As we continue through the
Beatitudes, or the attitudes of which the man of approved of God will possess,
we’ve learned how an individual is able to approach God and now how to continue
to live faithfully before Him. The one described as “pure in heart,” would be the
one who is pure, sincere and clean in heart; the one who thinks, feels and
purposes to do that which is right.
The heart is at the very
seat of our being, for example: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the
issues of life” (Prov. 4:23). Jesus taught: “…out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaketh” (Mt. 12:34). Later, Jesus continued: “But those
things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they
defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Mt.
15:18-19). Jesus began the Sermon on the
Mount teaching those “would be” disciples the kind of attitudes they should
possess in their lives in order to be pleasing to God.
The idea here is that we
should live pure lives, which begins with a pure heart; therefore, that which
is seen in us is true, no hypocrisy. James wrote: “a double-minded man is unstable in all his
ways” (Jms. 1:8). Our hearts become “pure in obeying the truth” (1
Pet. 1:22) and should remain so as “we walk in the light” (1 Jn. 1:7). The great
blessing: “they shall see God.”
-Wayne Rodgers
