Psalm 119:1

Blessed are the undefiled in the way,  Who walk in the law of the LORD!

Psalm 119 starts with the idea of blessedness. This is a significant pattern, found throughout Hebrew writing: it is the way the whole book of Psalms starts in Psalm 1, the way Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount, and the way Paul begins many of his letters to the early church. It is an important idea, and one we need to understand.

Everyone wants to be blessed.¹ Whether a person is a believer or not, all our lives are spent seeking contentment and satisfaction—one could call it "the pursuit of happiness"—and that is what the word "blessed" means in this passage. Unfortunately, without the grace of God it is impossible to find this blessedness. People try, of course, but they are either trying to make themselves happy in the wrong way, or they do not even recognize real happiness when they see it. God's way to blessedness is hard, yes, but the world's way simply doesn't work, as the Preacher points out many times in Ecclesiastes. 

Eccles. 1:14 I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind. 

Eccles. 2:1 I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure”; but surely, this also was vanity.

The false happiness that the world offers will never truly satisfy a longing heart. "Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy?" Isaiah asks, and Paul reminds us  in 1 Timothy 6:9-10 that the pleasures of this life (specifically the pursuit of riches) will cause us to stray, and will drown us if we love them too much.

So if the world cannot offer blessedness, what is the way to obtain it? The Psalmist tells us quite plainly: being undefiled in the way. He then further defines "way" as "walking in the law of the LORD. But what does it mean to be undefiled? The Bible states many times that no one is without sin, throughout both the Old and New Testaments.

Prov. 20:9 Who can say, “I have made my heart clean,  I am pure from my sin”? 

Psalm 130:3 If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand? 

Rom. 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 

1 John 1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 

Being undefiled does not mean we have never sinned. Our sin is covered by Christ's righteousness, and we are to guard our hearts, and keep ourselves pure, searching for sin and uprooting it when we find it, with the help of His Spirit. This purity of heart is not a one-time event, it is a day-by-day walk, and we have to be consistent. There is no room for picking and choosing with God's laws, either. If you accept His right to set the rules, you must accept them all, whether or not they are popular, the ones that are difficult to follow as well as those that are easy.

Now, whether you are looking at the Christian life from the inside or the outside, this may not feel like the best way to be happy. Following a bunch of rules? How does this lead to blessedness?

First, we are blessed because of our assured future eternal state: we will see God, as Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:8, and we cannot see Him without holiness, as the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:14.

In addition, we will have certain blessings even in this flicker of a mortal life:
1. We know that we are no longer under God's wrath, which is an immense relief and freedom.
2. We are Jesus' friends. (John 15:14)
3. No matter what happens, we know that God is taking care of us. (Romans 8:28)
4. We are heirs to a great kingdom, and know that we will possess it one day. (1 Jn. 3:1) Just as heirs in the world have certain current privileges due to their future status, so it is with God's heirs.
5. We experience God's goodness toward us in this life. There are many moments where we see His hand at work, or simply enjoy His presence.
6. We have the great peace of God, which the world cannot understand. (Psalm 119:165; Gal. 6:16)

All these blessings are available to every saved person, but we only experience them when we are walking in His laws, keeping His commands, in sincere, constant, uniform obedience.

I know of no part of the holy Scriptures, where the nature and evidences of true and sincere godliness are so much of set purpose and so fully and largely insisted on and delineated, as the 119th Psalm. - Jonathan Edwards 

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1 I am indebted to a great sermon by Thomas Manton, a Puritan preacher in the 1600s, for the main outline points of this post and most of the scripture references. You can read the whole sermon here: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/manton/manton06.iii.iii.html