm 15, the concept of ‘the Great Exchange’ hadn’t been written about yet. King David expressed it in his psalms, but Christ needed to come to the earth to truly show us the meaning of it.
In Psalm 15, King David writes a checklist of who could dwell with God in eternity. Let’s get the marker out and see how we go on this scale:
- Lead a blameless life.
- Always speak the truth from the heart.
- Do not gossip.
- Do no wrongdoing toward anyone.
- Do not engage with any non-believer.
- Lend to the poor interest-free.
- Do not accept bribes.
I hope you went better than me and got all ticks and no crosses. I got lots of crosses. I have failed this test miserably. I am not good enough. I can’t measure up. But lucky for me – and you if you’re in the same boat as me, as I suspect – one cross was chosen by God to overwrite all the crosses on this checklist.
This is the Great Exchange. Jesus, the perfect one who has a tick against everything on this list, takes the place of me, a miserable sinner who gets it wrong a lot of the time. My disobedience is exchanged for his obedience, my blood for his, my death for his.
And when I stand before God with my head hung low like King David, who committed adultery and murder and lied about it, God only sees ticks and no crosses. Because of the cross of Jesus, none of the other crosses count for anything anymore, and I am washed whiter than snow.
When David asks, ‘Who may dwell in your sacred tent and who may live on your holy mountain?’, the answer is ‘No one, but all of us. But not us but Christ in us, and through Christ we are saved by the grace of God alone’. Thanks be to God for Jesus and what he has done for you, me, all of us.
Dear God, when I consider Jesus Christ, beaten, killed and a broken man, I hold my breath, but even more, I stand in awe when broken people come to him, hand in hand. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Maria loves serving God through the LCANZ and currently does this at St John’s Perth as a pastoral associate and volunteers at Concordia Duncraig in Western Australia. She enjoys being part of a Way Forward Working Group and tackling current theological issues on the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations. Her three kids and pastor husband keep her very happy and busy.
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