The Pure in Heart
8
The Pure in Heart
At some point in life, each of us must decide what is our highest joy, for the thing that delights us directs us. Generally speaking, children find their delight in what they have; youths in what they do; and adults in what they are. The first live for possessions, the second for experiences, and the third for character. We do not condemn children or youths for living as they do because they haven’t reached maturity, but we would certainly wonder at an adult who lived on those lower levels. The adult should know that possessions and experiences are empty apart from character. What we are determines how much we enjoy what we have and what we do.
All people have an outlook on life; they are seeking their highest joy. Outlook determines outcome. Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the stars and became the friend of God by faith. Lot lifted up his eyes and saw Sodom and became the friend of the world. Abraham inherited the city prepared for him by God, the city he had been seeking (Hebrews 11:13–16), but Lot lost everything when Sodom went up in smoke.
If life is to be rich and meaningful, then our joys must be the highest possible, and Jesus tells us that the highest joy possible is to see God.
What Is the Heart?
Let’s begin with the word heart—“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” Biblical psychology is not always as scientifically precise as we would like it to be. Paul writes about our “whole spirit, soul and body” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), and theologians suggest that the spirit is God-consciousness, the soul is self-consciousness, and the body is world-consciousness. Some students further suggest that the soul includes the God-given functions of intellect, emotion, and will. These are convenient categories, but they may not always be consistent. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, indicating four functions of personality.
Sometimes the Bible uses the word heart to indicate the emotions. “Do not let your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). “This can be nothing but sadness of heart” (Nehemiah 2:2). But the heart can also refer to the intellect. “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?” (Mark 2:8 NKJV). Hebrews 4:12 (KJV) states that the Word of God is a “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” The heart also indicates the volitional function, the will. “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself” (Daniel 1:8 KJV). Jesus admonished His disciples, “Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer” (Luke 21:14 NKJV).
Putting it all together, you get the impression that heart simply means the inner person with its many functions. This is the “master control” area of life. “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23). It is here that salvation is experienced: “That if you shall confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus as Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). The Pharisees tried to please God, but they ignored the heart and majored on outward actions. “These people honor me with their lips,” said Jesus, “but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8).
The heart, of course, is the source of all our trouble. We are prone to blame people and circumstances, and even God, for the wrong things that we do, but the heart is really the culprit. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Neither time nor experience has changed the human heart. God’s indictment before the flood is just as valid today: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). Jesus spells it out in greater detail: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matthew 15:19). The first step toward seeing God is admitting that my heart is sinful and that I cannot see God unless my heart is changed.
Can the heart be changed? “I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord” (Jeremiah 24:7). “ ‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’ Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more’ ” (Hebrews 10:16–17). Jesus called this experience being “born again” or “born from above” (John 3:1–7), and Peter described it as becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4 KJV). People are not changed from the outside in; they must be changed from the inside out.
The two kings, David and Saul, illustrate this truth. When God called Saul, “God changed Saul’s heart” (1 Samuel 10:9), and the beginning of his reign was successful. But then he disobeyed God in failing to wait for Samuel and in acting as the priest, and that was the end of his reign. “But now your kingdom will not endure,” Samuel announced, “the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14, italics added). Why? “The Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). David was that man after God’s own heart, not because he was sinless but because his heart was single. Saul was a double-minded man. He tried to fear the people and fear the Lord at the same time, and it could not be done. Saul worried about the outward appearance: “Please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel” (1 Samuel 15:30). David sought no honor for himself but only for God. “Let my enemy pursue and overtake me,” David prays in Psalm 7:5. “Let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.” He closes that prayer with his desire that God alone might be glorified: “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the Lord Most High” (Psalm 7:17).
You cannot read the Psalms without learning that David cultivated his heart, the inner person. “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart” (Psalm 9:1). “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). “Test me, O Lord, and try me; examine my heart and my mind” (Psalm 26:2). “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Psalm 27:8). “My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my verses for the king” (Psalm 45:1). (Did not Jesus say, “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” [Matthew 12:34]?) Psalm 57 records David’s experiences in the cave when he was hiding from Saul, and twice he stated the desire of his heart: “Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; let your glory be over all the earth” (vv. 5, 11).
What was David’s secret? “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music” (Psalm 57:7). Saul’s heart was not steadfast; it was divided and unstable. “A double-minded man [is] unstable in all he does” (James 1:8). Saul set his heart on receiving honor before the people, and he lost both that and the honor that comes only from God. David set his heart on God and sought to honor Him, and God honored him in a singular way. When the Lord told David that He would build him a house and give him a throne forever (a promise that Messiah would come from David’s line), the king was overwhelmed. Like a child, David used his own name as he spoke to God: “What more can David say to you for honoring your servant? For you know your servant” (1 Chronicles 17:18).
The highest joy of humanity comes from cultivating the deepest part of humanity, the heart. When the heart is pure, then the vision is clear, and a person will see God.
What Is a Pure Heart?
The word that is translated pure has two basic meanings: “clean” and “unmixed.” Our English word cathartic comes from this Greek word. A cathartic is an agent a doctor uses to cleanse the physical system. A psychiatrist also uses catharsis on the emotional level to “cleanse” the patient of hostilities and other destructive attitudes. There is also a spiritual catharsis, a cleansing of the inner person. “He purifies their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9) is one example. “The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7) is another.
But the word as it is used in this Beatitude takes the second meaning, for being “pure in heart” involves being unmixed as well as being clean. Milk that is pure is not adulterated with water. Gold with the dross removed is pure gold. Wheat with the chaff removed is pure wheat. The basic idea is that of integrity, singleness of heart, as opposed to duplicity, a double heart, a divided heart. When God cleanses sinners and makes them His children, He does more than merely wash away sin. He puts within them a new heart that wants to focus wholly on God. “I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them” (Jeremiah 32:39). This is spiritual and moral integrity.
It was this integrity that made David a successful king, and it was the lack of this integrity that corrupted and defeated Saul. God rejected Saul’s kingship, but “He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens . . . And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:70, 72). No matter how skillful the hands may be, if the heart is divided, the work will be destroyed. Samuel Johnson stated it beautifully: “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.” Peter illustrates the first and Judas the second. Peter loved Jesus Christ and boasted that he would die for him; he had integrity but not knowledge. Judas knew where the Lord was, where He would pray and what He could do, but he lacked integrity and used his knowledge to destroy himself and others.
Integrity of heart was David’s passionate concern, as is witnessed by many statements in the Psalms. “Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity, O Most High” (Psalm 7:8). “May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you” (Psalm 25:21). “Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have led a blameless life . . . But I lead a blameless life” (Psalm 26:1, 11). “In my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever” (Psalm 41:12). That last verse is perhaps the closest thing to this Beatitude that you will find in the Psalms; David had a pure heart, and he saw the face of God.
Jesus illustrates this singleness of heart in Matthew 6:19–23, when He talks about the eye. This is in the section of the Sermon on the Mount dealing with our relationship to wealth, and He is warning us against being double-minded, trying to serve both God and money. “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23). After illustrating this truth by means of the human body, Jesus then illustrates it again by means of human relationships. “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). Jesus is speaking here about singleness of devotion, desire, and direction. Psalm 86:11 explains it: “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” No person can ever hope to see God whose heart is divided between the Lord and the world.
Our relationship with God must be based on love. For our hearts to love anything other than God is to commit spiritual adultery. “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Because people are at war with God, they are at war with each other. “Saul became still more afraid of [David], and he remained his enemy the rest of his days” (1 Samuel 18:29). The only cure for spiritual adultery is, “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Matthew 22:37, italics added). David did not have a sinless heart, but he did have a single heart, and that made him a man after God’s own heart. “I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do” (Acts 13:22). This verse brings out the contrasts between Saul and David. Saul talked about God’s will, but David fulfilled it. Saul wanted his own will, but David wanted God’s will. And Saul obeyed only part of God’s will, whereas David fulfilled all of it.
How do we maintain this priceless integrity of heart? By being utterly honest with God, others, and ourselves and by seeking to honor God alone. When you read about the life of David, you see a man who sought to live openly and honestly. Twice in his life David resorted to duplicity, and in both instances he got into trouble. The first occurred when David fled to Gath and tried to escape Saul’s sword by joining the ranks of the enemy. (Gath was originally the home of Goliath, you will recall.) It became clear that David was no safer in Gath than he was in Judah, so he “pretended to be insane in their presence; and while he was in their hands he acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard” (1 Samuel 21:13). This masquerade enabled David to escape, and one result of this experience was the conviction that faith in God alone is the secret of God’s protection. David records this conviction in Psalm 34. Duplicity led David almost to death. He fled to the cave of Adullam, and there he wrote Psalm 57 and cried out: “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast” (v. 7). No more duplicity.
David’s second masquerade was following the sin with Bathsheba, when he pretended to honor her husband, Uriah. His ruse did not work, and he resorted to outright murder. Psalm 51 is the record of that experience, and once again the integrity of the inner person comes to the fore. “Surely you desire truth in the inner parts” (v. 6). “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right [steadfast, established] spirit within me” (v. 10). Certainly David had sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, but when he considered his sin in relationship to the integrity of his heart, he had to pray, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (v. 4).
Saul’s life, however, was one masquerade after another, climaxing in that visit to the witch’s cave. “Saul disguised himself,” announces the historian (1 Samuel 28:8), and from the human point of view, this was true. But from the spiritual point of view Saul did not disguise himself. He revealed himself. In the integrity of his heart, David had fled to a cave and there found God’s help. In the duplicity of his heart, Saul fled to a witch and discovered that God had forsaken him and the masquerade was over.
It is instructive to contrast the death of David and the death of Saul, the one resting confidently and directing the affairs of his kingdom up to the very end and the other staggering out into the darkness of defeat and having no control over himself or his kingdom. Saul’s last actions are identified with night: “Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men went to the woman . . . That same night they got up and left” (1 Samuel 28:8, 25). Like Saul centuries earlier, Judas went out, “and it was night” (John 13:30). But David’s last days are identified with light. “Now these are the last words of David . . . ‘When one rules over men in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth’ ”(2 Samuel 23:1, 3–4).
When you read David’s psalms, you realize that he was utterly honest before God. He never prayed anything that he did not mean. If he was afraid or sick or discouraged, he admitted it. Psalm 142 is one of his “cave songs,” and in it he says, “I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way. In the path where I walk men have hidden a snare for me” (vv. 2–3). Imagine complaining to God! “Hear me and answer me,” David cries in Psalm 55:2. “My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught.” He was honest with God in his living and in his praying, and this maintained his integrity. He was a man after God’s own heart.
Those who, like Pharisees, pretend to be holy and try to serve two masters eventually become shallow and hollow. Theirs is a surface religion that never reaches the heart. They have to use so much energy acting out a part that they have no strength left to live. There is no substitute for integrity. “Blessed are the pure in heart.”
How Do We See God?
“For they shall see God.” This is the highest blessing possible for humans, for when we see God, we see Him who is (as the theologians put it) “the Source, Support, and End of all things.” Since nothing is higher than God, then seeing God must be the highest joy that we can experience. It was this joy that motivated and excited men and women in Bible times and also inspired the great saints of church history. Moses prayed, “Now show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18). David wrote his heart’s desire in Psalm 42:1–2: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Phillip said to Jesus, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8 NASB). Of course it was for this purpose that Jesus came, that He might reveal God to us. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Why do we seem to have so little of this hunger for God in the church today? We are not lacking in programs or people, activities or “results”; we are lacking in a vision of God or even a desire for such a vision. The men and women God has used in past days have been characterized by a deep hunger to see God and know Him intimately. They have echoed the prayer of David, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory” (Psalm 63:1–2). If Isaiah’s experience is any pattern, it would seem that seeing God is a condition for serving God. “In the year that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). This was also Paul’s experience: He saw a light, and then he saw the Lord.
There is a sense, of course, in which God cannot be seen. “No one has ever seen God ” (John 1:18). Even Moses was unable to look upon God in His very essence. “But,” the Lord told him, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Paul, who visited the third heaven, described God as the one “who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16). Just as the human eye is blinded—and possibly destroyed—by gazing at the full light of the sun, so the spiritual eye cannot behold God in His fullness. No wonder Moses hid his face at the burning bush, “for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exodus 3:6 KJV).
We need that sense of respect today, for too many of God’s people evidence a flippant familiarity with God that is not only disrespectful but also downright disgusting. They know God in a secondhand way, but they want us to believe they are among His intimates. They have not yet had the deep experience of Job: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). The apostle John, an intimate friend of Jesus, had a similar experience: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).
No, God in His essence cannot be seen. How, then, do we see God? When people’s hearts are pure, then their eyes are opened to the vision of God wherever He may appear. To be sure, ultimately the children of God will in heaven “see his face” (Revelation 22:4). But it is not this final “beatific vision” of the saints and mystics that this Beatitude is talking about. Jesus is promising us the vision of God here and now. It is a basic principle that we see what we love, so if our hearts are united to fear and love God, then we will see God. We will live in a world that is filled with God.
To begin with, we will see God in His creation. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”(Psalm 19:1). The Psalms are filled with expressions of joy and wonder as the writer looked at God’s world and saw God Himself. In Psalm 29, for example, David watched a storm as it swept over the mountains, but he did not simply see a storm. He saw God. The thunder was the voice of the Lord, and the rushing waters upheld the throne of the Lord. Instead of showing fear as he saw the trees breaking under the wind and the rivers rising, David shouted with confidence, “The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord is enthroned as King forever” (Psalm 29:10). Because David had a pure heart, he saw God in the stars and in the storms, and he enjoyed living in God’s world.
The Lord Jesus had the same vision of God. He saw the providence of God in the fall of the sparrow and the generosity of God in the beauty of the lily. He watched a farmer sow his seed, and in that he saw the Word of God planted in people’s hearts. When the sun came up Jesus beheld the grace of God: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good” (Matthew 5:45). Likewise, the rain reminded Him that the Father “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). For Jesus, nature was alive with God. Not a nebulous Something, a First Cause, or a Prime Mover—but a heavenly Father. “This is my Father’s world!”
True, sin has marred creation, and with sin comes sorrow and death. “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now” (Romans 8:22 NASB). But in spite of what sin has done and what sinners are now doing, this is still God’s creation, and the saint who has a pure heart clearly sees His fingerprints and footprints. Whenever I become disgusted at the civilization humanity has built, I look deeply into the creation God has built; I read Psalm 104 and give thanks.
We see God in creation, but we also see God in circumstances. In Psalms 105 and 106, for example, the writer saw the hand of God in the history of His people. A. T. Pierson used to say, “History is His story”—and he was right. When Matthew wrote his gospel, he used the word fulfilled at least a dozen times, showing us that the events in the life of Christ were controlled by the hand of God. His birth was the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. His flight to Egypt fulfilled Hosea 11:1. His growing up in Nazareth fulfilled the promise in the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene” (a rejected one). Our Lord’s miracles of healing fulfilled Isaiah 53:4. Over and over in the gospel of Matthew we are told that our Lord’s early life was a plan from God. And if you and I are in the will of God—if our hearts are single—we too shall see God in the circumstances of life. This was Paul’s conviction when he wrote Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Psalm 23 makes clear that David saw God in the circumstances of his life. Life was not a series of accidents; it was a series of appointments. The Shepherd was in control. Even when David strayed and circumstances were painful, he still saw the Shepherd restoring him and refreshing him. When David looked back he saw God: “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life”; and when he looked ahead he saw God: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6). Even when going through the dark valley David saw God: “For you are with me.” It is significant that in verse 4 David changes from the third person he to the second person you.
We see God not only in the circumstances of our own lives but also in the march of events in the world. Thoreau was once asked if he wanted to read the newspaper, and he replied that he had read one once. “Blessed are they who never read a newspaper,” wrote Thoreau, “for they shall see Nature, and, through her, God.” But why sacrifice one for the other? I believe it was John Wesley who said that he read the newspaper to see how God was ruling in His world. There is no such thing as secular and sacred to the person with a pure heart and a single eye. “Who can proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord?” asks the writer of Psalm 106:2, whose eye penetrated deep into the mysteries of God’s ways in the world. Nature and life are windows through which we should see God, but if we lack that integrity of heart they become mirrors in which we see only ourselves. Jesus taught this in His parable of the foolish farmer (Luke 12:13–21). In his bumper crop and sudden wealth, the farmer did not see God; he saw only himself. Count the eleven personal pronouns in the farmer’s soliloquy and note the repetition of “I will.” This man was not pure in heart. He did not see God; he saw only himself.
The pure in heart see God in creation and circumstances and also in His Word. Unlike any other book, the Bible demands preparation of heart if its message is to be understood. As F. W. Robertson put it, “Obedience is the organ of spiritual knowledge.” He finds his basis for this statement in John 7:17: “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself” (NASB). We do not understand, then obey: That is instruction. We obey by faith, and then we understand. That is illumination. Double-minded people will never see God in the Bible. They may be book-taught, but they will never be God-taught. Their minds may grasp facts, but their hearts will never lay hold of truths. The Pharisees knew the traditions of the fathers and the opinions of the scholars, but they did not know God. And He was right there in their midst! Bible study is good and important, but Bible knowledge should lead to a deeper knowledge of God. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me” (John 5:39 NASB).
The Wider Vision
The experience of seeing God through the eyes of the heart is not a momentary thing; it is constant and growing. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18, literal translation). The pure in heart have nothing to hide, nothing to defend, nothing to explain. Their faces are unveiled. They advance “from glory to glory” until that day when they see Christ and become eternally like Him.
When you start to see God, you also start to see what God sees. You begin to see yourself in the light of God’s glory. Abraham stood and talked with the Lord and called himself “nothing but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27). Job saw God and said, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Peter fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Go away from me, Lord; for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8). Paul saw himself as “less than the least of all God’s people” (Ephesians 3:8) and the “worst” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). The vision of God humbles a person. “So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision,” wrote Daniel (10:8). “I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless.” Spiritual sight leads to spiritual insight. Isaiah saw the Lord and cried, “Woe to me! I am ruined” (Isaiah 6:5).
You not only see yourself in a new light, but you also see others in a new light. When the scribes and Pharisees looked at the publicans and sinners, they saw them as rebels, but Jesus saw them as lost coins, lost sheep, and lost children. The Pharisees saw God as a judge to condemn these rebels, but Jesus saw God as a seeking shepherd and a waiting father. The Pharisees saw Jesus as a glutton and a drunk, the friend of publicans and sinners. Jesus saw Himself as a physician who had come to heal the brokenhearted. It is impossible to divorce our vision of God and our insight into ourselves and others. If we would know each other, we must first know God.
The eyes see what the heart loves. If the heart loves God and is single in this devotion, then the eyes will see God whether others see Him or not. Nothing robs the heart of spiritual vision like sin. Saul’s repeated disobedience blinded him to God, circumstances, Samuel, and David. Saul treated his enemies like friends and his friends like enemies. No wonder Paul prayed that the “eyes” of our understanding might be enlightened (Ephesians 1:18). Literally, it is “the eyes for your heart.” Physically, our eyes tend to deteriorate, but spiritually our eyes ought to become keener and the vision brighter. If the light enters the body through the eyes and the “windows of the heart” become soiled, then the light grows dimmer and dimmer. Then we have to pray, with David, “Wash me” (Psalm 51:7).
The most important part of your life is the part only God sees. He knows whether your heart is pure. He wants your heart to be pure, for only then can you see God, and, in seeing God, receive all that He has and enjoy all that He is.