Blessed are the Pure in Heart

 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” 

(Matthew 5:8 NKJV)

    The scripture we looked at last week – 1 John 3:1-3 – stated that because we have hope as God’s children to see Him as He is, we work at purifying ourselves because God is pure.

    Here in Matthew, we have an excerpt from one of Jesus’ first sermons stating the same thing – those who are pure in heart will be blessed because they will see God.

    Let’s look at what “pure in heart” actually means.

    Pure in heart does not mean having clean and healthy arteries in the bodily organ that pumps our blood. The biblical heart is our mind, the fountain of our thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, purposes, and endeavours. It is the ‘inner man’ that we work daily to purify and keep from evil influence; the “new man” that was “created according to God in true righteousness and holiness’ (Ephesians 4:20-24) when we were baptized into Christ (Romans 6:1-13).     

    Keeping our heart pure means that we keep ourselves, our very thoughts, from corrupt desires, we do our utmost to avoid sin and sinful thoughts. We live clean, innocent, upright lives by serving God with utter sincerity, singleness of heart; making our loyalty and faithfulness to God our #1 priority. It means we wholly devote ourselves to obeying Him.

“Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God 

with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”” 

(Matthew 22:37 NKJV) 

    Take an honest look at what you look at (or do) each day because it all stores up in your heart. That crude, unwholesome humour you chuckle at online (and then even share for others to read), those posts with coarse language and/or swearing, those posts that encourage you to hold on to anger and resentment by justifying it according to man’s wisdom. What about those “friends” who love nothing more than gossiping and backbiting, or the books/movies/TV shows full of filthy language, adultery, and fornication? The list, unfortunately, can go on and on. Maybe it is necessary to truly visualize Jesus sitting right beside us while we scroll/post online, watch TV, and have a conversation – would we still make the same choices we’ve been making? God does see/hear everything we do/say, so let’s do all we can to scrub our hearts clean of bad influences!

    It will be worth every effort to read, study, and apply God’s Word to our lives each day! To have the blessed hope of one day being admitted into God’s presence in heaven, to be privileged to see our beloved Father and Creator should motivate us to try harder and do more to purify our hearts and keep our hearts pure each moment we are blessed with!!

You can do it! So can I!!

“Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? 

Or who may stand in His holy place? 

He who has clean hands and a pure heart, 

who has not lifted his soul up to an idol, not sworn deceitfully. 

He shall receive blessing from the LORD, 

and righteousness from the God of his salvation.” 

 (Psalm 24: 3-5 NKJV)