In The Window, G.W. Target tells of two men who shared a hospital room. One man’s bed was next to the wall; the other’s next to the window. Nurses sat the man up by the window to drain fluids from his lungs. He would describe to his roommate the beautiful things he saw outside the window. A father and son are fishing. Lovers having a picnic. A parade is passing by. These descriptions lifted the spirits of the man by the wall. But he began to resent the man by the window. Why did he get to the bed with a view? One night, the man by the window started choking. He was unable to call for help. The man by the wall could have pushed his call button. Instead, he listened to his roommate choke to death. The next morning, the nurses discovered the body. When the man by the wall felt it appropriate, he asked if he could be moved to the bed by the window. Once alone in the room, he propped himself up to get his first glimpse out of the window. He saw a brick wall staring back at him. 

What you see is determined by what is in you more than what is around you. This is the message of the sixth beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” It is arguably the most famous of the beatitudes of Jesus. Yet it is the most obscure beatitude. The blessed characteristics can be hard to adopt. The promised rewards can be hard to believe. This beatitude is hard to understand.

• What does it mean to be pure in heart? 
• What does it mean to see God? 

This sixth beatitude is also the most difficult to relate to others. As the passage progresses, patterns emerge. This beatitude defies attempts to categorize it. It stands on its own. This beatitude is also the most inaccessible. A person may claim to be poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungry and thirsty for righteousness, merciful, a peacemaker, or persecuted. Be suspicious of any person who claims to be pure in heart. 

Proverbs 20:9 asks, “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’”? Yet Jesus says to those who are pure in heart, “Congratulations! You’re already blessed.” William Barclay wrote: “Here is the beatitude which demands that every man who reads it should stop, and think, and examine himself.” Do you want to be blessed? God blesses the pure in heart. What does it mean for the pure in heart to be blessed? 

A Matter of the Heart

Matthew 5:3 blesses the poor in spirit. The blessing is not just for the poor. It is for the poor “in spirit.” The same principle works in the sixth beatitude. The blessing is for the pure “in heart.” “Blessed are the pure” would bless the scribes and Pharisees. The religious leaders were morally and ceremonially pure. Matthew 5:20 says, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” The scribes and Pharisees were the most righteous men in Israel. Their self-righteousness was not true righteousness. They conformed to rules, rituals, and regulations. True religion operates from the inside out. There are three kinds of religion. 

• Hand religion strives to be right with God by doing good works. 
• Head religion seeks to be right with God by attaining knowledge. 
• Heart religion teaches us to be right with God by being born again. 

Christianity is a religion of the heart. This does not mean worship, membership, discipleship, fellowship, and stewardship do not matter. It means the practice of your faith does not matter if your heart is not right. The state of our hearts determines whether we will see God.  The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.

The heart controls life. The Lord sent Samuel to anoint a new king from Jesse’s house. Jesse presented the sons he thought would make a good king. The oil of God did not fall on any of them. 1 Samuel 16:7 explains: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” The heart is mentioned more than nine hundred times in the Bible. Most of these references are metaphorical.

We speak of the heart to represent the emotions. In scripture, the heart is the seat of personhood. It is the innermost being, which includes the mind, will, and emotions. The heart is not merely where these reside. The heart presides over them. The heart governs what you think, do, and feel. Matthew 12:34 says, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” The heart is the control center of your life. 

Bandits plotted to rob a well-guarded bank. The determined bandits went outside of town and began to set barns on fire. As the town went out to put out the fires, the bandits robbed the bank. 

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” There are two ways to deal with pollution in water: upstream or downstream. Many people do not experience meaningful change because they deal with problems downstream. As you pull out debris, more flows in. To stop pollution, go upstream and deal with the source of the problem. Psalm 139:23-24 should be your prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”

The heart corrupts life. The 19th-century Russian novelist, Ivan Turgenev, said, “I do not know what the heart of a bad man is like. But I do know what the heart of a good man is like. And it is terrible.” This is the pervasive nature of our fallen condition. A good-hearted person is still a bad-hearted person. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” 

“Follow your heart” is not good advice. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” We should not judge another person’s heart. We do not understand how sick our hearts are. Matthew 15:19 says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” The heart is the source of our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds. Superficial solutions cannot fix our heart problem. 

• A makeover cannot cure cancer. 
• A car wash cannot fix an engine failure.  
• A paint job cannot stop a leaking roof. 
• Screen protectors cannot stop a software virus. 
• Self-help cannot cleanse an iniquitous heart. 

There must be a change on the inside. Only Jesus can change our hearts. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” The blood of Jesus can take a heart blackened by sin and wash it white as snow. The heart is changed by what you believe, not how you behave. Romans 10:9 says: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”How does one become pure in heart? 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

A Blessing for the Pure

Purity of heart is not sinless perfection. Some teach complete sanctification by which a Christian can live without sin. It is not a biblical doctrine. 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” The pure heart is not a perfect heart. What does it mean to be pure in heart?

To be pure in heart is to be sincere. “Pure” means to be “clean.” The terms are virtually synonymous. A pure heart is a clean heart. In Psalm 51:10, David prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” David’s prayer acknowledges that he could not create a clean heart within himself. The word “create” is the same word used in Genesis 1:1. We can no more create a clean heart in us than create a new world around us.

David’s prayer also acknowledges that it is possible to have a clean heart. Only God can do it. David’s sinful heart led him to adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. It led to a life of hypocrisy, in which David pretended to be something before others he knew he was not before God. David’s prayer for a clean heart expressed his desire to have a right spirit before God. 

Matthew 23:25-26 says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” Hypocrisy is to have clean hands before man and an unclean heart before God. Everyone is a hypocrite who is not pure in heart. To be pure in heart is to be sincere before God. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” 

Charles Swindoll wrote: “If a film were made about someone who lived this kind of completely sincere life in private and public, there would be no need to edit. You could videotape that person at church or at home, at work or at play, and you would catch no contradictions.”

To be pure in heart is to be single. “Pure” means to be clean from stain. It also means to be clean from mixture. 

• It was used of milk or water that was not watered down. 
• It was used of winnowed grain from which the chaff had been removed. 
• It was used of an army from which weak or coward soldiers had been removed. 

To be pure is to be unmixed, unalloyed, unadulterated. To be pure in heart is more than sincerity of heart. It is singleness of heart. The Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, summed up the meaning of this beatitude in the title of one of his books: “Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.” An impure heart is double-minded. James 1:8 says a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.  A pure heart is single-minded in its devotion to God. 

Psalm 24:3 asks, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” Psalm 24:4 answers: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.” Only Jesus perfectly meets these qualifications. Yet the psalmist wrote of a people who would meet these qualifications. These blessed people would not have sinless perfection. But they would have single-minded devotion. Purity of heart is to will one thing. 

Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” Are you a one-thing person? Philippians 3:13-14 says, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

A Promise to See God 

Virtue is its own reward. To be pure in heart is a blessing. To be pure in heart brings blessing. Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” This promise of God is a promise about God: “they shall see God.” John 4:24 says, “God is Spirit.” 1 Timothy 6:16 says God “alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” 1 John 4:12 says, “No one has seen God at any time.” 

The Bible consistently claims we cannot see God. Yet the Bible records the stories of people who saw God. Most did not live to tell about the experience. Isaiah 6:5 says, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Every person will see God. 

• The unsaved will see God in judgment. 
• The saved will see God in glory.

Ancient kings were notoriously inaccessible. Only a privileged few were permitted into the royal presence to see the king. The divine King makes himself available and accessible to the pure in heart. They shall see God. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Through the Lord Jesus Christ, the pure in heart shall see God. The original is emphatic: “They, and only they, shall see God.” The pure in heart shall see God on earth and in heaven. 

They shall see God on earth. The promise to see God is primarily about eternity. But the pure in heart shall see God on earth.

The pure in heart see God in Christ. Philipp said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” In John 14:9, Jesus answers, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whatever has seen me has seen the Father.” 

The pure in heart see God in scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The pure in heart see God in nature. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” 

The pure in heart see God through suffering. Job 42:5 says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” The believer hears about God in times of prosperity. The believer sees God in times of adversity. Thomas Brooks said, “A gracious soul may look through the darkest cloud and see God smiling on him.”

As a father and son sat in the boat fishing, the son asked, “Dad, have you ever seen God?” The father paused before he answered. He looked at the quiet lake, the blue sky, and the wind-blown trees. Then he looked his son in the face and said, “Son, I am getting to the place where all I can see is God.” The pure in heart see God in everything!

They shall see God in heaven. While shopping at a Christian bookstore, the clerk asked me if I wanted to see Jesus. He pointed me to a picture on the wall. The picture was not of Jesus. It was one of those pictures with a hidden image in it. I couldn’t see it. He told me to concentrate. I did. I still couldn’t see it. My friend flipped out when he saw it. I still could not see it. They tried to help me. Nothing worked. I finally pretended I saw it to get it over with. But I learned a lesson: You can only see what you see. 

Can you see God? The pure in heart shall see God exclusively, personally, continually, increasingly, and pervasively. Ultimately, the pure in heart shall see God eternally. Christians were warned not to be so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good. The pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Many Christians are so earthly-minded minded we are no heavenly good. But you must be heavenly-minded to be of earthly good. 

Heaven is our hope. The hope of heaven is not that we will see dead loved ones again. The hope of heaven is that we will see God. Revelation 21:3-4 says, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

William Dyke went blind at the age of ten. Despite his blindness, he graduated from university with honors. While in school, he fell in love and got engaged. Not long before the wedding, he had surgery on his eyes. They remained bandaged until his wedding day. When the bandages were removed at the altar, the first face he saw was his bride. He exclaimed, “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined!”