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

By John Earp

Nearly two-thousand years ago, Jesus Christ said those words (see Matt. 5:8). Some time back, someone I was having a conversation with was being quite critical of another man we both knew. He then began to talk about someone whose character he obviously thought highly of, but was quick to add, “I’m hesitant to say that anybody is good, though.” I didn’t really feel like pressing him on that point at the time. Perhaps I may have occasion to in the future. People all tend to make judgments of others, and people often think of all people as by definition morally bad to some degree or other. I can’t count the times I’ve heard ostensibly sincere Christians talking about how Christians are to live differently from the lost, only to quickly qualify it with, “But I know we all can’t really help but sin all the time no matter how hard we may try.” If that is truly the case, then what grounds does anyone have for criticizing someone for any kind of wrongdoing?

I once knew a man who was quite sure that everybody was a sell-out (always selfishly ambitious in motive), one way or another. That rather cynical view is quite common, no doubt, but the God-inspired Scriptures paint a very different picture, indicating that there are in fact just TWO kinds of people in this world—good versus bad, with two distinct kinds of hearts, pure versus wicked. Many times we hear the ancient words of the Prophet Jeremiah quoted, who said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV) as if it were always universally true of everyone, when the context Jeremiah was speaking to was a nation of people who had virtually all turned away in willful rebellion from the one true and living God.

Jeremiah’s words, though certainly inspired, are of course not any more inspired than the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, God himself manifest in the flesh, who plainly stated that it is “the pure in heart” who shall see God. Speaking of the resurrection of all that is to come, Jesus also said, ”Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29 KJV). Earlier in that same chapter (John 5:14), the Lord Jesus said to the man whom He had healed after he had been lame for 38 years, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” NIV

How are we to understand and respond to such tremendous truth, that we must choose to obey God consistently if we are to truly be called His disciples? If Jesus said that the pure in heart shall see God, then it stands to reason that if our heart is wicked and sinful, it needs to be changed by repentance and faith into a pure heart by the power of Jesus’ blood, his sinless, perfectly loving life poured out for us in His substitutionary death by crucifixion? And if Jesus said there is a Judgment Day coming, and our deeds are evil and our hearts impure, it is certainly in our very best interest to repent of each and every known sin we have committed and plead for mercy in the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ while we still have time, and to remain holy by that same gracious power. As the Apostle Peter said so pointedly in Acts 3:19, “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord,” and in 1 Peter 1:15-16: “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”