By Curt Mize
‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ (v. 8) — Who Will See God?
In Matthew 5, Jesus is teaching His disciples what it means to be a true member of the kingdom of God. He opens the “Sermon on the Mount” by giving what seems to be a random list of spiritual proverbs — the Beatitudes. Though they may seem random and disconnected, the Beatitudes in verses 3–11 are actually structured by the gospel message.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones helpfully explains that the first three beatitudes describe a heart ready to hear the gospel. We cannot embrace the gospel while believing we have merit to offer God; we must be poor in spirit. We cannot embrace the forgiveness of Christ while dismissing the seriousness of our offense against a holy God; we must mourn our sin.
Theologian Charles Spurgeon rightly notes that “pride cannot live beneath the cross” — we must be humble. Humility acknowledges that as sinners in need of grace, we are the problem.
A person who understands these three truths knows they need a savior. From there, verse 6 shows us the natural response to seeing our need: we hunger and thirst for a righteousness that is foreign to us. It is not in us but is made available to us in Christ. Through His work on the cross, we receive His righteousness before God. When we understand this, verse 8 becomes a treasured promise: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Those who would truly see God are those who mourn their sin and admit their need for Christ’s purity.
Seeing God
The Scriptures teach from start to finish that seeing God is the end goal of our spiritual life. The psalmist asks one thing of God in Psalm 27:4 — “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” Isaiah comforts the people of God by promising their “eyes will behold the King in His beauty” (Isa. 33:17). Job’s heart “faints within” him as he longs to “see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:26–27). Even Moses asks to see the glory of God though it would mean his certain death. Seeing the God of glory would be your and my constant desire if we knew our greatest need.
Yet our tendency as we read Jesus’ statement in verse 8 is to quickly usher ourselves into the category of “pure in heart.”
Whether by comparing ourselves with others or mitigating the extent of our wickedness, we all look for external evidence that we are truly pure in heart. No one naturally imagines they are excluded from Jesus’ blessing. Yet Jesus is clear that He is not judging our church attendance or giving records or ordination certificates. Jesus is concerned with our hearts.
I love the specificity Jesus uses when He sets the bar for who can see God. He leaves no room for ambiguity. The focus of purity is within us. The heart is the very core of who we are. It is the origin of the thoughts we think that no one hears; it is the motivation for our every action and word. It is this center of our being that Jesus says must be “pure.”
Pure doesn’t mean merely unstained, it is much deeper than that. This word “pure” carries the idea of a single direction; it is undivided love and affection. The same idea is captured in His command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Matt. 22:37).
Just as a husband’s love is impure if split between a wife and a mistress, so too are our hearts impure if they pursue anything but the Lord — even for the briefest moment. The split second of lust or the flash of anger are enough to disqualify us from being “pure in heart.”
At this point in Jesus’ sermon, anyone with a shred of spiritual life is panicking. Later in Matthew, the disciples asked incredulously, “Who then can be saved?” (Matt. 19:25). We must mourn our sin when we hear this standard, for it condemns us all — unless someone can meet that standard for us.
And in this we see the glory of the gospel. What we need most — purity of heart — has been accomplished for us by Christ and is freely given to us when we respond to the good news of the gospel.
The gospel begins by crippling our self-reliance, showing us the impossible standard we cannot meet. Then it thrills us with the glory that our deepest needs have been provided for in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He has succeeded where we failed and His righteousness is imputed to us, so that with no purity of our own, we are counted pure and righteous before a holy God. It is only if we are united with Christ that we can see God. That is the gospel in Matthew 5:8: Those who are truly pure in heart are those who mourn their impurity. They will see God.
Key to growth
Furthermore, understanding this truth is the key to growth in the Christian life. All of our “turning from sin to serve the living God” (1 Thess. 1:9) is dependent upon our continual pressing in to “behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
If we make it our daily goal to marinate in the greatness of what Jesus has done, we will “with unveiled face [behold] the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).
This is the process called “sanctification” and we who have believed the gospel have the ironclad assurance that He will complete what He began, for “those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified” (Rom. 8:30).
Because of this we press on, knowing that though sin partly clouds our vision of Him now, one day “no longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will worship Him. And we will see His face” (Rev. 22:3).
EDITOR’S NOTE — Curt Mize is associate pastor for FBC Dadeville. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Auburn University and a master of divinity degree from Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He and his wife, Jennifer, have one daughter.
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