Psalm 1:1-2, Blessed is the man…[whose] delight is in the law of YHWH…”
The blessed person—that is, the deeply happy person—is the one who delights in YHWH’s law. Now, to delight in a thing is a sort of blessedness in and of itself, and to be blessed implies that that which we delight in is enjoyed by us. And so, might we say from this that the delighting at the heart of true blessedness is delighting in the instruction of YHWH? The blessed person delights in YHWH’s words, *not* as a means to his blessedness, but *as* his blessedness. The blessedness of the blessed man is his delight in and enjoyment of the words of YHWH. This delight—just as a healthy man’s enjoyment of good food prevents him utterly from eating stones and broken glass—prevents the blessed man from standing in the sphere of those who oppose the one whose word is his delight and wellspring of his blessedness.
And what is this “law of YHWH” in which the blessed man delights? Well, the simple answer would be that it entails all that YHWH has spoken to His people throughout their history, and much could be said about that. However, I think that ultimately—as New Covenant people in a post-Calvary world—we need to understand that the “law of YHWH” is fulfilled and embodied in the incarnate Word of YHWH, the Word who is God Himself declared to us.
Jesus Christ, crucified and raised, IS HIMSELF the instruction of the Lord, the law of the Lord, the climactic and all encompassing “thus saith the Lord” whom to behold by the Spirit and so to embrace by faith IS to be made obedient (as we are increasingly conformed to Him).
So, we delight in the written instruction of YHWH, to be sure, but only in that it points us to the incarnate “instruction” of YHWH (John 5:39) whom we “read” with greatest clarity by the light of the resurrection as He is inscribed on the cross of Calvary………True blessedness, then, is to DELIGHT in the incarnate law of YHWH, the enfleshed Word of God, the embodied Name and Will of the Lord, who is Himself God—the crucified Jesus Christ who is raised and who lives forevermore.
