Last time we saw that to be “pure in heart” does not mean to be morally perfect or sinless. If it did, would you qualify? I certainly wouldn’t.
Rather, Jesus was speaking about people who were willing to humble themselves and come to God in order to be purified.
Does that describe you?
Maybe you’re not sure. What does that actually involve?
Let’s consider one point that is essential to grasp in order to be a Christian.
Trust God, not your heart
One of the most difficult things for people today to accept is that, as far as God is concerned, our hearts are not pure.
Here is what God said through Jeremiah, one of the Old Testament prophets:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?”
(Jeremiah 17:5–9)
Following your heart – that is, your instincts or emotions – can sometimes be an essential survival mechanism. As human beings, our bodies are naturally wired to prioritise our own survival and that of our children or immediate family and friends. Once survival has been taken care of, our bodies naturally seek out comfort and pleasure.
Unfortunately the seeking of comfort and pleasure is when problems can arise. It can often lead to an attitude of greed or selfishness, and may involve wanting to do things that are hurtful or destructive to others.
Here is what Jesus had to say about the state of the human heart:
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person,
(Matthew 15:18–20)
It’s when you feel a desire to do things that you know would be dishonest or damaging to other people – and nobody can honestly say they don’t experience such desires – that you know your heart isn’t pure. That’s when you know you need to come to God to ask for help in resisting the temptation to do these things, and even more importantly to seek forgiveness if you’ve already done them.
King David was one of the most faithful people who ever lived – some people might say second only to Jesus himself – but even he had these desires within his heart and, on one terrible occasion, gave into them in one of the worst ways imaginable. He felt an enormous attraction to his friend’s wife, took her to his bed, and then arranged to have his friend killed in order to cover it up and protect himself from the consequences.
After he realised what he’d done, he spoke these words to God:
Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me
(Psalm 51:7–12)
When you do something wrong, it’s because of a desire or an instinctual urge in your heart which you felt you had no choice but to satisfy. Doing so can cause serious harm or distress to other people, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still an offence against God.
The person who is “pure in heart” is not the person who never experiences these desires, because no such person exists or ever has. Even Jesus felt desires. Nor does “pure in heart” mean someone who always manages to resist these desires. Only Jesus can claim that.
A person who is “pure in heart” is someone who recognises they have sinned and are not able to remain pure in heart by themselves, and come to God in order to be purified.
What does that mean? It means confessing to God what you have done, admitting that there were no excuses or justifications, and asking him to forgive you and let you start again. That’s what David asked for. I do not expect you have ever done anything as bad as David did during that terrible time in his life. If God could hear David’s prayer and forgive him and cleanse his heart, he will certainly do the same for you when you truly repent.
They will see God
What does it mean that those who go through this process of repenting and being forgiven will “see God”? Is this referring to the hope of eternal life in God’s presence at the end of this age when Jesus returns to the earth?
As with some of the other promises Jesus made at this time, there is a sense of both “now” and “later”.
In the “later” sense he was certainly referring to the our future hope of eternity seeing God face to face. 1 John 3:2 reads: Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
This suggests that we will not truly see God until that time. Nevertheless there is still a sense in which you can “see” God now if you make him the number one priority in your life and come to him for purification.
For example, Hebrews 11:27 tells us about Moses: By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Moses did not literally see God while he was on the run from Pharaoh. He wouldn’t have survived if he had. So what did he see? The previous verses 25 and 26 tell us: He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.
Moses had experienced the pleasures of life as part of a privileged class within Egypt, but he had also witnessed the suffering of his biological relatives as they were cruelly enslaved by people from that same privileged class. At some point he must have made the decision to abandon his comfortable life, repent of his time spent in idle self-indulgence, and turn to God to be purified and given a true purpose in life.
As with David, if God was willing to do this for Moses, he’s more than willing to do it for you.
Nihilist to Christian 