Blessed are the pure in heart

The next Beatitude is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” This beatitude is a big one but a hard one.  What does it mean to be pure? The general definition of pure is “not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material.”  Something to compare this to is pure water-water that doesn’t have any contamination or mixed with anything and  water that is very safe to drink.  Likewise a person who has a pure heart is essentially like someone who has no contamination in their heart. 

As I was looking up more information or background on this verse, I read an article on the website Desiring God.  The article by John Piper reminded me that this Beatitude is essentially all about acting on a person’s heart, not just on how people act on the outside.  This Beatitude like all of the other Beatitudes describes that God does not look at a person the way the world generally does.  God does not spend his time looking at the status of a person.  He insteads spends that time looking at the person’s heart, and this doesn’t include how high or low in society that person is.  

Obviously, this also implies that besides being pure in our hearts, we need to be pure in our thoughts.  There are other verses in the Bible that discuss how our thoughts should be controlled and considered in everything that we do.  In Philippians 4:8 there is a list of items that a person should be thinking of and even includes that a person should be thinking about things that are pure or without contamination. This says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  

Wow.  I don’t know about you, but I know for sure there are many times that I am not pure in heart or pure in my thoughts.  There are often many times when my heart is filled with frustration, judgement of others, and general sinful desires.   I think we can all know that feeling when we have a great amount of anger or frustration in our hearts that we just want to hold on to, even when that doesn’t keep our heart pure.  There are moments that we struggle to forgive and continue to hold onto the grudges for a really long time that continues to then fill our hearts with contamination. Similarly to my thoughts that it seems when all the world is filled with many different negative things, it is hard to not get those items stuck in your head.  I know that I personally struggle keeping my thoughts clear especially as I listen to music that maybe has a lot of swear words or when I watch movies and shows that broadcast things that maybe don’t promote the best or moral things.  

The reward of this Beatitude is that those who are pure in heart will be able to see God. This is because God is completely pure.  God is completely loving and without any blemishes, which is why we as people who are not completely pure or without contamination can not see God.  For example in the Old Testament, God came down to Moses a few different times in different ways that did not include Moses seeing him fully.  This was because Moses was not as holy as he needed to be in order to see God.  One of the times was when God told Moses he was going to lead the Israelites to the promised land through a burning bush.  The other time was when God came down in a dense cloud on a mountain so that way Moses could talk to him but not fully see him.  When Moses was bringing the Israelites to the promised land and he was receiving the ten commandments for the people to follow, God met with Moses on a hill in a cloud because he would be too holy for Moses to talk to without some kind of barrier.   

However, even when being pure in heart is incredibly hard, the best thing for us is that we have Jesus Christ who is the main one who needs to be pure.  That is such a good blessing for all of us.  Jesus never sinned and was completely but pure also Jesus being pure in heart is a blessing for us in that he loves us so purely.  We don’t have to be concerned or anxious about not being 100% perfect or pure.  When he died on the cross for our sins, his purity has the ability to cleanse our impurities. This is also why we need to not focus on the things above to the things that are pure.  In Colossians 3:2, it says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Because we have been forgiven and have a relationship with God, we have a lot of things that are above in heaven and with God that we can instead be thinking about.  Then when we do that, we actually are given the blessing from this Beatitude and that is that the person can see God.  When we set our heart to the things that are pure, and therefore the things of God, we are actually then able to really see God.  

(Also just as an extra side note, this is my 50th blog post!! Thanks to everyone who has read even just a few of these posts.  It has been a fun journey to start writing this.)