“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8 NIV
Pure in heart. Jesus is talking in this verse about our heart, our motives, our attitude, our desires. These are all inner matters, matters of the heart. What He is not talking about is what the world sees when they look at us, our outer being. As with the rest of the Beatitudes, the idea of pure in heart revolves around our inner being.
When we change only on the outside, we are fooling ourselves. Going to church, wearing nice clothes, tithing and making sure that others see it, these are all outward actions and do not ensure that the inward action of change in our hearts has occurred. When we are pure in heart, our motives are to please God, align with His will, and then do His will. When we are solely changing on the outside, we are hoping to please others, aligning with the will of others.
If someone is only going to church because their parent or spouse has nagged them enough, or if a person wants to impress another person in their lives by tithing weekly at church, then they are doing this to please someone else, not God. It is not pleasing to God that they are doing it so that others believe they have changed. If that is the reason why they have changed, then they have already received whatever reward, the approval of the other person, that they are going to receive.
Being pure in heart is hard. We have to die to self daily and sometimes almost hourly because our fleshly desires are not pure and therefore not pleasing to God. As humans we cannot do this alone, we are not strong enough to remove the grip that sin has on our hearts. The only way to be pure in heart is by having God clean us, which occurs when we acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, accept that He died to set us free and confess that He is our Lord and Savior.
Once we have decided to follow Jesus, the process can begin of cleaning our hearts. It is a long process because our enemy, the devil, does not like it when we choose Jesus over him. He then turns up the heat and tries to give us reasons to stay connected to our sin. I encourage us all to be pure in heart, be connected to Jesus and not the enemy.
The second part of the verse states that the pure in heart will see God. When Jesus frees us from the chains of sin and we begin to make the changes we need to make to be more like Jesus, we begin to see the world differently. We can see God in the trees, flowers, a fawn, a child’s face. We begin to see God all around us because He created all of it, the earth, the plants, the animals and especially the child. When we then turn to His word, we are able to see Him, begin to draw closer to Him.
This idea of being pure in heart is a lot to change, so what if as you go through your day today, you pick one area to examine. If you decide to pick your motives for doing things, for example, then look at why you do or say the things you do or say. What is the reason behind your action or what do you hope to accomplish by saying what you say. When we dig deep into our motives, we reveal what we really want and who we are, if we are brave enough to take an honest look.
So do you want to make outward changes for the world to see and be only partly changed or do you want to make the inward changes that truly count and make the changes that will bring you closer to God? The choice is yours and yours alone.