![]() But he wonders whether he has been a fool to do so. The psalmist does not think purity of heart is some hypothetical moral perfection that no one can obtain he sees himself as having kept his heart pure-that is, having kept his heart from arrogance and hostility toward God. In other words, they are as far from being faithful, repentant, believing Israelites as you could imagine. They are arrogant, wicked, proud, violent, mockers, oppressors, setting their mouths against the heavens. And in the next verses he goes on to give us a very clear picture of what he means by the “pure in heart” by giving a long description of those who are not pure in heart. The psalmist believes that God is good to the pure in heart, but he is deeply troubled by the fact that those who are not pure in heart seem to prosper in this world. He believes in this goodness, but he also sees a serious problem:īut as for me, my feet came close to stumbling,Īs I saw the prosperity of the wicked. The psalmist describes God’s goodness to the people of Israel that is, to those who are pure in heart. To understand who are the pure in heart, we will look at three passages: Psalm 73, Psalm 24, and James 4. And we see this concept echoed in other parts of the New Testament. ![]() Since Jesus is telling us that only those who are pure in heart now will see God, we had better try to discover what He means by “pure in heart.” As it happens, I believe that Jesus is drawing on the Old Testament for the concept of being pure in heart. There is no getting around it Jesus tells us that only those whose hearts are pure now, today, in this life, will see God, will inherit the kingdom one day. And thus, those who are “pure in heart” now will see God and His kingdom in the future. Those who mourn now will be comforted in the future. Those who are poor in spirit now will inherit the kingdom in the future. ![]() I understand each of the beatitudes to have the same structure: those whose lives today are characterized by X are the truly fortunate people because they will inherit the kingdom of God in the future. (Institutes 3.14.9)Ĭould we get around this seemingly impossible demand for purity by postponing it to the next age? Could Jesus be saying, “One day, in the kingdom of God, you will be blessed by being pure in heart, totally free from sin”? Well, no, he is almost certainly not saying that. Let the holy servant of God, I say, select from the whole course of his life the action which he deems most excellent, and let him ponder it in all its parts he will doubtless find in it something that savors of the rottenness of the flesh, since our alacrity in well-doing is never what it ought to be, but our course is always retarded by much weakness. Is anyone “pure in heart”? I could never claim that my heart has been completely “pure” in anything I have thought or done. Jesus tells us in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
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