Pure in Heart: Understanding the Characteristics and Benefits

Rats, pigs, vultures, dogs and other animals are not bothered by what is gross and disgusting. Instead of being repulsed, they act as if such things are lovely. Imagine if they could be changed to love what is truly lovely.

In Matthew 5:8 Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But who among us is pure in heart and could hope to see the soul-satisfying beauty and glory of God? The late preacher John Blanchard said that the person who is keenly aware of his own impurity is likely the one who is pure in heart. Blanchard said that “the lost leap into sin and love it while the saved lapse into sin and loathe it.”

Blanchard went further to help us understand characteristics of a pure heart. He named three – sincerity, integrity and intensity. Sincerity can be terribly misguided, so it must be combined with the integrity of being aligned with God’s Word. To this must be added a hard-working devotion to submit to Jesus, examining thoughts and motives and inviting Jesus to cleanse them. Isaiah 33 tells of those whose lifestyles are righteous and whose words are upright, who reject corruption and turn away from evil, that they will see the King in His beauty.

What does it mean to see God? First, your eyes will be open to recognize God’s beautiful attributes on display in Jesus as you read of Him in the Bible. His holiness, love, justice, faithfulness, power over disease and demons and nature, all are magnificent.

Second, such a person begins to recognize God’s hand working everywhere. A woman named Hannah in the book of 1 Samuel confessed she recognized God’s sovereign hand at work in death and life, raising up people who are in deep trouble, guarding His people from permanent ruin and silencing those who rebel against His holy designs, and how God rules the physical creation.

Third, when Jesus returns and believers receive perfected bodies and are purified in every way, we will then be able to grasp His beauty and glory in a way that we could not when we were in frail bodies made of dust and with the pollution of sin clinging to us. God is an infinite being who delights in His own glory. We will be enabled to delight in that same glory. If the infinite God is satisfied, does it not follow that we will be also? Jeremiah 9:24 says, “’But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,’ says the Lord.”

Think about the fact that Jesus, being pure in heart, lived in a world that must’ve been more repulsive to Him than to any of us because of His perfect purity. Yet He loved us enough to embrace and die for us who were mired in ugly corruption so that we might share His beauty!