The Pure in Heart
1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
In horror films there is almost always a crumbling house draped in cobwebs, with eerie music playing. Merely looking at a filthy house, cluttered and thick with dust, unsettles people and seizes them with a fear like being trapped. When the heart is this dark and confused, we cannot laugh even if we want to, and frightening music becomes almost painful. Because people are shaped by their surroundings in this way, we should try to keep a peaceful heart by placing ourselves in wholesome surroundings and among good people. The human heart is like the earth when it was formless and empty and darkness lay on the surface of the deep, so that even those who have faith find it hard to come to God on their own. Receiving Jesus Christ does not mean we will always be glad and joyful, so we must keep our hearts pure and win the struggle with ourselves. Since we cannot help living in a dark and confused world, we have to fight a spiritual battle every day to keep the faith.
We must overcome ourselves in order to behold the bright glory of God. If a window is dirty, you can barely see the view beyond it, however beautiful it may be. In the same way, only when our hearts are always clean and pure can we grasp God’s glory and love more surely and remain full of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that he is the light, and he told us to live honest and faithful lives, as those who live in broad daylight. Yet when we see how hard Satan labors to lead people into darkness, we can tell that this world is a spiritual battlefield. If you have made a decision of faith, the first thing to do is to brush away the cares, worries, and greed of the world that hang about you like cobwebs. Dirt is easier to spot in a clean house, and in the same way only a clean and pure heart can see sin clearly. Once you hand the cares of your heart over to God, you will at last see how great the grace he has given you is, and you will realize that you have come this far not by your own ability but under God’s protection. When a person’s heart is draped with the cobwebs of greed and lust like this, even the loveliest music sounds like noise, and even advice given for their own good is suspected of hiding some motive.
To be pure in heart does not mean to be nice; it means that faith has matured. Someone whose faith has grown has a love full enough to embrace many people and the wisdom to understand the truth, which equips them to fulfill their calling well. If we keep training ourselves to purify our hearts through good deeds, we gain the composure to look at life’s problems objectively. Such training lets us fix our eyes fully on Jesus Christ, who rose above the world, above feelings and people, and embraced even sinners. Because Jesus knew that the end of every life is the place of judgment, he labored to save even the disciples who did not understand his words, and even Judas Iscariot, who sought to kill him. Such forgiveness is possible only because he is pure, without a single spot or sin. Those who are not pure in heart think they have deceived others completely and satisfied their own greed, but such conduct is self-deception, and no different from deceiving God. The sad thing is that such people imagine others do not know how hard and petty they are; yet people already know, just as anyone can see a house falling down, so they must strive to turn back. Someone whose heart has been seared may live a false life without shame, but God sees what they say and do, and he exposes their sin and puts them to shame. What we must never forget, even for a moment, is that our faith now determines what comes after death. Those who know for certain the life beyond death to which faith leads are not shaken at their core, and that steadiness enables them to meet the troubles of this life spiritually and well.
Those who stand on the rock know that God is watching them now, so when trouble comes, they do not fall into confusion, lose their temper, or say and do things that damage their relationships. The troubles we meet in life come so that God may see our faith; we must therefore face them with an honest faith and go to Christ, who is able to resolve them.
James 1:19-21
19So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; 20for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. 21Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
A person’s character is determined by what they say and do. In any situation, the words and deeds that come out of someone show what kind of person they are, so you must train yourself to think carefully yet judge quickly if you are to avoid mistakes. Once a word has left your mouth, it is still yours, but you can no longer control it, and the life of the one who spoke may be changed by the one who heard. The trust others place in us is not built in a day or two. We can be trusted only when the life people see stays the same over many years; let us not forget, then, that a single mistake can bring down everything we have built so far. So the way to earn trust is to hold back our words, choose well the right moment for what must be said, and show a good heart in what we do. Everyone has knowledge, experience, and ideas of their own. That is why we warm to those who think as we do and bristle at those who think differently. We must let the word shape us into people with hearts wide enough to take in many others, and we must discipline ourselves to keep a pure heart. People who often misspeak do so because their words run ahead of their thoughts. If we speak and act after weighing a little more deeply the other person’s intentions and situation, and with consideration for them, we will not make the kind of mistakes that leave us regretting our words and blowing matters out of proportion.
No one can say and do everything they want in life. Why? Because life never goes according to our own plans. To become mature, we must set the word of God at the center and live by holding our thoughts and judgments up against it. When our thinking collides with the word and proves contrary to God’s will, we must know how to turn back quickly and how to lay ourselves down. As we train ourselves in this way—to think deeply and let go quickly—our mistakes grow fewer, and as they become rare, we gain the trust of others. A Christian who lives with goodness and wisdom while fighting the spiritual battle may be lonely, because the fight they must win is with themselves. Even so, since others must not stumble on our account, we need to keep disciplining ourselves and bringing ourselves into submission. I know how hard it is to keep the heart pure, yet we must live holy lives, because we are God’s children, and our lives must reveal him.
James said that when others speak to us or counsel us, we must be swift to hear and slow to anger if we are to produce the righteousness of God; in the same way, how we conduct ourselves can either extend the Kingdom of God or make us a stumbling block. If we think deeply and judge with gentleness and good sense, we can avoid creating problems in any situation and resolve them with ease. Living things in a bowl die when the water turns murky, so we pour in plenty of fresh water until the murky water spills over, and before long the water runs clear. In the same way, when the word we have understood and the fullness of the Holy Spirit overflow in our hearts, they can correct the human thoughts, methods, and habits that have pooled and gone stagnant there. Such a person is pure in heart; we should therefore always be filling ourselves with grace, love, and gentleness through a faith that is full. When James says to receive with humility the implanted word, he means that the human heart is like a field of thorns: only when those thorns are burned does the soil of the heart grow soft, so that the word planted there can take root. Only when we lay aside all human thinking and righteousness in this way can the seed of the good word be sown there and bear a harvest.
When God drove Adam out of the Garden of Eden after he ate the forbidden fruit, he made him till the ground from which he was taken; in the same way, humanity was made from dust and filled itself within with sin. We came into this world with sinful hearts and bodies, impure, having taken Satan as our father. Yet he washed us clean with the blood of Christ, clothed us in white robes, and made us into new vessels able to hold his grace. To be pure in heart means to be one whose heart has been washed—one who is clean, one who is pure. If you are to be blessed, you must make your heart pure and live a pure life, looking to Christ alone.
Proverbs 17:3
3The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but Yahweh tests the hearts.
Just as pure gold can be obtained only by heating it to 1,500 degrees, we could never have a pure faith unless God weighed our hearts and refined us in the fire. As tools for gaining that pure faith, he has entrusted us with wealth, health, and power. To see whether we have treated these as our own strength and acted proudly, or taken them for our own and grown hard, he hands us the troubles of this life and shakes our faith through that refining. To us the process is suffering so painful it feels like death, but God longs for us to overcome sin like that of the forbidden fruit and to win the victory. He refines us because only by winning against Satan in this harsh world can we reach heaven. Only one who knows this heart of the Father can become pure, without greed for the world and without complaint. Of course, from a human point of view, we might look at those who prosper in the world and call it unfair; but whatever life we live, we can enter heaven only by keeping the faith. Only with a pure heart can we fill the vessel of faith and show God that we are living wisely. For a marathon runner, running fast matters, but winning while keeping the rules matters even more. However fast they run, if they do not compete by the rules, they must hand back the prize they were given.
You are saints whom God loves. If you serve faithfully with all your strength according to the rules God has laid down, you can certainly receive a reward. That reward is unlike any prize the world gives; it is eternal life.
Exodus 19:24
24Yahweh said to him, “Go down! You shall bring Aaron up with you, but don’t let the priests and the people break through to come up to Yahweh, lest he break out against them.”
After the exodus, the people of Israel arrived at Mount Sinai. On the third day after their arrival, Yahweh came down in fire amid thick smoke, called Moses himself, and commanded him to come up the mountain. That God called Moses by name and told him to come near tells us how earnestly Moses had striven to live a pure life. Moses put his calling before his own life, and for that reason God entrusted him with a special task. For a human being to part the Red Sea is utterly impossible, but because Moses believed in God’s almighty power, he could raise his staff and divide the sea. Being human, Moses must have been afraid of what would happen if the Red Sea did not part. But he set aside his own thoughts and obeyed, ready to die if he must, and it was through that obedience that the Red Sea parted. And Israel was able to cross over safely on dry ground. God is absolute and far above us, so people cannot meet him directly. So God commanded Moses to keep the people from following him when he came up the mountain. If the people, who were not holy, came up out of a longing to see the holy God, they might die. God is not one whom people can see simply because they wish to.
Do you want to see God? Then I hope you will keep your heart pure, because he has said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. If you live wisely—swift to hear, slow to speak, not given to anger—and serve from the lowest place, then, as with Moses, God himself will be the first to call you to meet him, and he will hold you close in the grace of heaven.
When the people of Israel reached Mount Sinai, God gave them the law and showed them how a human life ought rightly to be lived. Along with it he gave them the tabernacle, where sin could be forgiven, and in this we see how deep and wide the love of God is. The law makes us aware of sin but has no power to forgive it, so in the end we could only die because of sin. That is why God did not give the law alone; he also gave the tabernacle, where sin could be forgiven, and he forgave through sacrifices of blood. Since God himself accomplishes the whole work of salvation in this way, all we have to do is long for his grace and lay down our own righteousness. To make us pure, God prepared the sacrifice of blood and swept clean hearts tangled in sin as filthy as cobwebs.
Luke 17:21
21neither will they say, ‘Look, here!’ or, ‘Look, there!’ for behold, God’s Kingdom is within you.”
When the Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come, he told them that the Kingdom of God does not come in a way that can be observed. Some people today speak as if they knew where the Kingdom of God is, saying it is here or it is there, and some even speak as though they were Jesus himself; but all of it is a lie, because the Kingdom of God is within our hearts. We long to see God with our own eyes, so whenever someone says they have been to heaven, or have heard God’s voice, we envy them. But as Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is within the heart of every one of us, so what matters most is to know how precious we are in his sight. If your heart is pure, you will already have met God, who has come to dwell within you, and you will be filled with the help of the Holy Spirit, who always walks with you. When the Holy Spirit transforms a person within, that person naturally shows the character of Jesus. We are broken clay jars, soiled clay jars, clay jars thrown away as useless. But the Lord gathered up the fragile clay jars that the world would not care for, and caused every one of them to be born again as a holy vessel.
Gold is worth little while it lies buried in the earth, but once its impurities are removed and it is made into a necklace, it is of great value. To be born again as pure gold of such worth, it must pass through the suffering of the furnace. To finish a gold necklace, a fierce flame must touch the cut ends; only then do they melt and join as one. When gold and silver, once merely hard, are turned to liquid by the flame and fuse together, they at last become a necklace that will not break. We too, like gold and silver, at first had a hard and evil nature that kept us from drawing near to one another. But when the Holy Spirit melted us with the fierce flame of the Spirit, our hearts, each hard in its own way, melted and became the church. This is not like making a garment from scraps of cloth stitched together with thread; because two have been melted into one, they cannot be pulled apart, however hard anyone tries. This is what it means to be brothers and sisters in faith; this is the bond between God and his people, and between the church and Christ, who nailed himself to the cross for our sins.
When Jesus says, I am in you and you are in me, and urges all of us to remain in him, we see that this is a bond that can never be broken. Having been given so astonishing a blessing, you are, through the glory of God, the pure in heart, and you have become saints blessed to see God. Christ will always help you as you are made new. May you too persevere for the sake of your sanctification, even when it is hard; may you hold your tongue even when anger rises, and live in gentleness. Then he will entrust more to you who are gentle and humble, and he will bring you to meet the pure and living God and make you live each day as one who is pure. It is my earnest hope that, with a wise and pure faith, you will be people who see God and live in peace within his grace.