“Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8)
Most people in life consider themselves to be good people. You will occasionally find an exception to that rule, as you encounter someone who by his own admission is “born to lose” or just a bad guy. But most of us think we’re OK. Even in prison you will find a lot of folks who will tell you, “I’m not that bad.”
The way we come to this conclusion is by comparing ourselves to someone else. It’s always easy to find someone who is a little bit lower than you are, so no matter how low you are, you can usually say, “At least I’m not like So-and-so.”
As with the other Beatitudes we have studied, the phrase “pure in heart” in this verse means much more than one might think. Many would assume that it refers simply to being a good person, and some of us think that we are already there. But let’s look at it more closely in light of what the Bible says.
There are two main points to the explanation of this phrase, and the first point is to consider what it is not. Several places in the New Testament mention the religion of the Pharisees. A Pharisee was a religious leader whose life was impeccably clean and who did a great deal of good in the eyes of his fellow man. Many would assume such a person was pure in heart because there were no chinks in his armor.
But look at what Jesus said about the religion of the Pharisees in Matt. 23:27-28. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”
I perform a lot of funerals, and many of them today take place at mausoleums. The walls inside these structures are beautiful and ornate, and the outside will contain fabulous carvings and other such things. You think about what a beautiful place it is on the outside, but no one ever wants to open the boxes behind the walls, because they all contain the remains of dead people.
This is how Jesus views the Pharisees and their religion according to these verses. They looked great as far as the outward appearance goes, but the inside was rotten and dead.
So we might think to ourselves, “Hey, I’m doing pretty good. I’ve got the right haircut, I’m wearing the right clothes. I don’t do things that are really bad. I guess I’m OK.” But being pure in heart is not like the Pharisee attitude that is concerned only with the outward appearance.
I grew up in church in the 1970s and 1980s when we all made a big deal out of how people looked, and it was very important that we had the right “standards” – the ladies’ dresses were the right length, the men wore manly clothes, etc. Now I certainly appreciate that and want to encourage some of that in my church today, but I think something was lost in translation. I remember all of the preaching about what we should wear, but I have trouble remembering why. There was a lot of emphasis on outward appearances back then, but I don’t recall much being said about letting God work from the inside out as opposed to man working from the outside in.
If you are just working from the outside in on some issue, especially a spiritual one, it will last only as long as the influence of the person who taught you that principle. But if God works on you from the inside out, it won’t matter what other people say or do.
We should encourage one another to look and act like Christians, but we have to be careful before we judge someone based solely on appearance, because we have all seen many examples of someone who looked right on the outside but was living wrong on the inside, and eventually the outside became a manifestation of what was really on the inside. Even teenagers and young people can get caught up in the outward appearance without having the right heart attitude.
I have seen photos of famous preachers looking just right, in a nice suit with perfect hair and Bible in hand, only to find out later that they were living in wickedness when those pictures were taken. Of course, in those situations the truth always comes out eventually.
If you let God get hold of your heart, no preacher or anyone else will ever have to get onto you about how you conduct yourself. There must be boundaries and guidelines about these things, but I would much rather let God show you how you should look and act. Then I can just stand back and say, “That is a work of God. Praise His name.”
Being pure in heart does not mean having the religion of the Pharisees, and it also does not refer to righteousness compared to others. Look at 2 Cor. 10:12. “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”
Everyone likes to point out that they are better than someone else. Often on visitation I will ask a person about going to Heaven, and the response is, “Oh, yes. I’m going to Heaven when I die.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m a good person.”
“What makes you a good person?”
“Well, I’ve never killed anybody.”
You compare yourself to some notorious serial killer and decide that you’re OK. If could go out to the state prison and pick out 15,000 inmates for comparison, and since I’ve never spent any time in jail, I guess I’m fine. But the Bible never says that has anything to do with it.
Comparing your righteousness to that of others is a sliding scale, because no matter how far you slide you can always find someone who slid farther. The correct standard is God’s holiness. As I Pet. 1:16 says, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” In comparison to God, all of us are found wanting.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say, “Well, Preacher, I come to church most of the time. I give my money. I do this and that.” You can come to church every time the doors are open but it doesn’t make you a Christian. The same goes for baptism or any other work you do.
Some people won’t go to church because of the people who are there, and others go to church just so they can say they went. Either way, it’s a comparative type of religion that is far from what being pure in heart is all about.
Since we’ve seen what being pure in heart is not, then what is it? It is a heart that is purified by the blood of Christ and has purposed to live in such a way that pleases the Lord. I don’t live for Jesus so I can be born again; but because I am born again, I want to please God with my every action, word, thought and intent.
Look at I Pet. 1:18-23. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”
The first mark of being pure in heart is that you have been purified by the blood of Christ. As the song says, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
Your sin is so awful, so terrible, so disgusting before God that He damned those in sin to an eternal Hell. But He loved us so much that, while He condemned us, He also made a way for you to be saved and escape that condemnation. His only son Jesus took your place and shed His blood, which was offered on the mercy seat in Heaven as atonement or a covering for your sin. The only hope you have of going to Heaven is that your sins have been covered by the blood of Christ.
You say, “Jesus died for everybody.” Yes, He did, but not everybody has appropriated the blood of Jesus for their sin. There is a movement in the world today that claims God is the Father of all. He is the Creator of all, but He is not the Father of all. You become someone’s child by birth or adoption, and when you are born again by the Spirit of God you are adopted into the family of God.
If you have not been born again, you are not a child of God. You were created by God, but you are a child of the Devil. As John 8:44 says, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” You must be born again or you will die in your sin and spend eternity in Hell, no matter how good a person you think you are.
Some people call it a “bloody” religion. It is the Bible’s plan for salvation. I didn’t invent it; I’m just reading what God said. According to xxxx, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.” All of the bulls and oxen and turtledoves and every other type of sacrifice offered in the Old Testament tabernacle and temple were symbols of a continual sacrifice for the sins of those people. But when Jesus Christ died on the cross He made a one-time sacrifice so that the men of this world could be made the sons of God.
After being purified by the blood of Christ, a pure heart seeks to live for God so as to be ready at any moment for your homegoing or His coming. Every thought, word and action should be filtered through the lens of what Christ would want you to do.
Now that we have seen the explanation of this Beatitude, let’s look at some examples.
Read Isa. 6:1-8. “In the year In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”
Isaiah said that after he saw the Lord and his sin was purged, he had a desire to do something for God. After seeing the Lord high and lifted up, the thought that consumed Isaiah was, “Lord, I’ll go!”
I am bothered by people who say that they have a love for God but they never have a volunteer spirit for God. They profess to know the Lord, but they just sit in service after service and you never see them do anything for the Lord. If you are truly born again and you want to please God, what are you doing with your life for Him?
Think about Daniel, who purposed in his heart that he would serve God in Babylon no matter what happened, regardless of whether it was popular or pleasing to man. He didn’t worry about the consequences; all that mattered to him was serving God.
As we consider someone like that and the time in which he lived, we need to look around at all we have in the United States of America in the 21st century and ask ourselves why we don’t have more of a heart’s desire to live in a way that will please God.
There are numerous other examples from the Bible that we could cite. The Apostle Paul, after being gloriously converted on the road to Damascus, spent the rest of his life in service to the Lord knowing that it would be difficult. God told him it would be a tough road, but he went right along. He didn’t care about the cost because he had seen the Lord.
The problem with us today is that too many of us have never seen the Lord as He is, so we don’t really know who we are. We elevate ourselves to a place where we essentially run our own lives.
I read former NASCAR driver Darrell Waltrip’s testimony recently. He said that he was saved in 1983 but never fully surrendered his life to the Lord until years later. “I never gave God control of my life,” he said, “because Darrell Waltrip had plans and desires.”
A lot of us get saved but don’t really let the Lord have total control of our lives because we still see ourselves as being pretty good. We start comparing ourselves to other people and look at what we do and don’t do, and we think everything’s OK. But when you really get a glimpse of what God is, you will be stirred to do something for Him because you know you have to see Him again.
If a police officer with a flashing blue light above his car can make you tremble, or a black-robed judge can make you quiver, or someone who is considered a leader by the world’s standards can make you act differently – then the idea of standing before God someday and giving an account of your life should make you change the way you do everything. It will affect every decision you make.
Look at Rom. 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
What a wonderful verse. We’ve heard it so many times. But we always stop there. Read on in verses 29-30. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”
The latter verses tell us why verse 28 is true, because God is trying to make you a little bit more like Christ. We are to emulate Him, which is easier said than done.
When was the last time you gave yourself, knowing that you would be violated? Most of us cannot say that we have ever done that, because we only do that which we know is safe and comfortable. When Christ gave Himself, He did so knowing that He would be humiliated and spat upon.
There is a lot more to Christlikeness than putting on a suit and going to church. The cost of serving God is far greater than most of us are willing to pay. It’s about going out among people who don’t love you and loving them anyway; it’s giving of yourself to people even though you know they are taking advantage of you.
Those of us in the ministry seem to have an especially strong tendency to judge people, and they get beaten up on by the ones they least expect. I can’t worry about that. I have to do what I am supposed to do whether they beat up on me or not.
You think you are pure in heart because you are kind to your spouse and children. Millions of lost people can make that claim. A Christlike person will love a wife-beater and try to help him see Christ when many of us want to just throw him in jail and forget about his entire family.
A Christlike person will love Muslims and those who are against everything this country stands for. In my flesh, I have nothing good to say about Muslims. I saw the film “Letters from Iwo Jima” and explained to my son who watched it with me that the Japanese soldiers were not the glorious Samurai warriors they are portrayed to be in the movie. They committed unspeakable acts of atrocity toward our soldiers in World War II. But Christ loved them and still does, although many older Americans who remember that time still harbor hatred and resentment.
It is easy for us to love our friends. Jesus told us to love our enemies.
You may be familiar with Rom. 12:20, which says, “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.” Many of us interpret that verse as a way to get vengeance on an enemy through kindness. But what the Lord actually means there is that it is a way to start a fire in the other person’s life, which is a good thing. You’re not making him suffer; you are caring for your enemy’s needs. We are commanded to leave the revenge up to God.
We can justify being nice to someone who was mean to us if it will ultimately cause suffering in that person’s life. But our flesh cannot accept the idea of being kind simply for the sake of being kind. “That’s just not fair,” we say.
Was it fair for Jesus to take all of our sins upon His sinless body, to be mocked and spat upon, yet say, “Father, forgive them”? Look at His attitude toward the two thieves who were crucified with him. Both of them railed on him at first, then one changed his tune toward the end. While He was dying, Jesus told him, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). That kind of forgiveness is near impossible for most of us.
This is where emulating Jesus gets hard. I can love you when you’re good to me, but when you’ve taken from me or humiliated me it gets much more difficult.
When Peter got cocky and announced that he had forgiven someone seven times, he was feeling pretty good about himself. Christ’s suggestion was “seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22). What He meant was, “Forgive them as many times as it takes.”
I will be the first to admit that this is far from my nature. My wife can attest to this, as she has occasionally suggested calling someone who hasn’t been to church in a while, and my typical response is, “They know where we are. I’ve checked up on them long enough. They know what they should do.”
As we emulate Christ, we must elevate our own living. If I want to lose weight it will take much more than just saying that I want to lose weight. If that was all it took, I would be quite thin right now. But it takes more than that. I have to make a change.
The same goes for your Christian life. If you say you want to live for God, that’s not enough. You have to make changes in your behavior. You need to have a program and set a goal. If you want to be spiritual and more like Christ, you can talk about it all you want, but until you radically change your life you will never become what you say you want to be.
There are some obvious parameters that must be set. You can’t watch filth on television or hang out in bars and be pure in heart. There are plenty of other examples that I don’t have to list here. You have to purpose in your heart that you won’t allow certain things to enter your life if they can be a stumbling block for you.
You have to be in church. You’ve got to study your Bible and have a prayer life. You need to be accountable to someone. To be pure in heart, you can’t just wish it will happen. You’ll have to do some things to make it happen.
It is a continual process that requires you to evaluate. Think about your own Christian life. Where is your relationship with God compared to one year ago? If you can think of a time in your life when you were closer to Him than you are right now, that is not progress. The term we usually associate with this condition is “backslidden.”
That is why you must evaluate your life from time to time. Do you have a greater desire to love those who would hurt you than you did last year? Do you want to be more like Christ than you once were? You can look back on good things you have done in your life, but you must still be striving to live for Him. That is a journey that should not end until your life on this earth ends.
There are some evidences of a pure heart that we can readily identify. One of them is positional sanctification in Christ that never changes once you accept Him as your Saviour. Heb. 10:18 says, “…faithful that promised.”
Once you are saved, there is no need to get saved again. There is no additional covering; your sin is already covered. You are a new creature and you have eternal security, in the position of never again having to be judged for your sin.
There is also progressional sanctification. When you were saved, there was a lot about you that was not godly or holy and it didn’t just disappear. But you gained a new person inside you that said, “Don’t do that.” A battle began to rage within you.
Progressional sanctification means that you look at where you started and determine to grow in grace and add to your faith (having therefore these promises, Jude 20, 2 Pet 1:5, 2 Pet. 3:18). Naturally, you will hit a plateau here and there and encounter numerous hurdles in your Christian life. When you reach a hurdle you will either clear it or it will stop you and slow down your growth. How you respond will determine whether you remain a baby Christian or continue to grow in your relationship with God.
Most Christians clear the first few hurdles and then stay in the same place from then on. You don’t have what we would consider a wicked life, but you’re also not in the kind of deep relationship where you really see Him as He is. That’s because those later hurdles are much harder to cross, but they are the ones that will lead to exceptional growth in your Christian life and allow you to see things about Christ that you have never seen before. The older and more mature I get, the more I realize how little I know about the depths of God’s love and where I should be in relation to Him.
Are you pained by sin? Does it really bother you? Are you pursuing holiness as your goal and doing whatever it takes to get there? If you really want it, you will do what you have to do. Most of us will not do that.
Are you living a pure life? When we go to certain countries on mission trips, we tell people not to drink the water. We think our water in the U.S. is pretty good, and people from other countries might think it’s great because theirs is so bad.
If you see a bug in a glass of drinking water from your house, you probably would not drink it. But if that same water out of your tap were put under a microscope, you would see things in that water that might make you sick. We drink it because we don’t see it.
Now consider the purity of the Christian life. The farther you go with Christ, the more things start to show up. When you first get saved a lot of things are just black. But when you walk with Christ you see so many more things that just aren’t right. The farther you go, the more intense the microscope gets. If you have been saved for many years, the things that bother a new Christian should not bother you.
In closing the discussion of this Beatitude, look at the last part of the verse: “They shall see God.” I want to see that, but I’ll never see it until I take the necessary steps to be pure in heart. I can’t compare myself to other people. Christ alone is the standard I should be measuring myself against.
