Blessed are the poor in heart

Bible

Today we are continuing our series on the Beatitudes, the first part of Jesus’ amazing presentation popularly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Before we get stuck into today’s beatitude, let’s read the whole list again.

Matthew 5:3–12 ESV

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. 10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Today we are looking at the sixth beatitude: blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

The problem with this beatitude is that it is exactly what we would expect. There is nothing surprising or unexpected about it to our eyes. It’s not like “blessed are the mourners,” for example. So to really understand the weight of this command we are going to have to dig deep. So what we’ll do this morning is look at each key word in the sentence to understand precisely what Jesus meant by this, and how it fits into his teaching. Then we’ll be able to explore how it applies to us today.

Let’s get started.

Blessèd

The first word is blessèd.

We’ve talked a lot about what “blessèd” means over the course of this series, and I just want to add a little something more. You might notice that I am pronouncing the word “blessèd” and not “blessed.” There is a good reason for this. The Greek word that is translated as bless, makarios, is found in each of the beatitudes as an adjective. In English, bless is the present tense verb—to bless someone. Blessed is the past tense verb—to have blessed someone. And blessèd is the adjective—to be in a blessèd state.

What does this mean for the beatitudes? Well, it means that Jesus is not giving a formula for success here. He’s not saying, for example, that the pure in heart are blessed by being given the opportunity to see God, nor is he saying that Christians are blessed, and thus become pure in heart and so can see God. Rather he is saying that those who are pure in heart shall therefore see God, and this means that they can be described as blessèd.

It’s helpful here to understand the nature of the entire Sermon on the Mount, which the beatitudes open. The whole sermon is an exploration of the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. When Jesus starts with the beatitudes he is describing a set of key character attributes of the citizens of the Kingdom. He also links each to their fruit. Each of these characteristics mark a person as blessèd.

Being blessèd, the adjective, can thus be seen as being at the very centre of God’s will, and experiencing all the joys, wonders, privileges and opportunities that such as position yields. Indeed, when Elizabeth sees Mary, pregnant with Jesus, she calls her blessèd because she has accepted and believed Gabriel’s message.

Jesus uses the beatitudes as an uplifting and challenging introduction to his lengthy sermon on the nature of Christian life, of Kingdom citizenship.

OK, so that’s how Jesus is using this word, blessèd, in each of the beatitudes. What about the rest of the words in today’s beatitude?

Pure

The first word in today’s beatitude is “pure.” What does that mean?

Pure is a word that has lost much of it’s meaning in modern culture, thanks to its overuse in marketing. Obviously it means something good, since it’s so popular. But what do digital radios, women’s fashion, dairy free cheese, hair conditioner, data storage services, and an entire country have in common?

A modern idea of purity is “completely and uniquely you.” You can see echos of that in the New Zealand ad campaign, and perhaps in the fashion ad here. But while that’s a popular idea, it doesn’t account for most uses of the word. This dairy free butter gives you a better clue as to what pure means. The point of the butter is that it is free of dairy, and that supposedly makes it pure. Of course, pure real butter would have nothing but dairy in it. The point is that to be pure is to be free of contaminants, whatever those contaminants might be. That’s what all those products are trying to claim: they offer some form of unadulterated product or service.

So purity in English, and also in the original Greek means to be uncontaminated, clean, unmixed. Pure gold is just gold with nothing else in it. Pure water is just water with nothing else in it. And so on.

Heart

Let’s turn now to what Jesus means by “heart.” The Greek word he uses is kardia, which we find in English in words like cardiologist, or cardiovascular. Its immediate meaning is the organ in the chest that pumps blood around the body. But clearly Jesus is not claiming that people with perfect heart-health will see God.

Throughout the New Testament, heart is almost always used metaphorically, which given that the New Testament is not a health manual is unsurprising. In Greek literature, when heart was used as a metaphor, it referred to the “seat of moral and intellectual life.” That includes the emotions, the will, and the power of thought. The New Testament refines this understanding by placing the heart at “the centre of the inner life of man and the source or seat of all the forces and functions of soul and spirit.” In other words, the heart is the source of our will, thought life, emotional life, and spiritual life.

This is quite different to modern, Western concepts of the heart, which tend to consider the heart the seat of the emotions alone. Think of the saying, “follow your heart.” That can be translated as “follow your deepest desires.”

The New Testament’s much richer meaning of heart is important for us to grasp so that we can understand this beatitude.

Pure heart

So now we can see that a “pure heart” refers to an uncontaminated will, thought life, spiritual life, and emotional life.

Uncontaminated by what, though? Remember that Jesus is here describing the values of the Kingdom of Heaven. Citizens of the Kingdom are to be “Kingdom minded,” or, we might say, “Kingdom hearted.” In other words, purity of heart here, and throughout the New Testament, refers to a complete and consuming focus on God’s Kingdom. A pure heart pays no attention to the world, neither to our fleshly desires (such as lust or greed), nor to our corrupt intellectual desires (such as pride or anger), nor to our selfish spiritual desires (such as hatred or contempt).

A person with a pure heart is a person whose will, thoughts, emotions and spirit are all in perfect alignment, agreement, and submission to God. A person, of course, like Jesus.

It’s worth clearing up a potential misunderstanding here. Sometimes we think of “pure” as referring to something like a white wedding dress, which represents the purity of the bride. Certainly, this purity is the lack of contamination, namely sexual contamination. But this is a purity that the bride was born with. Is Jesus referring to a purity of heart that we are born with and can only potentially lose over time? No, of course not!

The primary image for purity in the New Testament is gold, refined by fire. The book of Revelation speaks of the ultimate purity of the new heavens and new earth, after the fire of Judgement Day has refined everything, with the strange image of streets of gold so pure that they are like transparent glass. But gold doesn’t start out, pure, does it? It starts out as a messy ore. I grew up in an old gold mining town, and around town were piles of cyanide dust, yes, the poison, that had been used to extract gold from the ore. It was a messy process refining gold back then, involving massive hammers that crushed the ore into powder, then poison cyanide, and then fire. But the result was precious.

That’s the sort of purity that Jesus is talking about here. Purity that suffering and obedience and the fire of the Holy Spirit has refined from hearts that were once corrupt. It’s not a cheap purity, but an expensive one. Fortunately, Jesus is the one who paid the price. But we must participate in the process. We’ll talk a little more about that in a moment, but first, what is the fruit of all this? What does it lead to?

See God

The final part of the beatitude to unpack is “seeing God.” What does it mean to “see God?” Isn’t God spirit, and thus invisible? A Bible search on the concept of “seeing God” shows that this phrase is quite rare.

Many commentators believe Jesus was alluding to Psalm 24 with this beatitude. That Psalm says,

Psalm 24:3–6 NLT

3 Who may climb the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies. 5 They will receive the Lord’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior. 6 Such people may seek you and worship in your presence, O God of Jacob. Interlude

So, it seems we need pure hands as well as hearts to see God, and we show it by not worshiping idols and never lying. OK. Easy peasy.

The few other references to seeing God make it clear that it requires a special purity and righteousness to see God.

Nonetheless, despite this phrase’s rarity, theologians consider the concept of seeing God as crucially important.

Hands up those who have heard of the term, “The Beatific Vision?” This is a theological doctrine about how, at the end of time, after Judgement Day when the New Heavens and New Earth have come to fruition and God joins his people for eternity, we will be able to see God face to face.

Paul mentions this in his first letter to the Corinthian church:

1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

The Lexham Survey of Theology, explains the power of the Beatific Vision this way,

Lexham Survey of Theology The Beatific Vision

When they experience seeing God, the faithful will find complete satisfaction in God and enjoy the beauty of all God’s perfections.

Some of the blessings of the beatific vision are, in a sense, negatives. They include freedom from evil, the absence of temptation, and rest from struggle or suffering. Beholding divine glory will alleviate all the weariness of our earthly struggle with sin and death. God will wipe all tears from our eyes (Rev 21:3).

But the most important aspects of the beatific vision are positive enjoyments. These include the direct knowledge of God, the blessing of new life, and the joys of the glorified body. In the final state, there will no longer be any potential for sin or death, and the faithful will enjoy the perfections of God. God is the consummation of all that is beautiful and the summation of all that the faithful desire. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Ps 16:11).

This theological concept reminds us that seeing something is not merely a passive activity: it changes us. And seeing something like the eternal, transcendent, glorious and awesome creator God is going to change us profoundly! You see, not all refinement is unpleasant. Sometimes God’s holy fire is wonderful.

When do we see God?

Which raises a pertinent question. When do we get to see God? Or, to put it another way, do we have to have a 100% pure heart to see God at all (and then we see him face to face), or can we have, say, a 50% pure heart and see God in a lesser sense? Do we have to wait until the resurrection, when all sin is purged from our bodies and thus our hearts, before we can see God, or can we see God in this life to some extent?

I believe Paul’s words to the Corinthians indicate that we will see God in this life. Remember what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 13,

1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Yes, Paul says, at the end of the age, in the New Heavens and New Earth, we will see clearly. But until then we still see, but as in a mirror dimly. The impurities in our heart dim our vision of God, but they don’t blind it. As our heart becomes ever more pure, as we grow in holiness, in sanctification, and become more and more like our Lord Jesus, so our vision of God becomes clearer and clearer. And the wonderful thing is that our vision of God transforms us and purifies our heart. It becomes a virtuous circle—our purity allowing us to better see God, and the vision of God further purifying us.

A final note

So now, let’s summarise our understanding of this beatitude.

Jesus tells us that those whose thoughts, will, emotions and spirit are all completely focused on God, filled with his love, with no contaminating distractions or idols, will be able to see God. Seeing God is an experience that, itself, will transform us by drawing us ever closer to God and ever more consumed with his infinite and holy purposes and mysteries. And this is, truly, a blessèd state in which to dwell.

Application

Now, this sounds all very nice and mystical and amazing in theory. But what does it have to do with crazy traffic at endless roadworks, spiraling costs of living, tantrumming toddlers, contrary teenagers, demanding bosses, wildly weedy gardens, fragile health, or any of the endless pressures of everyday life?

That is an excellent question, and without an answer this sermon is just so much hot air.

Let’s go back to that definition of the Beatific Vision. Remember the so-called negatives that seeing God delivered? They included “freedom from evil, the absence of temptation, and rest from struggle or suffering. Beholding divine glory will alleviate all the weariness of our earthly struggle with sin and death.”

This is the effect of seeing God in full, but when we see God in part, we still receive these benefits, if only in part. So seeing God dimly reduces our struggle with evil, it mitigates temptation, it gives us some reprieve from struggle and suffering. This is not so surprising. We humans are built in such a way that seeing worldly light and beauty lifts our hearts. The curse of Seasonal Affective Disorder (appropriately abbreviated to SAD) is not something that we struggle much with in this part of the world, because our winters are bright and warm. But in the far south, or the north of the northern hemisphere, it is a genuine threat as the dark, coldness of the winter months throws people into depression.

In the same way, the darkness of a life with no sight of God makes everything harder. Christians are called to participate in refining our hearts as gold is refined by fire. But we don’t do it alone. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, and he works in our hearts, purifying us and ushering us gradually into God’s presence. And the purer we become, the closer to God, the greater our ability to serve the Kingdom. To change the world in ways that will echo into eternity.

So, if you are struggling, if life is heavy, if sin is growing ever more tempting, then the joys of seeing God should be looking ever more desirable, just as a sheep stuck in an overgrazed paddock will look from the dusty, bare earth of its field to the lush grass in the neighbouring paddock, and wonder how it can make the journey from here to there.

So how can we make the journey from here to there? How do we work on purifying our heart?

Fortunately there is an abundance of assistance, since this is one of the primary tasks of every Christian. We can start by listening to God’s voice. We do that by reading his Word, the Bible. In the 21st Century we can have astonishing Bible tools in our pockets. Apps like Logos Bible Software or YouVersion Bible App. You can even have them read to you! And in terms of Bible passages to think about, it’s worth meditating on the other beatitudes, since they lead us into a purer heart—embracing mourning, being poor of spirit, being meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and so on. In fact, the entire Sermon on the Mount is a wonderfully challenging section of scripture to focus on in purifying our hearts.

We can continue by building spiritual disciplines, such as prayer, sabbath, fasting, and so forth into our lives. Here at BCC we have the Transformation Trek that guides us through these disciplines. Practicing charity, this month’s discipline, will purify your heart. There are endless resources, just talk to any pastor and they’ll be able to point you to books, courses, apps, retreats, and so on. Just be aware that we don’t mature on our own. We’re not like cheese, stuck in a cave to mature. We’re more like butter, which needs lots of effort put into it to churn it into delicious purity.

And we can even work on our emotions. An excellent resource is the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship program, which includes courses on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and Emotionally Healthy Relationships, books, podcasts, and so on.

But perhaps the most important thing we can do is to be faithful to Jesus. In his final instructions to his disciples, Jesus told them,

John 14:15 NLT

15 “If you love me, obey my commandments.

He didn’t stop there, as if he were a school master barking demands. He continued with an extraordinary promise,

John 14:15–18 ESV

15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. 18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Such tenderness reveals the heart of God. He yearns to dwell with his people. Jesus died so that God might come and dwell in us. As we live out Kingdom lives, full of grace and mercy, love and compassion, endurance and perseverance, we will grow in purity and we will see God more and more clearly. Our hearts will be lifted above the storms and winds of this life. As Jesus said, later in his Sermon on the Mount,

Matthew 7:24–25 ESV

24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.

Let’s pray.

Lord, we know that you have made us to be your children. We are built to dwell in your presence, to serve you and love you. So when we grow closer to you, when our hearts become purer, everything becomes clearer and more joyful. Help us to yearn for a glimpse of you. Help us to work with your Holy Spirit, melting out the contaminants that mar our hearts. Purge from us the lusts and desires that lead us away from you, and, instead, lead us beside still waters, restore our souls, guide us along the right paths for your name’s sake, we pray. Amen.