Chapter Seven: Pure in Heart
PURE IN HEART
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
MATTHEW 5:8
For many years I assumed that “pure in heart” referred to moral or sexual purity. It certainly includes that, but it means much more.
To better understand what it means to be pure in heart, it will help to see the different ways the Bible uses the word heart. In addition to the physical function of the organ in our chest, John Blanchard lists eight functions of the heart identified in the Scriptures:
We can see, then, that the heart stands for one’s inner being, the “real you,” that which makes you who you are.
The word pure is used of clothing that has been washed, of grain from which all chaff has been removed, and of gold that has been refined until all impurities have been removed. A pure heart, then, is one from which all sinful desires have been removed. Positively it means to love God with all my heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:37). It means to live all of life to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).
Here we encounter a problem. As we see from its eight distinct functions, the spiritual heart is very complex. Each of us can be enticed to sin through any of these inclinations. Furthermore, our hearts are deceitful and searchable by God alone. We cannot plumb the depths of our motives. We may desire to glorify God, but in our heart we want to look good in the process. In our decision making, we may rationalize an action we know is not consistent with the will of God. Our understanding and our reasoning are often clouded by our desires. If we are honest, then, we have to admit we do not have a pure heart.
So how does one grow in purity of heart? I believe it begins by accepting the lordship of Christ in our lives. What does that mean?
Sometimes the lordship of Christ has been taught by using a car illustration. You are driving along in the car of your life with Jesus in the passenger seat. At some point Jesus says, “I want to drive.” So you turn over the driving of your life to Him. In doing so, you acknowledge His lordship over your life.
In recent years I have concluded that this driving illustration is insufficient to picture the lordship of Christ. Closer to the truth is that Christ does not say, “I want to drive” but rather “I own this car.” Paul puts it this way: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
To grasp the truth that we no longer belong to ourselves but to Christ is to grasp a truth fundamental to the Christian life. It is also to understand in a practical sense what it means to be pure in heart.
Another illustration will perhaps more forcibly drive home the ownership of Christ over our lives. Suppose I sell you a piece of commercial property on which I am already behind in my mortgage payments. You not only pay me a fair price for the property but also pay my overdue payments. Now the property belongs totally to you. I no longer have a say in how the property is used. This is essentially what Christ has done. By His death on the cross He paid our debt to God, a debt we could not possibly pay ourselves. As Paul says in Titus 2:14, “[He] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.”
This doesn’t mean Jesus wants you to ask Him what color socks you should wear today. It does mean He wants you to constantly keep in mind that you are not your own. You were bought with a price. You are His possession.
Once we acknowledge God’s ownership of us, our responsibility becomes clear: Whatever we do must serve God’s purposes. And central among God’s purposes, as demonstrated throughout the Scriptures, is God’s glory. Paul concludes a brief message on sexual purity with the admonition, “So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). He does the same in 1 Corinthians 10:31 after a discussion of the issue of eating meat offered to idols. “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” That, positively, is purity of heart.
Years ago, while still in my twenties, I was given a book titled Have We No Rights?[6] I could not finish the book because the author’s answer was “No, we have no rights,” and at that stage of my Christian life I could not accept that. Now I agree with her. I have no rights because I no longer “own” myself. I have no right to good health, though I am responsible for living prudently with regard to health. I have no right to success in life, though I am responsible for pursuing excellence in whatever work God calls me to. I have no right to be treated with fairness and dignity, though I am responsible for treating others with fairness and dignity (see Matthew 7:12; 22:39).
That last statement seems unfair, doesn’t it? The answer to that apparent unfairness is that the Lord Jesus Christ now holds that right to my life, and He exercises it with perfect love and wisdom in such a way that good or bad treatment by others will be used to make me more like Him.
Now let’s go back to the car illustration with Jesus having said, “I own this car.” I still drive the car, but I recognize His ownership, so now my objective is no longer to drive where I want to go but only to drive where He wants to go. To apply the illustration to real life: I still live my life. I still use my understanding and reasoning abilities. I still have emotions, motives, and desires. But to be pure in heart —or better, to seek to be pure in heart —I must bring all those activities of the heart under the ownership of Christ.
This idea of Jesus being the “owner” of our lives is a radical idea to our independently minded society today —even Christian society. Many Christians are not sure they like the idea. They are happy to live a “decent Christian life” and avoid major sins, but to give up control of their lives to Christ is a different matter. What will motivate Christians to do this? The answer lies in our grasp of the love of Christ for us, as it is revealed in the gospel. The Jesus who “owns” us is the Jesus who died in our place to save us from the just and holy wrath of God.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture is 2 Corinthians 5:14-15:
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
What does Paul mean when he says the love of Christ controls us? Some years ago Kenneth Wuest, a lecturer in Greek at Moody Bible Institute, wrote an expanded translation of the New Testament. This is how he translated 2 Corinthians 5:14-15:
For the love which Christ has [for me] presses on me from all sides, holding me to one end and prohibiting me from considering any other, wrapping itself around me in tenderness, giving me an impelling motive, having brought me to this conclusion, namely, that One died on behalf of all, therefore all died.[7]
“One end” —one objective in life and no other, period. That is purity of heart. What kept Paul focused on that one objective? It was the love of Christ shown in His death for us. And what is the objective? To live no longer for ourselves but for Him who died for us.
Does this mean all other objectives are illegitimate? Not at all. We all have objectives. I have an objective to finish this book, another to do something special for my wife on our wedding anniversary, and on and on. But in all of these objectives we should keep in mind that the controlling objective of our lives is to live in continual awareness that Christ is the “owner” of our lives and that we are to live for Him, not for ourselves.
Another Scripture that is helpful in this discussion is Romans 12:1:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
To present our bodies (and our hearts also) is to recognize Christ as the “owner” of our lives. It is the subjective, experiential response to the objective truth that we are His own possession. But again, what does Paul present as the compelling motive to do this? It is the mercies of God as shown in the death of Christ in our place for our sins. (To pursue the extent of God’s mercies further, see Romans 5:6-10 and Ephesians 2:1-7.)
It may seem as if I continually take us back to the gospel. That is true, for it is the love of Christ for us as seen in the gospel that provides both the right motive and the only enduring motivation to seek to be pure in heart.
But we need more than a proper motive and a lively motivation if we are to grow in purity of heart. We need the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts and to enable us to work. Two Scriptures sum up our responsibility to grow in purity of heart. The first is Psalm 86:11:
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
We cannot by our own willpower unite our hearts to fear God —that is, to reverence Him and seek to glorify Him. That is why, like David, we should make prayer to this end a consistent part of our daily lives.
The second Scripture is Romans 12:2:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Though the Scriptures are not mentioned in that verse, they are clearly implied. Our minds can only be transformed as they are regularly exposed to the Word of God. This means we need to regularly read and study our Bibles and apply what we find there to our daily lives.
To be —or better, to seek to be —pure in heart produces humility in action as we become more God-focused in our daily lives. It requires humility to acknowledge that we no longer belong to ourselves but to Christ. And it is humbling to realize how much our hearts are divided —how often our desires, motives, emotions, and decision making are directed toward ourselves rather than Christ.
To acknowledge how far short we fall from purity of heart will send us back to the first Beatitudes: to be poor in spirit and to mourn because our hearts are so often divided. That is humbling. But that honest humility should drive us back to the gospel, where we see ourselves united to the One who had the only perfectly pure heart in all of history. This will motivate us and empower us to seek what we can never fully attain: to be pure in heart.
I love the old hymns I grew up with, and one I have recently been reflecting on is “My Faith Looks Up to Thee.” The last phrases of the first stanza read as follows:
Take all my guilt away,
O let me from this day
Be wholly Thine!
“Let me be wholly Thine.” This is to be pure in heart. This is my prayer for myself, and I pray it is yours also.