The Mountain Is Not Yet Ascended: The King And His People As The Nations Rage in Psalms 25–33 (Part 1)—Psalm 25 And The Unashamed Life

by on July 25, 2026 | Comment

Have you no shame? This question usually suggests that we are doing something that ought to shame us. Society has standards, and when we fail to live up to them, people think we should have a sense of guilt and that our behavior should humiliate or penalize us.

Psalm 25 is about why we do not have to feel shame before the world or before God. David’s point in this psalm is not that we have no reason to be ashamed. Rather, he teaches us about how God has dealt with the cause of our shame and relieves us from its affliction.

In the Psalter, each psalm on its own offers something specific to help us. At the same time, the book of Psalms is unified. It is instruction in the godly response to the full spectrum of experience and emotion that we encounter in the Christian life. Each psalm shows us how to pray through the blessings and vitriols of life. When we do not even know how to pray, God has been kind to give us the words we need when we cannot conjure them ourselves. While a psalm is personal, each one contributes something to the main idea of this book, which is about God’s King.

Psalm 25 teaches why God’s blessings mean that we do not have to endure shame. We have done things that should bring shame on us in this life and in the next. Yet David prays that God would not let him be put to shame. He prays for protection and for mercy. Emphatically, he prays that the Lord would lead him in ways of holiness.

Psalm 25, then, shapes our discipleship in helping us form our response to the Lord’s great promises, his provision of rescue, and even our recognition that we fall short of his good standards. It helps us cry to the Lord in response to his grace. The main point is that God cares for us, so we need not be ashamed.

Awareness of Sin

Part of the meaning of Psalm 25 can be drawn from its placement within the outline of the book. We have been studying the Psalter to see how the whole fits together. In verses 1–7, Psalm 25 starts with David’s trust in God and his mercy for his sin. David entrusted his soul to God for protection from enemies. Within this statement of need, he then asks for God’s help to guide him in righteousness and to have mercy by not remembering his sins. So David is aware that God has something he could hold against him.

How does David’s opening admission help us to understand this psalm’s full meaning considering its being the twenty-fifth in the Psalter? Part 1 in this series gave us a few coordinates. Psalms 1–2 show that the whole Psalter is instruction about the law and the gospel. Psalm 1 introduces us to one of the themes of the entire book, that as those walking with God, we are to delight in his law. Psalm 2 shows us that the Psalter is about the gospel, in that God’s King, who will reign forever, brings blessing to all who take refuge in him.

After Psalms 3–14 show the king praying in distress as the nations rage against him, Psalms 15–24 answer the question Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? This collect sets up Psalms 25–33 in a special way, as they tell us who will be permitted to dwell with God in blessing of everlasting fellowship on the holy mountain. The answer is, in the first place, the one who has clean hands and a pure heart—namely, the one who is perfectly righteous.

Of special note, at the center of that group is Psalm 19 about God’s holy law. The point of placing this celebration of God’s righteous standard at the center of this collection is to show that the Savior King’s work for his people has a particular relation to the law. His righteous life was about keeping that law in our place, his atoning death was about forgiving our transgression of the law, his resurrection was about overturning the curse of the law, and his ascension was about claiming the reward of the law on our behalf so that he could bestow it on us by grace.

With Psalms 15–24 explaining how Christ, the glorified King, has paved the way to fellowship with God in his holy temple, specifically by dealing with the law’s demands for us, how we should respond? What is the right response to the law’s demand of obedience and then its demand for death on failure to keep the law? What should be our response to the glorified Savior King who has kept the law and paid our penalty?

Psalm 25 sets pace to show us that response to the law, its demands, and the One who has kept it, especially with four explicit statements of confession of sin:1

Remember not the sins of my youth

or my transgressions. (v. 7)

He instructs sinners in the way. (v. 8)

For your name’s sake, O Lord,

pardon my guilt, for it is great. (v. 11)

Consider my affliction and my trouble,

and forgive all my sins. (v. 18)

Throughout the New Testament, the disciples whom the risen Christ confronted fell on their face to humble themselves as sinners before the holy God. Our first response to the wonderful King presented to us in the Psalms, especially Psalms 15–24, is an awareness of sin.

Awe of God

Psalm 25:8–15 teaches us about the second response to the glory of God’s saving King as presented especially in the previous group of psalms. Here, David instructs us that sinners forgiven by God and freed from the shame of our guilt and condemnation recognize how amazing our God truly is.

As becomes clear throughout Psalm 25, guilt is our deepest problem.2 Guilt is such a problem because of what it means for us in relation to God: “Good and upright is the Lord” (v. 8). Sinners before the holy God are in serious trouble. Yet pardon and forgiveness also run throughout this psalm. When we recognize our sin and need for forgiveness, we ought also to marvel over why our sinfulness leaves us in need of this rescue—namely, God’s absolute goodness, holiness, and purity.

This awe of God includes marveling at who he is as we contemplate his glory. It is also not just sitting around in reflection, because David marvels not only that God is good and upright but also that this good and upright God

instructs sinners in the way.

He leads the humble in what is right,

and teaches the humble his way. (vv. 8–9)

God changes sinners who find forgiveness with him. So our awe of God should flow into our hope to be more like this God who inspires our awe.

Why do we admire well-known sports figures or great leaders of the past? We see something in their skill or character that we wish we could copy or follow. They are examples who inspire us. More than any earthly figure, God himself should inspire our awe in such a way that we want to be more like him. Accordingly, our admiration of God in his goodness flows over into prayer that he would guide our paths.

Psalm 25, then, is also a prayer for personal holiness. As a response to the glorious King of Psalm 15–24, we see our need considering the law. We also see the template for who we should be. We long to be more like that wonderful King who leads us into glory.

Glory is one of those great longings of the human heart. Sometimes we long for glory in wrong ways, such as when we hope to attain glory for ourselves apart from honoring God. On the other hand, in a good way, we hope to see glory.

In Christ we have the promise that we will see glory. Still, why wait until our death or the resurrection to pursue greater tastes of glory? When we pursue greater likeness to Christ, we get a stronger taste of what life is like when God frees us entirely from sin. This pursuit pushes more barriers out of the way for us to experience what God’s glory is like as his own character shines through in our lives. Awe of God leaves us marveling at God’s amazing grace to free us from sin’s penalty and looking to him to direct us into greater freedom from sin’s power.

Asking for Grace

Psalm 25:10 makes the main point of the psalm:

All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,

for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.3

God’s goodness showers on his people as he remains committed to those who belong to him to provide them with grace. He is the one who causes his forgiven people to follow him in faithfulness. Psalm 25 has shown us, in verse 3, that waiting for God will not put us to shame.4 What does Romans 5:1 teach us? “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Further, “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (5:5).

These are the twin themes of Psalm 25 too—the acknowledgment that we need God’s forgiveness and to be found in his grace alongside the prayer that God would strengthen us to walk with him. As we hope in God in these ways, God will not put us to shame. We have the hope of glory won for us by the King who has done everything for our salvation. We also have the help of the Spirit to work in us so that we walk in paths of righteousness.

The final section in verses 16–22 is about asking for grace—in the forgiveness of sin and amid our troubles and trials in this life. It ends where it began—with confidence, that the Lord’s grace is what will ultimately leave us unashamed, as in verse 20: “Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you.”

How can we trust fully that God will not let us fall into shame? Look at verse 22: “Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.” The perspective switches emphatically from the one who needs help to one praying for God’s people in their need for rescue. Why?

Psalm 25 ends with the King’s prayer for his people.5 All along, Christ has been the one praying Psalm 25 on our behalf. The glorified King of Psalm 24 now leads God’s covenant people in prayer.6 Even though Psalm 25 is the first emphatic confession of sin in the Psalter, Christ prays this prayer for us not because he has his own guilt to confess but as the Savior who has taken our sin on himself to bear our guilt.7 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). St. Augustine explains Psalm 25: “Christ is speaking here, but in the person of the Church, for the things in this psalm are more relevant to the Christian people who have turned to God.”8

Even as we respond to the glorified King with awareness of our sin, awe for God, and a request for grace, we must remember that Christ is always the one who remains near to us. Christ is the reason we should respond well to him. He is also the one who helps us respond to him.

We come again to a psalm about Christ as the one who lived the perfect life, following the paths of righteousness in our place. He died on the cross so that we could be forgiven. He rose in resurrection life to guarantee our place in his kingdom and to provide blessing to all who take refuge in him. So, have you no shame? No, Christ has taken it from you and carries you to glory.

Notes

  1. O. Palmer Robertson, The Flow of the Psalms (P&R, 2015), 75.
  2. Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary (Crossway, 2024), 2:299.
  3. James M. Hamilton Jr., Psalms, Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Lexham Academic, 2021), 1:310.
  4. Hamilton, Psalms, 1:314.
  5. Ash, Psalms, 2:301.
  6. Ash, Psalms, 2:291.
  7. Ash, Psalms, 2:291–93.
  8. St. Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms, trans. Maria Boulding OSB (New City Press, 2000), 1:249.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find this whole series here.

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