It’s so very easy to read some of the psalms from that perspective that the psalms can be mistakenly neglected as Old Covenant tunes for Old Covenant days and not to be sung by New Covenant believers. That is a tragic conclusion! David and the other psalmists are New Covenant believers in the sense that David is not seeking to earn his salvation by works. If so, we all know, and David knows better than we, he wouldn’t have made it. For David is not only well known as a giant-slayer, a great king, and a sweet psalmist, he is also known as an adulterer and murderer. So to anyone who reads Psalm 15 and concludes, “Oh, we are saved by works,” I think David would say, “No, no. That’s not what it means. That’s not how it is to be read.”

There is another way to read this psalm. It is with a New Covenant understanding of salvation, a justification by faith understanding, a James 2 understanding that faith without works is dead. But we don’t have to wait until the New Testament to have that understanding of the Gospel. In fact, David and the other OT saints, the remnant of believers found throughout the OT, had this understanding of salvation. They knew they could not earn their salvation by keeping the law, however, they also knew that striving to please God by obeying Him was evidence of genuine, true faith! In fact, I believe there was an Old Testament text, straight out of the Law, in the back of David’s mind as he wrote Psalm 15.

Note how Deut 30:6,8 would inform our reading of Psalm 15. "And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live...And you shall again obey the voice of the Lord and keep all his commandments that I command you today."