Pure in heart

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

When Jesus spoke about being “pure in heart”, he was talking about what goes on inside a person.  This not only means doing the right thing but doing the right things for the right reasons.  It involves your motives. 

God wants us to be real.  He wants us to love others because He loved us. He wants us to serve others, because He served us.  He wants us to take care of each other, because He takes care of us.  We should never do any of these things out of a selfish motive.  It’s never to be for what we can get out of it.

It is important to understand that Jesus didn’t say blessed are the people who have pure hearts. If he had, none of us would be included.  Jeremiah said “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”  (Jeremiah. 17:9)

I think we should take what Jesus is saying here and put it with what David said in Psalm 51:10.  “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.”  We all have impurity in our hearts that only God can cleanse. 

So in order to be pure in heart, we need to seek to live a holy life.  We need to pursue God.  We need to put aside all the things the world offers and fall more in love with our Savior.  Loving Jesus with our whole heart will lead to internal motivations that desire to please Him in every way.

Two more verses come to mind.

“as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”   Proverbs 23:7 

“take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  2 Corinthians 10:5 

Perhaps we need to take an inventory of our lives and see if there are things we are doing or people we are spending time with that cause our mind not to be obedient to Christ or that lead us down a path the encourages sin.  If so, be careful.  Your actions will follow your heart.

When we accept Christ as our Savior, we are cleansed in our heart.  Our sins are forgiven and we have peace with God.  But that is just the beginning.  We need to move on from there and keep our hearts cleansed and pure.  Ask God to search your heart and to reveal anything that interferes with your heart being pure.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”   Psalm 139 :23 – 24 

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