Pure in Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Matthew 5:8

Like mercy, purity of heart is a direct result of the poor-in-spirit Christian seeing sin as God sees it. That Christian will mourn over his or her own sin, meekly accepting God’s standard of righteousness, and hungering to meet it with all the intensity of the most urgent need.  

To Be Pure-Hearted

To be pure means to be clean or clear, figuratively or literally. To have a pure heart is not only to have a heart that is cleansed from sin, as at salvation, but also a heart that desires to stay clean before God.

Just like a clean floor needs regular attention if it is to stay clean, our hearts need that ongoing confession of sin and restoration of fellowship as we live as saved, yet still sinners in the midst of a filthy world. 1Timothy 1:5 reminds us,

“Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”

Our love for others, our mercy, our meekness, every aspect of our interactions with others flows from our hearts. A pure heart will value others the way God values them and will treat them accordingly.

If our hearts are soiled by the grime of unconfessed sin, however, we will treat others according to the selfishness and deceitfulness of our old sin nature.

Purity of heart strikes me as a single-minded focus. Jesus Himself mentions later in this same “Sermon on the Mount,”

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Luke 6:22-23)

The direction our eyes are gazing determines our focus. When we keep our eyes set on the world and worldly things, our focus will be worldly.

With our gaze full of a worldly focus, the light of Christ which ought to shine through us will be dimmed as we embrace the world’s darkness.

However, when we set our gaze on the things of God, our light grows brighter and brighter. The purer our heart, the brighter our light. Paul says,

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

His one goal, the one thing for which he worked and longed, was “The high calling of God in Christ Jesus” When we become Christians, we are called to be ambassadors. (2 Corinthians 5:20) Jesus said, just a few verses away from our beatitude,

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Purity of heart will always lead to the fulfillment of our calling to be lights, examples, beacons of hope and righteousness that will lead others to the one in Whom there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

To See God

Purity of heart also leads to a glorious result: “for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8) Matthew Henry explains this well:

“None but the pure are capable of seeing God, nor would heaven be happiness to the impure. As God cannot endure to look upon their iniquity, so they cannot look upon His purity.” *

You see, when our hearts are made pure before God at salvation, we are given the unfailingly certain promise that we will see Him one day, face to face. (1 Corinthians 3:12)

In the glorious description of eternity ahead with God in the New Jerusalem, we are told,

“And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: And they shall see His face…” (Revelation 22:3-4)

But, as with so many of the other promises made in these beatitudes, there is an earthly aspect to the promise as well as the obvious heavenly fulfillment. This is seen in 1 John 3:2-3.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”

The knowledge that we will one day see God face to face, in the indescribable glory of all that He is, serves as motivation to purify ourselves now, while we wait for His coming. And notice, too, that beholding God makes us become more like Him. 2 Corinthians puts it this way:

“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into that same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (3:18)

Here on earth, we wait for that sweet someday when we will see God face to face and be given new bodies, pure and free from our sin natures. But while we wait, we strive to become more and more like God as we catch more and more glimpses of His glory.

 Where Do We Begin?

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “So how do we get there? How do we develop that single-minded striving to keep our hearts pure before God?” Psalm 119 gives the answer:

“Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to Thy Word. With my whole heart have I sought Thee: O let me not wander from Thy commandments. Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” (vv.9-11)

Purity of heart begins with God’s Word. One of the things Jesus prayed for His disciples in John 17 was,

“Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is truth.” (v.17)

He then goes on to say that He prays this not just for His disciples, but also for all those who would believe in Him through their word (i.e., you and me.) We are sanctified, or set apart from sin and to God, through the Scripture. This means that the way we grow in striving after purity of heart is to immerse ourselves in God’s Word, saturating our thinking with His truth. That is exactly what the author of Psalm 119 did. That is where his heart to study, learn, obey, and delight in God’s Word came from.

When I was a teen, my brother came home from Bible college with a grand plan to memorize Psalm 119—and for me to memorize it along with him!

To be honest, I began memorizing the psalm to please my brother. However, the more time I spent reading, repeating, and reviewing the verses, the more truth I noticed in them, and the more I grew to share the love the unnamed psalmist had for God’s Word. The verses resonated with where I was in my Christian growth as well as where I wanted to be.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that memorization project was to be a defining force in my growth to the measure of spiritual maturity I enjoy today.  It was the Holy Spirit of God quickening the Word of God to my heart that developed within me the desire, the longing, the thirst for holiness that motivates me to strive after purity of heart.

—And if you come to it honestly, with a poor in spirit heart, humbly submissive to its truths, that’s exactly what the Word of God will do for you.

“Behold, I have longed after Thy precepts: quicken me in Thy righteousness.” (Psalm 119:40)

*Matthew Henry, Parallel Commentary of the New Testament, AMG Publishers. Chattanooga: Tennessee. 2003 p. 15