At the time in Israel’s history when Jesus came to earth, the teaching of the Scriptures had been so horribly corrupted by the Pharisees that an Israelite man thought his mission from God was the lifeless keeping of thousands of requirements in God’s rule book that were eventually expanded by the Pharisees to 30 volumes of dos and don’ts. In utter contrast to this externally focused, rule- keeping slavery, Jesus said, those who enjoyed the presence of God never were the self-righteous rule-keepers but those who were pure in heart. Jesus’ message was, “righteousness is a matter of the heart and that bar is so high that I have come to give you a NEW, PURE HEART and The Holy Spirit to dwell in that heart to help you do what the law really is all about: loving God and loving your neighbor.” This episode considers how we can experience the power of Christ at work in us TRANSFORMING OUR HEARTS for everyday living that pleases him.
As we study the 6th beatitude, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8) it is helpful to remember that Jesus was correcting the terrible perversion of Judaism brought about by the Pharisees. Scripture had always taught what the prophet Micah had explained. What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)? But a Jewish man in Jesus day was told his mission was conforming to an impossible list of dos and don’ts. For example, he was not to carry a burden on the Sabbath Day and he needed to know what a burden was! According to the Law of the Elders:
“A burden is food equal in weight to a dried fig, enough wine for mixing in a goblet, milk enough for one swallow, honey enough to put on a wound, water enough to moisten an eye-salve, ink enough to write two letters of the alphabet.” So, writing must be defined. "He who writes two letters of the alphabet with his right or left hand, whether of one kind or two kinds, if they are written with different inks or in different languages is guilty. Even if he should write two letters from forgetfulness, he is guilty, whether he has written them with ink, or with paint, red chalk, vitriol, or anything which makes a permanent mark. But, if anyone writes with dark fluid, with fruit juice, or in the dust of the road, or in sand, or in anything that does not leave a permanent mark, he is not guilty.
This is sick—but that is what God’s Covenant of Grace made with Abraham and his posterity had become. Jesus corrected what these legalists were teaching about dietary laws: It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person...What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone (Matt 15:11, 18-20).
These words hammer home the truth that the heart is the center of the spiritual life and mankind’s core problem is therefore the heart. That is why the gospel is so powerful. Because our rebellion caused the corruption of the human heart—we need a HEART TRANSPLANT. Our race needed a savior to give us a new heart and a supernatural being to dwell in our heart to help us guard it: Here is Ezekiel’s prophecy of Jesus’ coming: I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God (11:19-20).
Christianity has never been about struggling in our own power to follow the path of life, God’s moral law, which makes the Law an oppressive burden. Rather, it is knowing that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to me so that I am loved when I fail to keep God’s agenda. But it is also knowing that MY MISSION IS to cooperate with the Holy Spirit at work in my heart to purify it and produce Christ-like attitudes. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23).
How Do We Cooperate With the Holy Spirit as He Transforms our Heart into Greater Purity?
A. Recognizing that spiritual maturity is not so much a matter of changing what our hands do, as changing what hearts love. Augustine taught that we are most fundamentally shaped by what our hearts love.
For Augustine, what we call virtues are nothing more than forms of love. Courage is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than your own, even when the truth will put you at a disadvantage. And because Jesus himself said that all God’s laws come down to loving God and your neighbor, Augustine believed that all sin was ultimately a lack of love. Look at injustice. You may say that you believe in social equality and justice and think that you do, but if you make business decisions that exploit others, it is because at the heart level, you love your own prosperity more than your neighbor’s. In short, what you love most at the moment is what controls your action at the moment (Making Sens of God, Tim Keller).
But the corruption of our hearts does not just cause us to love the wrong things or not love the right things. Impure hearts are also those whose loves are not ordered properly. Keller continues to explain,
Augustine also observed that the heart’s loves have an order to them, and that we often love less important things more and the more important things less. Therefore, the disorder and unhappiness of our lives is caused by the disorder of our loves. A good and just person “is also a person who has (rightly) ordered his love, so that he does not love what is wrong to love, or fail to love what should be loved, or loved too much what should be loved less (or love too little what should be loved more)” How does this work? There is nothing wrong with loving your work, but if you love it more than your family, your loves are out of order and you may ruin your family. Or if you love making money more than you love justice, then you will exploit your employees, again because your loves are disordered. (Ibid.)
The 6th beatitude, then, which calls us to purity of heart, is about ordering our loves according to God’s design. Such ordering is not just prioritizing our relationships; it is prioritizing godly character. Purity of heart means loving Christ-like character more than complacency, loving integrity more than ease, loving generosity more than financial security, loving conflict resolution more than emotional withdrawal from hard relationships, biting a critical tongue because we love patience more than we love expressing how we feel, loving honesty about our weaknesses, more than we love impressing others, loving the pleasure of giving to others more than loving the satisfaction of having our own needs tended to.
Of course, the ultimate disordered love, and the ultimate source of our discontent is the failure to love first things first, a failure to love God supremely. Purity of heart begins with making God our first love, which is why the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The Greek word used in the 6th beatitude for purity is KATHAROS, which was often used of metals that had been refined until all the impurities were removed leaving only the pure metal. In this sense, purity means unmixed, unalloyed, unadulterated. A pure heart is an undivided heart. Supreme allegiance is given to our first love. James recognized that our heart desire to be liked can become disordered, causing us to love the approval of men instead of the approval of God. He challenged, You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (James 4:4). Augustine rightly believed that human beings are created for a degree of delight and fulfillment that nothing in creation can produce. His famous words to God from the beginning of his Confessions ring true, You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it finds it’s rest in you. Humans harm themselves when we love anything more than God. For example,
If you love your children more than you love God, you will essentially rest your need for significance and security in them. You will need too much for them to succeed, be happy, and love you. That will either drive them away or crush them under the weight of your expectations because they will be the ultimate source of your happiness, and no human being can measure up to that. If instead you love your spouse or romantic partner more than God, the same things occur. If you love your work and career more than God, you will necessarily also love them more than your family, your community and your own health, and so that will lead to physical and relational breakdown and often…to social injustice. If you love anything more than God, you harm the object of your love, you harm yourself, you harm the world around you, and you end up deeply dissatisfied and discontent (Ibid).
So, our first observation is that pursuing a pure heart requires us to order our loves according to God’s design.
B. Observation #2 comes from understanding he biblical use of the word heart, which is KARDIA, from which we get cardiac. The heart is used metaphorically in Scripture to refer to the inner person, the seat of our desires, motivations and attitudes. A pure heart, therefore, can only come from exposing the motives of our heart to God’s Word. We read in Hebrews 4:12-13: The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the THOUGHTS AND INTENTIONS of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Pursuing a pure heart means inviting God to reveal to us the motives underlying even good actions at time, especially selfish ones. Lord, is my motive wanting to impress so others think more highly of me? Is my pride keeping me arguing instead of saying, “You’re right?” Is it my anger that is causing me to shut out my wife right now? Is it my love of comfort that causes me to complain when I have to do more work to fix a problem? Is my grumpiness over another unexpected bill the result of not wanting to trust You again to provide, or is it sinful autonomy that hates depending upon You? Am I angry at a setback at work because I am leaning too heavily on success to make my life meaningful, rather than obedience to you? This second step to becoming more pure in heart was stated by David, Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Ps 139:23-24).
C. The third way to pursue a pure heart is to grieve over my sinful heart’s rebellion. Last week, we saw that beatitudes 1-4 are the foundation for beatitudes 5-8. We saw that being merciful to others, the 5th beatitude, depends upon the 1st beatitude, knowing how merciful God has been to me. Similarly, the 6th beatitude, Blessed at the pure in heart, is rooted in the 2nd beatitude, Blessed are those who mourn over sin and its devastation. James portrays this heart attitude.
Realize that you have been disloyal and get your hearts made true once more. As you come close to God you should be deeply sorry, you should be grieved, you should even be in tears. Your laughter will have to become mourning, your high spirits will have to become heartfelt dejection. You will have to feel very small in the sight of God before he will set you on your feet once more (James 4:8-10 Phillips)
In order to mourn properly over sin, I need to stop seeing my sin primarily as BREAKING A RULE and start seeing my sin as the VIOLATING OF A RELATIONSHIP, namely my relationship with God. From the beginning, God’s covenant with his people has been a relational one—one of belonging to each other. The covenant essence is, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” Keeping his commandments has always been personal with God. In Deut 6:5, we read, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. THESE COMMANDMENTS THAT I GIVE YOU TODAY ARE TO BE ON YOUR HEARTS. Jesus repeated the same principle, If you love me keep, my commandments (John 14:15).
When you violate a rule, your conscience bothers you, you confess, and it is not big deal. But when you violate a person because of your sin, especially a person who is very precious to you, it tears you up inside. That is the grief Jesus is talking about. It is the result of remembering that when I sin, I wound the very heart of God with my disloyalty:
- I grieve his heart
- I bring shame on his name
- I trample into the mud the precious blood of Jesus shed for me
Purity of heart is directly related to hating the sin in our hearts because we know that ultimately it proves that in that moment, we loved the pleasure of having our own way more than we loved God. He deserves better!
D. Our 4th observation about pursing purity of heart is that requires standing guard over our God-given desires to stop Satan or sin from hijacking those desires, pouring gasoline on them and leading us into evil. Proverbs 4:23 gives this incredible warning: Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. The Greek word for lust, EPITHUMIA is literally over-desire. Here is a picture of life when Satan succeeds at turning up the flame on our desires, which then burn too hot.
- The desire for recognition becomes blind ambition destroying our homes
- The desire to succeed leads us to cut ethical corners.
- Our desire for respect prevents us from admitting our mistakes or sins
- The desire to save money leads to bending the truth in to get good deals
- The desire for rest leads to an unwillingness to serve others
- The desire to be valued hardens our heart to those who don’t express appreciation for us
- The desire for relaxation leads to laziness
- The pleasure of eating leads to gluttony
- The desire for sexual satisfaction leads outside of marriage for satisfaction
One of the practical ways to put the discipline of watching over our sexual desires is with eye discipline. I had an interesting discussion with my son who coaches high school cornerbacks about eye discipline. Over the weekend in one of the pro games, a cornerback made a classic mistake with his eye discipline. Instead of keeping his eyes on the receiver until the receiver looked back for the ball the corner took his eyes off of the receiver to look back for the ball and got beat for a touchdown—a good corner but he got beat by his lack of eye discipline. Josh pointed out also that referees make their calls through eye discipline, watching specific parts of the field and that on every play his defensive coaching staff follows eye discipline, dividing up the field into quadrants—so nothing on the field gets missed by the coaching staff.
When it comes to lust, King David got beat by a lack of eye discipline as well. When from the palace roof he saw Bathsheba bathing, he should have followed the example of Job who made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. David lost the battle of protecting his sexual appetite—and you know the consequences. He ended up murdering a dear friend—one of the most loyal of David’s famous mighty men, Uriah. How awful. There is one specific vulnerability that every human across every generation and every culture of the world has—the desires of his or her heart. Above all else, guard your heart, FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO FLOWS FROM IT.
For Further Prayerful Thought:
- What is the greatest lesson you have learned about making God your first love?
- One of the implications of this episode is that we need to turn up our passion to be like Christ, so that our desire to love well is stronger than our selfish desires, our desire for Jesus’ humility is greater than our desire to impress others. How can we fuel that passion to grow into Christ-like character?
- Think through some of the good things you did this week that might have been done with the wrong motive.
- Which part of your desire structure, does Satan seem to occasionally heat up into over-desire?
