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"Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God."
(Matthew 5:8)
When you hear the phrase "pure in heart", what or who comes to your mind? I think of Jesus first, who was pure in the greatest sense of the word. He lived a life of oneness with God the Father, and He lived with purity, sincerity, and no hypocrisy. I also think of a man in the Bible whom Jesus commended for being pure, for being a man who had no guile. Jesus said of Nathaniel in John 1:47, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!"
I also think of my maternal grandmother who lived into her eighties and was such a humble, meek, and pure woman of God. She was well acquainted with grief and sorrow, but she maintained a pure heart until she died. Her husband, my grandfather, was in a very difficult train wreck, and he eventually died at the age of 55 from cancer, but Granny kept pressing forward and loving her six children. In her later years, she suffered badly from scoliosis and lost her sense of smell, but she did not complain. She loved God and her family and lived to serve others. Our family misses her terribly because she lived to be missed. When the pure in heart are among us, we know it, and when they depart, we feel the emptiness and vacuum of their absence.
When I think of "pure in heart", I also think of people like Felix Dailey. He is well into his nineties and is such a fine Christian gentleman. This Korean War veteran has experienced his share of heartaches and difficulties, but instead of these trials in life making him bitter or angry toward God, they have made him trust even more in his Savior. If God allows me to live into my 90's, I want to live like he has lived. In the words of Clint Eastwood, he doesn't let the old man in! These saints of God were not perfect, but they had the Beatitudes of Jesus stamped on their lives, and their hearts were genuine and pure, with no deceit.
But the One who uttered the phrase initially was the One who lived out the teaching in its entirety. Jesus personified the pure in heart. He was sincere, genuine, and pure as the snow He created. He was open, honest, and transparent with those He loved and taught. But the religious world He entered in Jerusalem was dominated by those who were, by and large, very impure in heart, and they and Jesus clashed like water and oil or light and darkness. The Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, and scribes led the religious establishment in Jesus' day, and they made much of externals in religion but placed little value on the deeper things of the heart. For them, religion was reduced to pomp, show, and prestige, and they were men who, unfortunately, led hypocritical lives, teaching one thing while living another. They claimed to be people of the Book (what is now our Old Testament), but they neglected the Author.
Today, let us commit to be pure in heart before God with no hypocrisy.
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