Beckett: Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Here, we face a dilemma, for we are not pure in heart. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Sinners that we are, how can we have pure hearts when they are sick? Like David, we must ask of God, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). And so, this is just what He does. He purifies our hearts through Christ’s own pure heart. “Everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure” (1 John 3:3).

To Peter, Christ said, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15). Thus began Peter’s call to minister to the Gentiles, a people once unclean. Jesus makes clean what was once unclean. In Judaism, if someone touches a dead body, they become unclean, yet Jesus touches the dead body of the son of the widow of Nain and raises him from the dead (Luke 7:11-17)! When the woman with the discharge of blood simply touched Jesus’ garment, she was made clean (Luke 8:43-48)! Jesus rebukes the unclean spirit in a young boy, and he is made well (Luke 9:37-43a)! And so on.

An unclean person does not stay unclean for long when they stand in the presence of the Pure One. So then, what do you think happens to you when you stand before Jesus? What do you think His Word does to you when you hear it? It does the same as it did to the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19). For just as we are spiritual lepers (FC SD I, 6), so He pronounces you clean with water and His Word, which “is not mere ordinary water, but water comprehended in God’s Word and command and sanctified by them [Ephesians 5:26-27]… This is all because of the Word, which is a heavenly, holy Word, which no one can praise enough. For it has, and is able to do, all that God is and can do [Isaiah 55:10-11]” (LC IV, 14, 17).

Because Christ has made us pure, we shall see Him as He is. “They will see His face, and His name shall be on their forehead” (Revelation 22:4). Each of us receives His name in our Baptism (Matthew 28:19). So, when next you see your pastor place the sign of the cross upon the forehead of a baby while speaking the name of the Triune God in Baptism, remember this happened to you, too. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:1).

Thus made pure by His holy Word, we live pure and decent lives with our family and our neighbour “in what we say and do” (SC, The Sixth Commandment). Now that Christ has made us pure, we “flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” with the help of God (2 Timothy 2:22).