The Blessed Man

The Book of Psalms is a God-breathed and God-preserved collection of songs. We know this because what is true of “all scripture” is true of each of its parts: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). And in these Holy Scriptures, “For whatsoever things were written aforetime” including the Psalms “were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

The Psalms are the whole word of God in a concentrated summary. The doctrine, morality, history, prophecy, life concerns of the people of God, and everything else in the Psalms relate to the whole Bible—both the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Taken together, the Psalms comprise a course of doctrinal, practical and personally experienced truth that God himself has provided for his people to give their full heart’s attention to, and to use in their worship of him.

The more we get into the whole Bible, the more we will get out of the Psalms. And the more we get into the Psalms, the more we will get out of the whole Bible. And especially, the Psalms reveal to us the Messiah, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we would do very well to let them dwell richly in our hearts.¹

We must begin our worship of God with the first Psalm. But we must not remain upon its surface, and we must not stop here. Many theologians say that Psalms 1 and 2 serve together as a foundation for the whole Book of Psalms. We will find this to be true, if they get to know them. Let us dig deeply into that foundation, let us learn to appreciate how the first two Psalms prepare us for the whole Psalter, and let us see how they introduce us to some of its most important recurrent themes.

The Righteous Man

When we seek a thorough understanding of the first Psalm, we find the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone deserves the blessing of God, for he alone is without sin. Of himself, therefore, Christ the Son of God is the only righteous man whom we first meet in this Psalm, and whom we meet again and again throughout the Psalms. Therefore, he is the only blessed man by his own merit.

Mankind fell into sin in the original sin of Adam; and upon this we each heap up our own lifetime of sins (Genesis 3:6; Romans 5:12; 3:23). Our sins shut our mouths so that we cannot claim to be righteous in ourselves (Romans 3:19; 7:18). “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10; quoting Psalm 14:3)—Christ alone excepted. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only man who has never sinned (Hebrews 4:15; 1 John 3:5; 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:22).

God blesses people who do not deserve the blessing of God in SALVATION. The Saviour’s sacrificial death on the cross is the satisfaction of Divine justice for those whom he saves from their sins (Matthew 1:21).

God imputes his own righteousness to his people when he saves them: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just [i.e. the righteous]² shall live by faith” (Romans 1:16-17; quoting Habakkuk 2:4). “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (Romans 3:21-22). “Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9).

God also imparts his righteousness to his people increasingly while they live in this world, when he gives them a new heart that delights in his moral laws and makes them walk in his ways. God’s work of grace in their souls makes them hunger and thirst after this righteousness from God, with which he increasingly fills them (Matthew 5:6). And they will be perfectly just and glorified in heaven, when they are fully conformed to the image of the Son of God in true righteousness and holiness (Hebrews 12:23; Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 4:24).

The just shall live by faith. All who are righteous believe in the one Saviour, the Messiah. And it is only with faith in Christ and an understanding of this double transaction, this great exchange of our sin upon Christ and Christ’s righteousness upon us, that we can properly participate in singing the first Psalm from our own heart. Or else we are not the blessed man, and we are not the righteous man. If we do not have this saving relationship with Christ—if we are outside of Christ, then we we will never drink of these waters like the prosperous tree in this life, and we will not stand before God in the “congregation of the righteous” in the judgment, but we will be among the ungodly that perish (Psalm 1:3, 5-6).

We catch our first small glimpse of these great truths in the first Psalm. We need the second Psalm to more fully reveal to us the Anointed One than we see of him in the first. And likewise, the people of God under the Old Covenant looked forward to their Messiah and Saviour in Psalms 1 and 2 and all the Psalms, though they saw him dimly there, compared to we now see him in the Psalms.³ For Christ had not yet come to fulfil all righteousness and to give himself as a sacrifice for both their and our sins. And they did not have the later New Testament revelation that we now have. Nonetheless, the Old Testament saints saw and believed in the Messiah before he was “manifest in the flesh”—and they were also saved by him (see Isaiah 53:5-6; Matthew 8:11; 1 Corinthians 10:1-4; Hebrews 11; Revelation 21:9-14).

As Christ himself would later proclaim: as with all the Old Testament Scriptures, the Psalms too “are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). And he has come to fulfil all things “which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms”, concerning himself (Luke 24:44).

The righteous man, blessed man of the Psalms is ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ. But he is also all his people in him, cleansed of their sins and clothed in his righteousness, from both the Old and New Covenants.

That is why we Christians should love the Psalms so much.

The God-Blessed Man

The first Psalm begins by introducing us to the man who is blessed by God, and the way he lives. The source of the blessing is the LORD himself. The Psalm opens without saying so, but if there is a blessing then there must be a Blesser who bestows the blessing upon the one who is blessed. This has not been seriously disputed.

The God-blessed man “walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2).

Who are these ungodly sinners that scoff at God? This is the state of all fallen mankind in Adam; the state of all who are under the curse of God, not his blessing (Genesis 3; 6:5; 8:21; Deuteronomy 27:26; 30:19).

What does the “law of the LORD” mean? The word for “law” is torah in the Hebrew. The name given to the Five Books of Moses (Genesis-Deuteronomy) is “The Torah”. But the word torah ultimately includes all of Jehovah’s law wherever we find it taught in the Bible, because, as Paul said, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

Many commentaries and sermons preached on this Psalm say that this means we should delight in the whole of the word of God. Well, of course we should delight in and meditate on the whole Bible. But that is not what this Psalm is primarily teaching us, and this broader truth can be used to obscure the fact that the Christian ought to delight in and meditate on the “law of the LORD”. The way of godliness, the way of loving the God’s torah of verse 2, is set in contrast to the way of ungodliness, sinning and scoffing against God in verse 1.

Before the Psalm briefly describes the LORD’s blessing upon this man’s life, it takes us to see his heart. This first Psalm, and therefore the Book of Psalms, starts here—and so should we. The blessed man’s heart is different from that of the ungodly, the sinners, the scoffers around him. Now we must ask, what makes that difference, and where does this difference come from? Does he have his own innate spark of goodness? Did moral goodness emerge from his “only evil continually” fallen nature? Or is this difference of heart part of the blessing of God in this man?

This is not about being part of a chosen race or a chosen people—this is about the heart. You may be a physical descendant of Israel; but as the apostle Paul will later say, “They are not all Israel, which are of Israel” (Romans 9:6). You may be part of the visible Church; but what the Lord Jesus Christ himself says about false prophets is also true about false Christians: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:16-21).

So, we must each ask ourselves, am I nothing but a “corrupt tree”? Do I do God’s revealed will? Does my heart delight in it, and do I meditate upon it? Have I found at least a beginning of these things in my heart? In my heart, do I have the spiritual life of this blessed man, or am I only “dead in sins”, as someone who is still “in the flesh” that cannot please God (Ephesians 2:1-10; Galatians 5:17; Romans 8:7-11)?

God has given us this Psalm to make us take a serious and honest look at whether we have God’s blessing in our own hearts and lives, both now and in the eternity to come.

The Highest Moral Standard

In the first two verses of the first Psalm the highest moral standard (there is none higher) is summarised, negatively and positively. This is what the God-blessed heart and life should and shall look like: turning from the influence, company and culture of sinners and turning to enjoy the deep study of God’s law, so that its influence reforms us internally and changes our external lives; and we then influence our family, society and culture. For what is true for this one blessed man is true for all the people of God.

All Christians should recognise the two contrary, antithetical ways of life with which Psalm 1 begins. In the New Testament Scriptures, this turning from sin is also known as repentance of heart, mortification of deeds, putting off the “old man”, being no longer conformed to this world, and no longer walking “in the flesh”. Together with turning from sins is turning to God for forgiveness of sins and salvation from sin. This double turning is called conversion. And we call living in obedience to God’s moral laws sanctification, putting on the new man, walking in the Spirit, walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful unto every good work, bearing fruit unto God, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, growing in grace, partaking of the divine nature, being conformed to the image of the Son of God in godliness, righteousness and true holiness, and having a pure soul and a pure heart. There are many other ways and metaphors we use to describe these two ways of life, drawn from the Scriptures.⁴

Besides all these symbols, these allusions to Old Testament Scriptures, there are actual commands, proverbs and practical applications—the same moral law in the New Testament Scriptures:

“Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:28-32).

“Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:1-8).

“Charity [love] suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

And much, much more.

We must acknowledge and confess that all our turning from sin and turning to God, all our salvation and its outworking in our life—is the work of our Triune God within us from beginning to end. This work of God is the very same blessing of Psalm 1.

No life-walk under the teachings and influence of the ungodly, those who hate and reject God. No taking sides with the sinner in his sins, or standing with them in the way that they are going. No union with leading or professional scoffers at God and godliness, and no condoning them or sitting alongside them in the same office or on the same platform, whether they are in the seat of the teacher or leader, whether in religion, politics, business, or the entertainment industry. What Psalm 1:1 teaches us still holds true for the people of God today.

The first thing that God the Holy Spirit has put in the Book of Psalms, for us all to learn and sing in our worship of him, is this: the blessed man, who is emblematic of every man, woman and child of God, turns from sin and turns to God. And turning to God involves being so filled with love for God’s law that we meditate upon it day and night. Not that it is all we should think about, but that all we think about should be brought into conformance with it, so that God’s moral law shapes our heart and mind and life. This is what people who are blessed by God do.

According to the first Psalm, those people whom God blesses—those in whom God works salvation and conversion—come to be totally in love with God’s law. They find in their hearts what they never had before: a delight to study God’s law and to live it out. Yes, they have a real delight in it, not merely a mild fondness of it; and they certainly don’t strive to banish it from their life as though it were not for the Christian. They esteem it more highly than any amount of gold and far better than the sweetest honey (Psalm 19:10).

Now, the Psalms are the word of Christ, and we should let them dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16); therefore we should all agree with the first Psalm. But if you are a Christian and you are not persuaded to love and sing the Psalms, and you are not persuaded that you should delight in the law of God, then have you at least taken onboard what the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ says? In his Beatitudes, in one line Jesus says all that the first Psalm is saying: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Blessed by God by being filled with his righteousness.

Later on in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us that the people of God become like salt that brings good flavour and preservation from corruption. Here physical corruption is a metaphor for moral corruption. They become like a light to the world and a city that cannot be hid. And they let their light so shine before men that they see their good deeds and glorify their Father in heaven (Matthew 5:13-18).

So, according to our Lord Jesus Christ, we must live in the opposite way to the ungodly, the sinners, and the scornful, such as are briefly described in the first verse of Psalm 1. Putting it the other way, Psalm 1:1-2 is a summary of the Sermon on the Mount. Do you see?

How can anyone live like Jesus teaches—like Psalm 1 teaches? It can only be by the blessing of God. And this is what both the words of Christ in Psalm 1 and the Beatitudes teach us.

The Two Great Commandments in the Law

Before we get overwhelmed with thoughts about which laws and how many laws are delighted in and meditated upon by the God-blessed man (or should be; and should be obeyed, of course), and before we consider the question of whether God’s blessing or our delighting in God’s law must come first, let us understand what are the the law’s two great commandments according to our Saviour.

“Then one of them [Pharisees], which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:35-40).

According to Christ there two great commandments in the Torah, that have to do with man’s duty toward God and toward man. After quoting the law of total love for the LORD Jesus teaches there is a another that is “like unto”⁵ it, one that is second in number but equal in greatness. Similarly, the apostle Paul is not wrong nor is he overstating the second great commandment when he teaches us: “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14).

Our Saviour first quotes the law of love to God that sums up what is often called the first table (tablet) of the law, i.e. the first four of the Ten Commandments. Then he immediately joins to it the law of love to neighbours, which embraces all the second table, the other six commandments. Therefore these two great commandments combined are the sum and substance, the centre and the whole of God’s law. And, not only do they summarise the Ten Commandments, but Jesus says that “on these two hang all the law and the prophets”.

Now, which and how many laws of God should we keep? Paul says all the law, i.e. all the moral law that is summed up in “love thy neighbour as thyself”. And of course, he does not exclude the law of love to God himself. We should keep every law that enables us to properly keep what Jesus says are the two great commandments in the Torah. This whether or not they are restated or touched upon in the New Testament Scriptures; for as with all Scripture (that the Jews call the Law, Prophets, and Writings), all the moral law is given for our doctrine, our reproof, our correction, and our training in righteousness. Delight in them, and make them your meditation day and night. Start with the two great commandments in the Law, and you will inevitably embrace and delight in all of God’s moral law. Learn to love the highest moral standard.

But should Christians keep God’s commandments? This is an absurd question. However, there are some argue that for Christians to delight in and meditate upon God’s law would be foolish. They say that for Christians to intently study God’s moral law in the Old Testament Scriptures in order to keep it—is to try to be make themselves perfect by the flesh, and to return to the Schoolmaster, and to be brought under the law again (Galatians 3:3, 23-25). They say that “the law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Timothy 1:9); which they think means that God’s moral commandments are not for the Christian.

But we are not trying to make ourselves perfect “by the flesh”. And the blessed, godly, righteous man in Psalm 1 was not meditating on God’s law in order to earn his salvation by obeying it. The Christian is already saved. And the blessed man of Psalm 1 is already the blessed man. His heart has been so transformed by the blessing of God that he now truly delights in his law, and he is now the tree planted by the rivers of water, that shall make him produce fruit in his season, shall make his leaves afterwards to remain green and not wither, and shall make all he does for the glory of God to prosper.

There are not two ways of salvation, but one. And in this one way, you must come to delight in the law of God. You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind; and you must love your neighbour as yourself. Christ did not say one thing to the Jews and another thing to Christians.

The Way of Godliness

The teaching of Paul, that the Christian is not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14), is not a rejection of any part of the highest moral standard. What the apostle teaches is how the born-again, new heart, spiritually alive man, woman, and child of God should live: “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace … But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness … But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:13-14, 17-18, 22-23).

No, the morality of the New Testament is not an alternative to, or a subset of, the Old Testament moral law. It is the same highest standard morality, not a lower standard. God’s moral law has not been abrogated. The Christian way is fully the way of righteousness, true holiness, and godliness. The Christian life-walk goes in the same one opposite direction to the way of the ungodly, sinners, and scoffers of this world as is referred to in the first Psalm. And this is the way of delighting in God’s law and of spiritual prospering even in this world, and of being part of the one congregation of the righteous that is comprised of all who shall stand in God’s judgment of man on the last day.

Of course, there is much more that is profitable to the people of God in the whole Bible—and we are to delight in and meditate day and night in all of it. But if, by the “all scripture” of which Paul writes, we are are to be reproved, corrected, and instructed in righteousness in order to make us perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works, then we cannot set aside God’s law in those scriptures. Antinomianism makes no sense. And again, no, it is not legalism to delight in God’s moral law and to seek to live according to it, as a Christian.

The first Psalm should drive us to honest and humbling introspection. And it should cause us to ask vital, ultimate questions about who and what we really are: godly or ungodly. And what we really receive from God: the blessing or only the curse. And what we really deserve from God the Righteous Judge on the Day of Judgment: will we stand in glorified state of eternally perfect blessedness with the LORD and his people in Heaven, are will we be condemned to perish in the never-ending torment of Hell. We must get our answers to these questions from the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures.

The second Psalm will give us a clear view of the Messiah, the Son of God himself, and it will plainly tell us that the blessing of God is upon “all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:12). But here we are in Psalm 1, where we get a smaller glimpse of our Saviour.

Unless we are saved from our sins we will only walk, stand, and sit in our sins, going from bad to worse. If we had been left to ourselves in the ungodly state, we would have willingly continued under teachers, mentors and influencers who blaspheme and scoff at God and all that is godly. And if we were well-educated enough to sit in a seat of learning or in a seat of authority, then we would have become yet another master mocker of God, teaching and leading others in our own mad rush to Hell.

Before God made us Christians (for it was, and is, all of God and not of our works), if we could have honestly looked at our own heart in the fallen, dead-in-sins state in those days, we would have seen no sign of delight in God’s law, but only delight in sin. No, we were not godly then. We were definitely ungodly. But are we godly now? When we honestly examine our own hearts, we know we still fall short of God’s perfect moral standard, even now as Christians. We admit that our life is not conformed to God’s moral law. Not yet.

So, where am I in Psalm 1? Where are you? How can we already be in the state of perfect blessedness? Are we truly in the congregation of the righteous, that God causes to stand and not perish in the judgment (Psalm v.5)?

God’s Blessing Precedes Godliness

We should all have a strong desire to know: how did this man, about whom this Psalm is written, get into the blessed state? Is he godly because he is blessed by God, or is he blessed by God because he is godly?

How can men, fallen descendants of Adam with their desperately wicked hearts, from which proceed only evil continually, who are spiritually dead in trespasses and in sins—how can they ever delight in God’s law (Jeremiah 17:9; Matthew 15:16-20; Ephesians 2:1, 5)? How can one of the “none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10) become righteous, and all who are like him in the congregation of the righteous that stands in the judgment of God? First, God must change them.

God’s blessing must necessarily precede godliness in fallen sinners. We must therefore also infer that the blessed man is already a transformed man—since he delights in the law of the LORD as only a man with a new heart can (see Ezekiel 11:19; Psalm 51:10; Matthew 5:8; John 3:3-8; Ephesians 2:1). Anyone who really has this delight in the law of God in their heart is not in the fallen, unregenerate state any more.

Without the blessing of God, this man would be like other men who are in the land of spiritual famine, drought, barrenness, and death; where they are unable to produce any fruit or leaves at all, let alone keep them from withering; and where nothing they do shall prosper. (Understand that this Psalm is teaching us about spiritual things.) But the blessed man is not driven away like chaff to perish, as they are (Psalm 1:4, 6).

Some people think that if they can be good, if they can do good, then God will reward them by making them like this prosperous tree. Others deny that God must first bless people in order to make them godly; they argue that the first Psalm (and all the Old Testament Scriptures) cannot be “Christianised” or “evangelicalized” in this way. But it is they who are contradicting reality, not us. Can you keep God’s law and become righteous and worthy of eternal life by your own efforts? Will you ever delight in the law of the LORD, and make it your meditation day and night?

It was Moses, or rather, the Holy Spirit through Moses, who taught the children of Israel, “Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them” (Deuteronomy 27:26). The apostle Paul’s doctrine is no different: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10).

What about those places in the Bible where the order seems to be flipped? Does the Holy Spirit teach works-salvation anywhere? No, there is nothing in Old Testament Scriptures or in the New that contradicts the gospel. Nothing that says any man made his own way into heaven without salvation by God’s grace alone, through God-given hew-heart’s faith alone in the Son of God, the Messiah alone.

To give one example: the twenty-fourth Psalm says, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation” (Psalm 24:3-5). Does this Psalm say that the man first must have clean hands and a pure heart, and must keep them clean and pure, so that God will approve of him and give him the blessing he deserves? No, because there is no man, except for the Lord Jesus Christ and those whom he saves and cleanses from sin by his blood (Matthew 26:28; 1 John 1:7), who has clean hands and a pure heart.

It is “the God of his salvation” who saves this man and gives him righteousness, not his own hands or his heart. If there are morally clean hands and pure hearts in any fallen, sinful descendants of Adam, this can only be because God has given them new hearts and washed away their sins. Wherever there is a pure, clean, circumcised heart, this is God’s work (Psalm 51:10; Deuteronomy 30:6; Jeremiah 24:7; Ezekiel 11:19; 36:26; see also 2 Corinthians 5:17).

In the Psalm immediately before the 24^th, it is written that it is Jehovah who restores the souls of his people, and leads them in paths of righteousness for his own name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). Soul-restoration and being led by God in a righteous life-walk is all part of the blessing of God in salvation.

But the blessing being spoken of in Psalm 24 is the further, greater blessing given to such a saved man. It is the consummating, perfect state of blessedness in heaven itself, dwelling in that city where the King of Glory, the LORD of hosts rides in triumphantly after securing total victory over all his enemies, through the eternal gates and everlasting doors (vv.7-10).

God’s Blessing Is Only Found in Christ

One sin caused the fall of mankind, and the expulsion of Adam from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:14). And one sin prevented Moses from being permitted to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 32:51-52). But here is a blessed man in the blessed land; he is not in the fallen, dead-in-sins state any more, but he is drinking from the “rivers of water” that flow from God.

God’s blessing⁶ is upon this man’s life. He has God’s blessing manifested in his prospering in “whatsoever he doeth” (in everything he does). This allegory is not about physical health and wealth. But some people whom God truly blesses may also be blessed with health, or wealth, or both health and wealth. Many healthy and wealthy people in this world are among the most openly wicked. You may know some of them; the names of many more are in the news. What they have is not the blessing of God; and if they doe in their sins then they will never have it. Whereas the blessed people of God may be poor, weak, frail, suffering from imprisonment, torture, disease or injury, and they may be on their death bed. You may know some of them personally.

The blessing from God in the first Psalm means the spiritual blessing of salvation, and all that is included in salvation. The happy state of this man, his desirable residence beside the “rivers of water”, and all his prosperity, is spiritual. We do not understand Psalm 1 if we think that it teaches an obedience-prosperity “gospel” (really a false, counterfeit gospel that is no gospel). This Psalm does not speak of a system of self-help, or personal development from cursedness to blessedness, ungodliness to godliness, spiritual death to spiritual life. It does not teach works-religion or self-salvation at all. That is not taught anywhere in the Bible.

God is the source from whom all blessings flow. He is the Blesser. The rivers of water, the fruit, the unwithering green leaves, the prosperous growth and fruitfulness, and the membership in the congregation of the righteous all comes from God. It is not that the man, while he was previously planted in a barren, dry, dead place, showed signs of green, or proved there was something good within him—and then for these promising signs God selected him for transplantation to the blessed land beside the rivers of water. No. And neither did he uproot himself from the cursed land and then roll or walk into the blessed land to reestablish himself there by his own work or power. It is all God’s work of grace, not of debt or reward for loving or obeying God’s law.

The first Psalm does not teach us how to get into the wonderful state of being blessed by God, and is does not hint that there is such a way within the power or reach of the fallen men. But it presents how things are with the people of God. “Blessed is the man”, present tense. Or as we have it in the Scottish Metrical Psalter: “That man hath [has] perfect blessedness”. This is their present reality. And this is how it shall be with them forever, as this first Psalm will teach us in its concluding verses.

The first Psalm is about the saved man, the man saved by the Saviour, the Messiah himself. The blessed man is saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Yes, this is true, though he is in the Old Covenant.

That there is this blessing from God—is the gospel.

The Rivers of Living Water

The “rivers of water” that Jehovah plants blessed man beside (v.3), actually one great river described in the plural to emphasise its magnificent flowing abundance, allegorically represents the full covenant blessing. The Hebrew word for “river” can also mean a stream or channel, but here we are to picture a great abundance of waters. A similar allegory can be found in Isaiah, where the LORD says: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters … Come to me and drink … hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David” (Isaiah 55:1-3).

These great flowing waters in Isaiah 55, the everlasting covenant, the sure mercies of David—and in Psalm 1, the blessing of abundant fruitful prosperity in the congregation of the righteous that shall stand before God in the judgment—are (or, is) none other than the living water that the Lord Jesus Christ gives his people. “Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:9-14).

And in the Book of Revelation, this same great covenantal blessing is again symbolised as a river: “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1-2). This water continues to be sent forth to all the world—to Israel, and to Samaria (as to this woman), and to the Gentiles, and this water brings repentance and remission of sins (cf. Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8; 11:18; 20:21).

God has called this man in Psalm 1 to the rivers of water, and God by his sovereign grace has gifted him with the undeserved and unmerited favour that includes every blessing that flows from his throne. The blessed tree’s planting, watering, growth and prospering in everything is symbolic of the blessed man’s justification, sanctification, and ultimate glorification in Christ, the Lamb of God. There is only this one way of salvation, and this one Saviour (Psalm 2:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Timothy 2:5; Galatians 3:19-25). The first Psalm does not hold out to anyone another way. There is only one way that leads to standing in the congregation of the righteous before God in the judgment, followed by Heaven forevermore.

The rivers of water that provide spiritual life and prosperity is brought into the soul the Holy Spirit, whom Christ gives to those who come to him. Jesus directly quotes from the first Psalm: “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)” (John 7:38-39). Do you see how Jesus clearly quoted from Psalm 1 to claim and prove that he was the Son of God?

Therefore, to drink of this water in Psalm 1—is to turn to Christ and believe in him. Taking up these rivers of water symbolises hearing and believing in the Messiah. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). Those who are in Christ Jesus shall not come into condemnation because they have been given its opposite:⁷ they are justified, i.e. righteous, as the congregation of the righteous is righteous.

The Lord Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit to indwell his people after he was put to death on the cross, raised again the third day, and ascended into heaven in glory to his throne at the right hand of God (John 14:16-29; 16:7; Acts 1:9; 2:2 ff.; Ephesians 4:8). Christ’s giving of the Holy Spirit has provided the New Testament Church with the full measure of the spiritual revelation, gifts and power of the Spirit. However, Christ himself coming in the “fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4; Mark 1:15) to die for the sins of his people does not mean that those of his people who lived and died before the incarnation were not saved or not included in him. They were also covered by the Messiah’s one atoning sacrifice that takes away sins. Similarly, this giving of the Holy Spirit consequent to Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension does not prove that the Holy Spirit was also gifted by God to the Old Testament saints. For not one fallen descendant of Adam of himself can seek God, delight in God, long for God, or repent of his sins, or have righteousness, or have the presence of God with him, in his soul unless he or she is saved.

In the first Psalm we are taught of how Old Testament saints loved the law of the LORD, and this is also taught in later Psalms (e.g. Psalm 19; 63:1-4; Psalm 51:11; 119; etc.). And God the Holy Spirit’s presence with the people of God is necessarily implied in the Aaronic blessing: “And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them, The LORD bless thee, and keep thee: The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them” (Numbers 6:22-27).⁸

We also remember those people whose faith and godliness was recorded in the Gospels, some of whom died before Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit (recorded in Acts 2): namely John the Baptist, his parents Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon the prophet, and Anna the prophetess (Luke 1). Doubtless there were many others not mentioned by name. Others, such as Mary the mother of Jesus, whose spirit rejoiced in God her Saviour, outlived Christ’s crucifixion and continued to believe in him (Luke 1:46; John 19.26; Acts 1:14). Their faith in the Messiah to come (and who has come) and their godliness, as we have said, all required a gracious work of God in their souls by the Holy Spirit. And these also are in the one congregation of the righteous, in Christ in the covenant of grace, that shall stand before God in the judgment.

“Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”—“but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. This immense water is symbolic of the great blessing of God in the man, woman and child of God, welling up within their soul and affecting their whole way of life and lasting forever.

The blessed man shall live the life of spiritual growth, flourishing, increasing and prospering even in the midst of this cursed world—because he has come to Christ and he drinks from him. In this world, the Christian already has the abundant and full blessing of God, though he or she benefits from it in increasing instalments. It is God’s work of grace, wrought in his heart by the Holy Spirit, that the blessed man is enabled to delight in the law of the LORD. This law he delights in no longer condemns him, because the Saviour has saved him from his sins and has taken his sins away (Matthew 1:21; John 1:29; 1 John 1:7; Isaiah 53), but it instructs him in the godly life.

God’s blessing upon the man, woman, child of God in the here-and-now promises them what they shall have and what they shall be in the perfect state to come. The Scottish Metrical Version is correct in translating Psalm 1:1 as “That man hath perfect blessedness … .”

The Transformation of the Heart

The first Psalm lifts our eyes up from one particular blessed man to view the whole congregation of the righteous (Psalm 1:5), the people of God whether under the Old Covenant or the New: the one people who shall stand before God in the judgment: they shall not perish but have eternal life of perfect blessedness in heaven (vv.5-6; John 3:16). But before that, while still in this world, they are already the congregation of the righteous.

The first Psalm does not say so outright, but it is strongly implied that even while they live in this world, all who become true members of this congregation on earth increasingly look like this blessed man, this flourishing and prospering tree, by being blessed by God as much themselves. In Psalm 119 they are all given the following to sing from their hearts in our prayer and praise to God, for they are all like this blessed man: “O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day … I cried with my whole heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep thy statutes. I cried unto thee; save me, and I shall keep thy testimonies. I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried: I hoped in thy word. Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word” (Psalm 119:97; 145-148). They are all the blessed man.

The psalmist himself was already such a blessed man as this. He was a saved, converted “holy man of God”, as all the writers of the Holy Scriptures were (2 Peter 1:21). This psalmist at the present time is among the “spirits of just men made perfect”, as all who are saved shall be (Hebrews 12:23). But while in this world he shunned ungodliness; he truly loved God’s law; he possessed of every spiritual blessing from God in these rivers of water. He was now one member of that “cloud of witnesses” that ran the race before us, whose testimony encourages us on (Hebrews 12:1).

He had the the early green leaves and the fruit already growing, but not the perfection in this world. Increasingly in the now, and completely in the to come that lies ahead for the psalmist and all who are blessed by God, “whatsoever he doeth shall prosper”. This all-inclusive “whatsoever he doeth” describes the perfection of the shall-be state. All those whom God blesses shall one day stand in the judgment, where they will be accepted and welcomed by God into the eternal state—and where they will continue to drink from that same great river of blessedness that have been taking in already, for in Heaven it is still Christ who everlastingly sustains them in their glorified state. But before that, in the now, here we drink from Christ and we grow in grace. Here we bear fruit unto God, here we delight in God’s law and we keep it, and here we prosper in his blessing upon us. Or we should, and we shall, if we are his people and he is our God. Yes, even now.

To emphasise this again: in describing the singular “he”, the blessed man who shall stand like a tree, he is simultaneously describing the “they”. The blessed man is put for all the people of God. His state in this world is their state in this world. Thus the Psalmist’s words speak of the present blessed state of himself together with those around him in this household, fellowship, and people: they are already the congregation of the righteous. Increasingly in this world they shall bear fruit that grows until the seasonal fruit-harvest, they shall have the green leaves that shall not wither, and they shall begin prospering in everything. In this world is their springtime and summertime—their growing season. And none of this can happen without their being in the “blessed is” state already.

But what about the afflictions, trials, temptations, remaining sin, and coming death that both the blessed man and the congregation have in this world (unless they are in the last generation before Christ returns; see 1 Thessalonians 4:17)? The first Psalm does not mention that, but later Psalms do, as do over parts of Scripture. We may be struggling in pain and anguish. We may be heavily burdened with worries and stresses and distresses. In our internal war against the lusts of our flesh and our remaining indwelling sin, we may fail to see that we are making any progress in godliness and fruit-bearing, and we may doubt that we are saved. We may be in total despair, when we look at what we are in ourselves. In such times we may ask, how can it be said of me that I am in the blessed state? “Blessed is the man who”—how is that my reality? Could even the psalmist himself compose the first Psalm if he was going through what I am going through? How does God expect us to sing it?! Our comfort at such times is to remember how blessed we are in Christ Jesus.

In this here and now, the psalmist sees the prospering trees that he and all the people of God are growing up into: he sees the congregation taking up the rivers of water, and he sees the green leaves and spiritual fruit that he and they have in small but increasing measure. And he knows that God the Holy Spirit will have his abundant harvest from each and every one of them. For when the blessed man “bringeth forth his fruit in his season” he is a well-watered and well-favoured tree that is fully laden.

That’s how things shall be for all the Lord’s people. They are not now lifeless, barren, or unfruitful—because of the rivers of water that they are drinking up. Quite the contrary: this is the well-watered spring and summer of the spiritual life. Their growth phase. The blessed man is pictured as a tree that shall be full of fruit, none dropped early by insufficient watering, none wasted by disease or insects: he “bringeth forth his fruit in his season”—all his spiritual fruit comes to the harvest (John 15:8; Romans 6:22; 7:4; Galatians 5:22; Philippians 1:1; Hebrews 12:11). Then, note that after this harvest it is said of him, “his leaf also shall not wither”—spiritually speaking (not physically speaking) autumn and winter never comes for the blessed man, but he is this way forever (Psalm 1:3).

“I Delight in the Law of God After the Inward Man”

In Romans chapter 7, the apostle Paul described himself in a way that was very similar to the God-blessed man of Psalm 1—even though he still struggled with indwelling sin. It was as a Christian that Paul confessed, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Romans 7:22). Paul’s profession here is not quite the same as the words in Psalm 1, but it is similar enough to show that he is referring to it. (But he also had in mind another Scripture, as we shall see later.)

Paul gave his Christian readership this view of his own internal struggles as an example of what goes on in the Christian soul, to encourage and assure us. God had given him a new heart, and that new heart now delighted in the law of God. Before he was born again, Paul never loved God’s law like that.⁹ However, while he still lived in this world, as a Christian, Paul was afflicted by his old sinful lusts emanating from what he now called the “body of this death”.

Before Paul became a born-again Christian, he was “alive without the law” (Romans 7:9). That is, he had a self-conceited and imagined freedom that was really a willing and settled enslavement to his sins. In this fallen state he never properly applied God’s law to his heart. Paul admits that this was true of his own case, even though he had been raised as a Jew and he had been a student of the law and a Pharisee. In those days he was only a Jew outwardly, without a transformed heart (cf. Romans 2:28-29; Ephesians 2:3). That was until the Holy Spirit impressed God’s law upon Paul’s heart, and enlivened his conscience, and showed him the awful judgment of God that he deserved. Now he was made to see that he was “carnal, sold under sin”, his inner slave-master (Romans 7:7-14).

The law of God was “ordained to life”, affirms Paul, following Moses: “For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them” (Romans 10:5). And following the Psalms: “What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. The face of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psalm 34:12-16). And as Christ said: “This do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:28); and “if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). But the effect is the opposite in fallen man: the law slays the sinner. The law of God enrages the fallen heart further against God. No part of an unregenerate heart will cry to God for forgiveness and salvation, but it will cry out all the more against God, for it is spiritually “dead in trespasses and in sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5).

Now, with the saving and enabling grace of God giving Paul a new heart, he was enabled to see and admit that he had no hope in himself. And so he began to cry out to God, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). This is the Christian’s prayer from his or her conversion onwards: for total deliverance from sin by God, and for forgiveness from God, and to properly thank God for this salvation “through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v.25a). Fallen descendants of Adam, dead in their sins, have their inner troubles and struggles but not like this; they do not have a new man warring against their old man (that is all they are, and it is not “old” with them), since they have not been born again. Unless the Holy Spirit gives them a new heart, they will never cry out to God for such deliverance, nor will they have salvation’s gratitude.

The apostle’s testimony of his own life change is, though details differ, the testimony of all true Christians. And in his teaching on these things, Paul brings together two Scriptures when he says of himself, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man”. In speaking of the law of God after the inward man, he identifies himself as a partaker of the New Covenant. This is clearly a reference to the prophecy in Jeremiah, where it is written that in the New Covenant, “I [the LORD] will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31-34). (We shall say more on the New Covenant below.) And in speaking of his delight in the law of God after the inward man, Paul identifies himself with the blessed man of Psalm 1.

The law did its condemning work of showing Paul that in him (that is, in his “flesh”, as he now calls his “old man”) there dwells no good thing. But he has also now discovered that he has a new nature, given to him by the Holy Spirit at his new birth (see John 3:3-8; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3, 23); a new man that delights to learn and follow the law’s instructing work in how he ought to live. Paul the Christian now properly “would do good”; that is, he now has the will to obey God, and to please and honour and worship God. However, he understands that of himself he cannot perform the good that he now wills to do (Romans 7:18).

We should have inferred that the blessed man in Psalm 1 was also in this state, because he was a man in the God-blessed state, and, while he was still living in this world, he was growing “like a tree” in grace, fruitfulness and spiritual prosperity. Though we are not given a view of the blessed man’s internal struggles (he is a picture of every one of the Lord’s people, and the internal struggles are not the same in every case), we are shown that he is drinking from the powerful rivers of water that flow from God, and from the Lamb, and therefore he is becoming victorious in them all.

The Christian’s lifelong prayer is, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (vv.24-25a). God will always answer this prayer. He will have his victory, his glory, within each and every one of his people. God the Father has sent his only-begotten Son to conquer sin and death and to ensure this victory by the sacrifice of himself—“he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21; Hebrews 9:24-28). All of God’s deliverance of his people is through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin” says Paul, concluding this thought (v.25b). The Christian in this world is in a temporary, unfinished state. The internal spiritual war, that was Paul’s war while he was in this world, will not always be happening in the Christian’s soul. God’s victory and glory is coming to him.

The Law of the Spirit of Life

The apostle speaks of numerous “laws”¹⁰ in this passage (in Romans chapter 7 and continuing into chapter 8), and that makes the apostle’s writing difficult to follow here.

First, there is the holy, just, good, and spiritual “law of God” (v.22), the objective moral law. This is the law that Paul and the Christian now delights in after the inward man.

Second, There was the “law of sin” / “law of sin and death” (7:23; 8:2) that opposed God’s law. This is the “old man” of the Christian, that is now a powerless dethroned slave-master, that was crucified and died in the death of Christ (see also Romans 6:2-4; 7:4, 6; Galatians 2:20).

Third, there is still “a law” / “another law of my members”¹¹ (7:21, 23) that was still within Paul and is still within the Christian so long as he or she remains in this world. This is the habitual, trained-in lusts carried over from the old man and still clinging on, and more sins which we shamefully commit—as Paul says: the “sin that dwelleth in me”; the “evil” that is still “present with me”; the “flesh” in which “dwelleth no good thing”.

Fourth, there is now also in the Christian what Paul calls “the law of my mind” (7:23) that was put there by God’s work of grace in his or her soul when he gave them their regenerate new nature. This is the “delight in the law of God after his inward man”, and the changed will that now “would do good”.

There is a fifth law mentioned in chapter 8, the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that makes the Christian free from the law of sin and death (8:2). This is God’s work of grace in the soul (this is our customary term that encompasses all these good things and ascribes them all to God), that gives us the new birth, the new man within, the delight in the law of God after the new inward man, the mind for the things of the Spirit, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the purposes of new obedience to God, the power to walk in the Spirit (8:1, 4-6), and every spiritual blessing.

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law [God’s moral law] could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us”—while we remain in this world, yes, fulfilled in us—“who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:2-4). That is, God’s righteousness imputed to us by his Son’s condemning our sins in his flesh and transferring his righteousness to our account; then God’s righteousness imparted to us by his work of grace making us free and enabling us to walk not after the flesh and instead to walk after the Spirit.

We have seen how the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the rivers of living water as coming from himself, and how the blessed man is therefore one who comes to Jesus and drinks, and receives these rivers of water into his soul, that then well up within him unto eternal life—“this he spake of the Holy Spirit”, confirms the apostle John (John 4:14; 7:37-39). These rivers of water are what the apostle Paul here calls the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. These waters are, this Holy Spirit is what puts us into the state of the Christian—the blessed man in the blessed land.

Therefore the born again man, woman or child is the blessed man of Psalm 1, and that is the reason why they have their delight in the law of God—like no-one has who has not been given the new heart. Christian! If this delight is a only small flicker in you, then you must fan it into flame, so that you can really know that it is a delight: meditate on the law of the LORD day an night.

A Bible with cross references can help you see how the practical applications in the New Testament Scriptures are drawn from God’s moral law in the Books of Moses, and in the Psalms, and Proverbs, and other parts of the Old Testament Scriptures. A good pastor will preach through the Ten Commandments repeatedly in his ministry (indeed it will be his delight to do so, having been delighted by them in his own heart through his personal studies and in his sermon preparation), and he will bring out both the condemning and instructing uses of the law. And when he preaches on moral and ethical matters elsewhere in the Scriptures, he will trace them back to the law of God. Then there are studies in the Ten Commandments in numerous Reformed Catechisms (e.g. the Westminster Shorter Catechism question 41 and following), and other books that study and expand on these catechisms. And many other books besides.

Having a real delight in the law of God is a mark of God’s grace in your soul, as is the growing leaves (maturity and character) and fruit (good works). We find these things taught by Christ and his apostles throughout the new Testament Scriptures, both in quoting this Psalm, and in other similar and various allegorical forms, and in the explicit exposition of the things symbolised.

The apostle Paul assures us: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). Now no condemnation! This is an astounding truth, that is all the more amazing to us when we see its juxtaposition against what Paul had said immediately before of his internal spiritual war and his still sinning, that is often missed when we split our readings by the chapters.

Paul the Christian is in Christ Jesus, and walks after the Spirit, and with his mind serves the law of God that he delights in, has no condemnation from God for his sins; however, he still sometimes sins when he gives in to his flesh, the “law of [his] members” that are still within him. These sins always grieve him and he cries out to God for forgiveness and deliverance. Though he has no power of his own to resist the the law of sin in his members, the lusts of his flesh, yet he does not always lose his battles in this war. But while he lived out his days on earth, Paul was increasingly winning them. How is he winning? God delivers him, not only at the end but all through his life from the “body of this death” through his Saviour Jesus Christ.

The same is true for all true Christians. Powerless Paul and powerless Christians now have the power of God to overcome the sin in their flesh— God answers this prayer. This power comes from the Holy Spirit. It is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, who plants into the Christian’s soul both the new life and the law of God, as was promised by God through the prophet Jeremiah in the New Covenant. (More on the New Covenant below.) The law of God that stirred them up to rage against God before, they now cherish and delight in it, in their hearts. It is to them more precious than gold, and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

Each deliverance from sin, that happens every time the Christian prays and turns from evil and do good, is an “earnest” or down-payment¹² of that final deliverance already by the work of Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit now within (see 2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:1-5; Ephesians 1:13-14). The work of the Holy Spirit in the true Christian, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has already quickened (1 Corinthians 15:45; John 6:63; Ephesians 2:1) or regenerated them, and has implanted in them the “law of [their new] mind” that delights in the law of God, and has the will to do good, and causes us to cry out for deliverance from sin, and thanks God for that deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now this law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus remains with the Christian, and it is never withdrawn, but the Spirit follows through by giving the power to do good that they don’t have of themselves, so that they can obey God’s moral law. And so they will, increasingly so.

We call this progress in godliness sanctification by the Spirit; bearing fruit of the Spirit; the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus making us free from the law of sin and death; growing in grace; being strengthened with all might according to God’s glorious power; labouring and striving according to his working, which works in us mightily (2 Thessalonians 2:13; Galatians 5:22-23; Romans 8:2; 2 Peter 3:18; Colossians 1:9, 29). And so on.

The blessed man’s (the tree’s) watering, unwithering green leaves, and prospering in everything are all spiritual. The rivers of living water flow into him and flow within him to give him spiritual life and a new heart, so that he delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on it day and night. And then they flow out of his innermost part to all his members, Jesus says. It is these waters of blessing, this work of the Holy Spirit, that brings the victory in the internal spiritual war. He is the source of the people of God’s obedience to God’s moral law; the source of their godliness, righteousness, holiness, and the restoration of the image of God in them.

“I Will Put My Law in Their Inward Parts”

Jehovah gave his prophet Jeremiah this prophecy, that is now fulfilled: “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah … But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

This is true of all believers in the Messiah, in the New Covenant (also known as the New Testament;¹³ see Matthew 26:26-28; Hebrews 8:6-13; 9:13-15; 13:20), whether they are of Israel according to the flesh or whether they are gentiles “made nigh by the blood of Christ”, so that they become “fellowcitizens with the saints” of Israel and “graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree” (Romans 11; Ephesians 2). “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek”; and beyond the Greek world too, when the church of Christ extended there: “for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:12-13).

That God puts his law in the inward parts of those who come to be included in the New Covenant does not mean that they have no need of the law that God’s law written in the Old Testament (Old Covenant) Scriptures. But as with all of God’s word, God puts his law into the inward parts of his people through their eyes and their ears by the Holy Spirit. God’s work of grace, the law of the Spirit of life, gives them a new heart and writes God’s law upon it; for their old spiritually dead heart would not take it. And this new, law-loving heart gives them a new “law of my mind” as Paul says, so that now we “would do good” by keeping God’s law, and also the power that frees us from the law of sin and death, that was in our old man. According to the apostle Paul, this is how Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant is fulfilled in the Christian.

You will enjoy what the Puritan William Gurnall had to say about this, in his The Christian in Complete Armour:

“Here is the work produced—a supernatural principle of a new life. (1.) By a principle of life, I mean, an inward disposition and quality, sweetly, powerfully, and constantly inclining it to that which is holy; so that the Christian, though passive in the production, is afterward active, and co-working with the Spirit in all actions of holiness; not as a lifeless instrument is in the hand of a musician, but as a living child in the hand of a father. Therefore they are said to be ‘led by the Holy Spirit,’ Romans 8:14. (2.) It is a principle of new life; the Spirit’s work was not [to] chase and recover what was swooning, but to work a life de novo—anew, in a soul quite dead: ‘You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses,’ Ephesians 2:1. The devil comes as orator, to persuade by argument, when he tempts; the Spirit as a creator, when he converts. The devil draws forth and enkindles what he finds raked up in the heart before; but the Holy Spirit puts into the soul what he finds not there—called in Scripture the ‘seed’ of God, 1 John 3:9, ‘Christ formed in you,’ Galatians 4:19, the ‘new creature,’ Galatians 6:15, the ‘law’ put by God into the inner man, Jeremiah 31:33, which Paul calls ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,’ Romans 8:2. (3.) It is a supernatural principle. By this we distinguish it from Adam’s righteousness and holiness, which was co-natural to him, as now sin is to us; and, had he stood, would have been propagated to us as naturally as now his sin is. Holiness was as natural to Adam’s soul as health was to his body, they both resulting ex principiis recte constitutis—from principles pure and rightly disposed.”¹⁴

The Way of the Righteous

In the spiritual war within us, God always wins and is never a loser. He shall deliver us from the body of this death. That is why we increasingly do not serve sin but serve God, while we drink the rivers of water that give us our new life. Our partaking of God, and his power in us, is evidenced outwardly in our not walking in the counsel of the ungodly, not standing in the way of sinners, not sitting in the seat of the scornful. And in bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and having unwithering green leaves, as the Psalmist says. The apostle Paul puts it like this: “though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).

The blessed people have a new life-walk. They are, each of them, a “new creature”, born again, and the old is gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christians have a new purpose and aspiration, and a new delight and desire—toward God and toward his moral law. They hunger and thirst for righteousness to be imparted to them and to fill their life. They have a new direction, a new determination, and a new destination.

By God’s work of grace in the soul, by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, by the powerfully quickening river of water of life that proceeds from the throne of God and from the Lamb, the people of God find that they do have a desire to not walk in the counsel of the ungodly any more. There will come a point where they can no longer stand in the way (path) of sinners. And they will not condone and sit in the seat of those who are scornful toward God and godliness. If they were such masters and leaders, then they will resign even at great cost to themselves and instead they will seek to champion good instead of evil.

Yes, it will be hard to live, stand, walk, and sit for Christ in a fallen world full of pain, disease, and wickedness. Some of us have it relatively easy, though “easy” may not be the word we would use. It is a lot harder in some situations and parts of the world where evil more greatly abounds. We are to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might, so that we stand in the evil day (Ephesians 6:10 ff.). The ungodly may persecute and abuse you, they may treat you as dead to them, and they may bring against you all manner of warfare and lawfare, as they did the apostles and prophets before you, and has you can learn about in the history of the Christian church (Matthew 5:11-12, 44; Romans 12:14; Hebrews 11:32-40; Revelation 6:9-11). But if your faith is real, it will not be plucked away by the birds, it will not wither without growing a root, and it will not be choked to unfruitfulness (Matthew 13:3-8; 18-23). The real internal transformation and spiritual war that the Holy Spirit is winning within you shall bring about an increasingly obvious outward change. Our Lord and Saviour commands us not to hide this change, but we must let shine before men as light in the darkness of this world, and as corruption-halting salt of the earth (Matthew 9:13-16). So, no more excuses. You cannot have a private faith that does not show. And you can’t do more good by not being openly Christian.

It is true that those whom the first Psalm calls “the righteous” ones are not perfect in this world. But they have been given a new nature. Meanwhile the lusts of their flesh, other people, and the society and culture around them still has a powerful influence, so that they are not always walking, standing, and sitting where they should be. But they have certainly begun in their new life, and they are showing increasing evidence of prospering and bearing fruit by it—by the power of God working in their souls. They shall manifest all the blessings that come from their uptake of the rivers of living water. And they shall prosper in everything, for God’s glory.

It is now possible for the Christian not to sin. However, we are not without sin, and we have an ongoing need for repentance (see 1 John 1:5-10; 1 Kings 8:46; Ecclesiastes 7:20). But we will never undo or lose what God has begun in us, because God will never leave us (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalm 23). We have that blessedness of the man whose sin has been forgiven and covered over by God (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalm 32). And when we sin, we always repent and cry out to God to “turn us again” (as we learn later, e.g. in Psalms 51 and 80). We will continue making progress in our new life-walk throughout the remainder of our life on earth. Indeed, repentance from sin and obedience and worship to God will come to characterise us: our inward and outward life will increasingly look like that of the blessed man and the prosperous tree in Psalm 1.

“The LORD knoweth the way of the righteous.” The way of the righteous leads away from the way of ungodly, sinners and scoffers against God. It is the way of delighting in the law of God in the inward man, and serving the law of God. Psalm 1 concludes by saying that God knows their way—he knows each of his people who are going in it, and he is intensely interested in the their progress in righteousness. The present and continuous tense of the word translated “knoweth” indicates to us that God is constantly with to his people in this way, their new life-walk; not only that he is merely remotely conscious of them.

The Lord’s people walk this way in the Spirit and by the Spirit. In other words, the “way of the righteous” is the distinctively Christian walk. “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour … For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord” (Ephesians 5:1-10).

If God has not transformed and translated us from the state of ungodliness to the blessed state, then we would have continued in our ungodly walking, standing, and sitting against him. What awaits people who do die in that state? They are “like the chaff which the wind driveth away” (Psalm 1:4). But unlike the dispersed, out-of-mind, reduction to nothingness that happens to chaff, there is “the judgment” of God to come.¹⁵

The ungodly (that is, fallen sinners) are “driven away” by God out of this world, to await the judgment every day. Every day, people die in their sins. All who die in their sins will not stand in God’s Day of Judgment; for they are not part of the congregation of the righteous that stands in the presence of God in heaven. No, but “the way of the ungodly shall perish”, and themselves along with it, forever. The way of the ungodly leads to the never-ending perishing of Hell.

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).

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1. See earlier articles in this series, The Word of Christ, and Richly in All Wisdom. ↩︎

2. Our English words righteous (from old English) and just (from old French) translate the same Greek word δίκαιος (dikaios). So, these two words both mean the same thing: what is morally right. Similarly, δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosune) can be translated as righteousness or justness (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, number 1343). ↩︎

3. See a previous post, The Lord Jesus Christ in The Psalms. ↩︎

4. Many more examples could be given than those listed here. We can of course refer to the Old Testament Scriptures: the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom Writings, including the Psalms. But these phrases I have given above are all from the New Testament Scriptures: Matthew 3:8; 4:17; 5:6, 16, 20; 18:3; Mark 1:4; Luke 13:1-5; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21; 26:20; Romans 5:17; 6:6, 22; 7:4; 8:1-14, 29-30; 12:2; 15:16; 2 Corinthians 1:30; 3:18; 6:11; 7:1; Galatians 5:16-25; Ephesians 2:1-10; 4:17-24; Colossians 1:10 3:5; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 3:13; 4:3, 7; 1 Timothy 2:2; 3:12; 2 Timothy 4:8; Titus 1:1; 2:12; 8:8; Hebrews 12:14; 13:21; 1 Peter 1:2-5, 13-16, 22; 3:12; 4:1-3; 2 Peter 1:3; 3:11; 1 John 3:7. ↩︎

5. Greek ὅμοιος αὐτός, homoios autos, meaning like the other, corresponding to the other, or equally the same with (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, numbers 3664 and 846). ↩︎

6. The word “blessed” in Psalm 1:1 is the Hebrew word רשׁא, ‘esher, which can also mean “happy” (Strong’s Concordance, Hebrew Dictionary, number 835). This has to do with the state or condition of the man, before his feelings. The word implies that he has received the blessing, and that he possesses something to be happy about. ↩︎

7. “‘Condemnation’ is the opposite of justification (cf. Romans 5:16; 8:34) and justification implies the absence of condemnation. Since the justification which is the theme of this epistle is the complete and irreversible justification of the ungodly, it carries with it the annulment of all condemnation.”—John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans. Wm. B. Eerdmans (one volume edition, 1968), commentary at Romans 8:1, p. 274. ↩︎

8. There were also occasionally special fillings of the Spirit (Exodus 31:2; 35:31; Numbers 11:17, 25; Judges 6:34; 13:25; 14:6, 19; 15:14), especially upon the prophets (2 Chronicles 15:1; 20:14; 24:20; Joel 2:28-29; Luke 2:25). ↩︎

9. “In his [Paul’s] innermost being, in what is central to the will and affection, he delights in the law of God. This cannot be said of the unregenerate man still under the law and in the flesh.”—John Murray, Romans, p. 237. ↩︎

10. See John Calvin, Commentaries, on Romans 7:21. ↩︎

11. “The corrupt and sinful inclination is here compared to a law, because it controlled and checked him [Paul] in his good motions. It is said to be seated in his members, because, Christ having set up his throne in his heart, it was only the rebellious members of the body that were the instruments of sin—in the sensitive appetite; or we may take it more generally for all that corrupt nature which is the seat not only of sensual but of more refined lusts. This wars against the law of the mind, the new nature; it draws the contrary way, drives on a contrary interest, which corrupt disposition and inclination are as great a burden and grief to the soul as the worst drudgery and captivity could be.”—Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at Romans 7:23. ↩︎

12. The New Testament Greek word ἀῤῥαβών, arrabon, carried over from the Hebrew ‭ןוֹברָעֵ ‘arabown, means downpayment, pledge, or security (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary number 725; Hebrew Dictionary number 6162). ↩︎

13. The English words “covenant” and “testament” are both used to translate the Greek word διαθήκη, diatheke (Strong’s Concordance, Greek Dictionary, number 1242). See the previous article, Fellowcitizens with the Saints in Israel, footnote 7. ↩︎

14. —William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Glasgow: Blackie and Son, 1864). Part 2, Direction 6: The Several Pieces of the Whole Armour of God. Second Piece—The Christian’s Breastplate, pp.408-409. ↩︎

15. Some preachers neglect to mention Hell, preferring instead to speak only of a “lost eternity”. Others preach annihilation for those who die outside of Christ. Both are avoiding what the Bible teaches. See Isaiah 66:22-24; Daniel 12:2-3; Matthew 18:6-9; 25:31-46; Mark 9:42-48; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10; Jude 7, 13; Revelation 14:9–11; 20:10, 14-15. ↩︎