purity

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8

Last time we saw that Christ-like wisdom is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is constantly being drawn toward more complete holiness both in our hearts and in how we live. To that we add today’s verse which was spoken by Jesus: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

And there you have the goal of the Christian life: seeing God… Experiencing our Christian faith in such a way that we are seeing God. It’s all present tense here. Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you (that’s future) and on earth there is no one I desire besides you (that’s here and now).”

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that today’s verse is the glue that holds all the rest of Scripture together. It’s the context for the teaching, the history, the stories. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” How does that work in our everyday life…with our family, at work, in ministry…what does that look like?

To understand that we have to begin with the ‘heart’. In the Bible the ‘heart’ is used to describe the command center of our life. Who you and I are in our totality. It includes our emotions, our rationality, our reason, thoughts, decision-maker (where we make decisions), the place from which our words speak forth… Put it all together and we have a very comprehensive description of who we are. “As a mirror reflects the face, so the heart reflects the person” (Prov 27:19).

Next we need to understand ‘pure’. Pure means ‘undivided’. “Give me an undivided heart, O Lord, that I may wholeheartedly revere your name” (Ps 86:11). Sure, a pure heart is cleansed, but it’s clean because it’s undivided. It’s undivided between God and everything else. Jesus was still talking about this a chapter later when He said, “You can’t serve both God and Mammon” (6:24). You and I can’t server God and stuff—God and anything else. That’s not being pure in heart. That’s a divided heart. (more…)

But the wisdom that comes from God is most of all, pure… James 3:17

Christ-like wisdom is pure since it is a gift from God, but we make a mistake when we think the opposite of pure is always impure—it isn’t; at least not all the time. The opposite of pure is the perversion of pure: it’s puritanical. It’s keeping rules and exerting discipline. It’s adhering to the “traditions of the elders”. Pure wisdom is not a mixture of rules and good intentions. Christ-like wisdom is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is constantly being drawn toward more complete holiness both in our hearts and in our life experience.

When the Holy Spirit is transforming our minds, then our thoughts are being purified…not only that, our desires mirror Jesus’ desires (that’s what real holiness is) in all aspects of life. We desire what God desires and He gives us the desires of our hearts because they are in line with His wisdom.

BUT, when we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to fill our thinking, attitudes, actions and desires, we are left trapped in all kinds of impurity. That’s when we start to rely on rules and traditions to achieve a pseudo-holiness—and the result is that we are puritanical and legalistic. Kind of like the Pharisees of old: hypocrites, knowing the right rules but powerless to actually carry out their ideals. (more…)