Center for Biblical Theology and Eschatology

The Blessed Pure in Heart

by Rodney G. Miersma

We now come to the sixth beatitude which Christ spoke to His disciples in the sermon on the mount. As we have said before, each one of these beatitudes reveals a spiritual characteristic which can be seen only in the child of God. Outside of the church of Christ there may be those who put on these characteristics externally, but Christ is concerned with the heart, for He says, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” One may seem very friendly, faithful, and diligent, but if the Spirit of Christ is not at work in him, he cannot possess the virtues which are and must be seen in the citizens of the heavenly kingdom. Only children of God are pure in heart. No one else is.

This beatitude speaks of a condition of the heart of a man. Even as it is true physically that the condition of the heart is of central concern, so it is spiritually. The spiritual heart is the center of spiritual activity. As is the heart spiritually, so is the man. Out of the heart proceed all of the issues of life. In the citizen of the kingdom of heaven, whose heart is truly pure, there must be seen all of the other virtues Jesus mentions in the beatitudes. So the question is not out of order, “What is the condition of your heart? Do you have heart trouble, spiritually?”

To answer that question we must go to the Scriptures to see what is said about our heart. Before we get into the particulars, we must look at the comparison between the physical and the spiritual heart. The physical heart, which pumps our life’s blood through our bodies, serves as a striking picture of one’s spiritual, ethical center, which is termed in Scripture the heart. This spiritual heart is not something which can be detected or corrected with a surgeon’s knife. It cannot be seen in the body or studied by the scientist. The heart is the very deepest part of a man. It determines his moral, spiritual position. It directs his thoughts and actions. That spiritual heart is one of two things: either it is a bad heart or it is a good and pure heart.

Now for the particulars. That the heart is either good or bad, a heart of flesh or a heart of stone, is taught inEzekiel 11:19, 20: “And I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them.” Jesus Himself said in Matthew 15:18, 19, “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies….”

The heart of man became bad, or stony, as Scripture puts it, after man’s fall into sin. God declared concerning man in Genesis 8:21: “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” And inJeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jesus confirms this in Matthew 12:34: “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

From the above references it becomes immediately plain that the problem of man today is that he has heart trouble. How ironic it is that man does not see his problem as a heart problem, but instead tries to tackle all of the symptoms of his trouble. He does not get at the heart of the matter. The church today is no better, as she proceeds from this same wrong idea. She tackles man’s problem as a social problem. So she would champion the cause of better education, the fight against the drug problem, the eradicating of poverty, and the fight against racial injustices. And it would seem that the answer to all of life’s problems is to throw more money at it.

All of the above are symptoms of a far deeper problem. One must understand that the problem with man today is a heart problem. Unless that is taken care of, all man’s attempts at changing symptoms will come to nought.

For the righteous, there is a changed heart, out of which proceeds the desire and longing to serve God. His heart determines the direction of his thoughts, of his words, and of his deeds.

It is the condition of the heart, too, that God will judge. He looks not at the outward, superficial appearance of a man. He judges the heart. InProverbs 17:3 we read, “The fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.” And inHebrews 4:12, we read, “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” It ought to be evident, therefore, that God does not merely judge the outward acts of man. In the final instance, it is the heart that is judged. And God will judge all actions on the basis of the heart from which it proceeded. A deed is to be judged good or bad depending on whether it issues from an evil or a good heart. And no man can hide his heart from God.

The heavenly citizens are pure in heart. Purity of heart suggests first a heart that is cleansed from all of its former corruption. It is a heart no longer defiled with sin. We read in Romans 2:29, “But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter….” In this sense, Scripture emphasizes a new heart, a heart of flesh, and a new man.

Furthermore, a pure heart is a single or undivided heart, a heart which is set on one thing alone. James 4:8 states, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.” And Jesus insists inMatthew 6:24, “Ye can not serve God and mammon.” A double heart is one in which a person seeks to set his heart on two different things. He seeks this world and cleaves to it, but also professes to desire the kingdom of heaven. But the single heart is one which seeks God and His righteousness. Scripture summarizes the law of God by stating, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart….” That is the glorious virtue to be seen in the citizen of the kingdom of heaven. Each child of God can confess: “I am pure in heart.”

How does one attain to this purity of heart, in light of the fact that each man is born totally depraved. There is none born without sin—a fact which is true even of children of God. None is in the position of claiming for himself, as a result of his own effort, a pure heart. So the question remains, “Where does this pure heart come from?”

The answer that the Word of God gives us is that this comes from God through Jesus Christ alone. For purity of heart, there must be a new birth. The life which Christ merited for His people on the cross must be planted in the heart. Jesus declares this to Nicodemus in John 3:3: “Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” Regeneration is the taking out of the heart of stone and replacing it with the heart of flesh (Ezek. 11:19, 20). After this takes place, apart from the will of man, God so opens that heart that there comes a consciousness of His glorious work and a desire to seek God. We read concerning one convert in the New Testament, “And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul” (Acts 16:14). God opened this woman’s heart. That explains how she attended to the Word preached. The spiritual center of one’s being is cleansed and purified by God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

One may not gather from this that the pure in heart on this earth are presently without sin. These have a pure heart, but they possess at the same time a sinful flesh. And these two, the new man and the old man, war one with the other. The old man of sin seeks control. Yet there is the principle of new obedience in this citizen of the kingdom of heaven. This explains also Paul’s cry in Romans 7:19, 20: “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.” And Paul adds in verse 22, “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”

So then, the pure of heart do reveal in their conversation and walk that a change has indeed taken place within them. Out of that pure heart proceed the issues of life. Out of such a pure heart comes the consciousness of poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, spiritual hungering and thirsting, and mercy. The pure in heart clearly seek the kingdom which isheavenly. This one does not set his heart on this earth with all of its corrupt pleasures. He is not double-minded; he seeks not to serve God and mammon. Such is the spiritual character of the citizen of the kingdom.

Blessed are ye! The pure in heart shall see God. Only the pure in heart could ever stand before the infinitely Holy One. But what a glorious, almost unbelievable, promise this is!

How shall we see God? Seeing refers, first of all, to a knowledge of God. We know Him already through His revelation in the Holy Scriptures. Hardly is it to be compared to our knowledge of Him in heaven. For now we see as through a glass darkly.

However, we shall see God in heaven through Jesus Christ. Christ will be with His people bodily in heaven. And Christ shall, to all eternity, reveal the Father to us. He is Himself the second person of the Trinity in our flesh. He shall speak to us and teach us in the perfections of our God. Jesus Himself said in John 14:9, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father….”

Furthermore, in the new heavens and new earth we shall see the beauty and glory of God perfectly in all of His creation. Now our understanding is clouded because of sin, and creation itself is affected and altered by the curse of God upon it because of man’s sin. But in the new creation, the child of God shall have a clear, sinless understanding of creation untouched anymore by the curse.

That is the future for the pure in heart. They look forward to the time that they shall see God as God has promised to them. They shall see Him thus at the moment of their death, when their souls enter conscious glory in heaven. They shall see Him in the day of resurrection, when bodily they shall stand before Him.

Even now, in a sense, we see God—that is, the pure in heart do. These see Him in the reading and study of His Word. They see Him when they come under the faithful preaching of His Word. They see Him when they come before His throne of grace in prayer. The pure in heart see Him even now through Jesus Christ their Lord.

What an unbelievable promise this is! At present, as pilgrims, we face the scorn and mockery of sinners. We are persecuted and killed all the day long. But we shall see God! How wonderful and amazing is the sovereign grace of God.

Rodney G. Miersma was ordained a minister in 1971 and began his labors in Hope Protestant Reformed Church in Isabel, South Dakota. He ministered there in Isabel until 1978, when he was called to Pella, Iowa where he ministered until 1980. In 1981, he was called to the First Protestant Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan where he ministered for seven years. After this, he was called to become the pastor of the Protestant Reformed Church of New Zealand. He pastored there in New Zealand until 1996, when he was called to his current charge in Immanuel Protestant Reformed Church in Lacombe, Alberta, Canada.