The Beatitudes
10 Truths
Blessed are the pure in heart (Matthew 5:8).
Matthew's Beatitude 6
Matthew 5:8
Blessed are the pure in heart because they will see God..
This should be the desire of every follower of Jesus. It is integrity in your inner person. You have a deep desire to glorify God with everything you think, say, and do.
Purity in heart starts now and is completed in heaven. The Holy Spirit is working purity into our hearts as we obey and follow Him. This purity will be fully realized when we are with God in heaven.
What is purity?
The original language word for purity expresses cleanliness and undivided loyalty to the Lord. This comes from the Old Testament concept of clean and unclean. God commanded the Israelites to deal with any unclean things or practices so they could be in the temple in His presence.
Purity requires being clean in God’s sight. It concerns your character and how you respond to the Holy Spirit’s leading as He makes you more like Jesus (Romans 8:29-30). Otherwise, His presence is temporarily blocked from us. People who were unclean could not worship in the temple. They had to wait until their time of impurity was over.
Purity is also refusing to be distracted by the world, your old desires, and voices other than God’s voice. It is a singular focus on God and how to please Him. It is seeking God and wanting only what He gives. When you seek God, you find Him (Jeremiah 29:13).
How does the Bible describe the heart?
The Bible describes the heart as a combination of our mind, emotions, will, and decision-making. It is the inner person, who you are before the Lord. God gives you a new heart (Ezekiel 36:27). This allows you to have a pure heart before Him.
David is an example of a person who had a heart after God’s heart (1 Samuel 13:14). This doesn’t mean David was perfect. It meant that wanted to do everything to please God. If he failed, he was quick to make it right.
In his psalm of repentance, David asked God to give him a clean heart, not distracted by the things of this world (Psalm 51:10). He did not want sin or anything else to keep him from experiencing God’s forgiveness.
The person who is pure in heart is not perfect but seeks God and to please Him in everything. This is the person who tries to be more like Jesus. It doesn’t mean you succeed every time. If you fail, you confess and ask Jesus for forgiveness (1 John 1:9). You get up and keep walking with Him. You pursue God’s desire for your purity.
Purity requires you to monitor and examine your thoughts, thought process, how your emotions are affected by your circumstances, the choices you make, and how you conduct yourself. You take worldly thoughts captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5), and change whatever the Spirit wants you to change.
Biblical Background
Jesus may have been thinking about Psalm 24:3-4. This psalm describes the person who may enter God’s presence. This person must have clean hands and a pure heart. Your actions and inner person aligned with God’s desires and will.
You do whatever honors God and glorifies Him because you want to please Him. This is the only way you can enter into His presence because He is a holy God and cannot dwell with an unholy person.
You are a person who does not deceive others. You do not have two different approaches. You are not in front of one person and another way in front of another. They do not find any difference if they compare how you treat them.
You are a person of integrity. Integrity means you are the same person on the inside as you are on the outside. You are honest, unmixed in your loyalty and actions. Your actions prove your inner character and fortitude.
The promise of seeing God
Jesus promises that those who are pure in heart will see God. Some people see this as what will happen when we go to heaven and when we are in the new Jerusalem (Revelation 22:3-4). But it is not a promise just for the future.
While we will see God in His fullness and be able to gaze upon His face in the end, we can do that partially now. Anyone who has a pure heart before the Lord can experience His presence spiritually.
The Holy Spirit lives in you and is the down payment of your future with God (Ephesians 1:14). His presence in you is a glimpse, a foretaste of what it will be like to be in God’s presence physically forever.
You get to experience the joy of God’s presence now. It makes you hungry for God’s presence in eternity. The Holy Spirit has high expectations for you because He dwells in you. We are His temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 6:19-20). Just as God’s presence filled the tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament, his presence is filling you now.
Cultivating a pure heart
You can have a pure heart now. You do not have to wait for God to make your heart completely pure in heaven. Ask God to search your heart and point out anything that does not please Him (Psalm 139:23-24).
Let God examine you and address what He wants to change in your heart. Keep yourself from hindrances like a divided loyalty between God in the world, lack of integrity, refusal to obey the Holy Spirit, grieving the Holy Spirit, and uncontrolled desires from the past.
Guard your heart and keep yourself from these things (Proverbs 4:23). James teaches us to not have a double-minded approach to life (James 1:8; 4:8). Seek God and desire to remain close to Him and work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13).
When you draw near to God, He draws near to you (James 4:8). A clean, pure heart and hands that are not defiled by wicked living open the doors of heaven and seeing God in His glory.
Life Change
- Do you have a single-minded desire to please God in everything you think, say, and do? Do you have any allegiance to the world?
- What is your thought life like? Do you have any priorities above glorifying God?
- Do people describe you as saying one thing and doing another?
- How do you make decisions? Are they driven by your desires, selfishness, or pride? Or do you ask God what He desires for your decisions?
- Do you leave time to enter God’s presence and dwell on Scripture? Is your schedule too busy for God?