Growing up I my parents would always take me to the doctor for normal visits, checkups, and yearly physicals, but one doctor I never went to was the eye doctor. My eyesight always seemed good, at least to me. I didn’t need glasses or contacts. I actually never even made a visit to the eye doctor until I was much older. I could see well, but my eyes occasionally began getting this fatigued or strained feeling and so I thought a trip to the eye doc was in order. In I went, and sure enough, I was told for the first time that I had astigmatism, that my eyes had a slight deviation in curvature that was causing a mild strain. I completed an eye exam, was given a prescription for glasses, ordered a pair online, and when they came in…I was stunned. I remember how everything seemed to have so much more detail than I ever thought it did. I felt I like I could see paint strokes on walls, I could see individual leaves on trees, and colors, my oh my, colors popped like never before. Everything was a sheer delight to behold.
Well, I say all that to get to this. In our text today we’re presented with a sight far greater and far grander. A sight that can fill up our souls like a stiff sea breeze fills up the sails of ship. A sight so compelling and invigorating that it leaves us desiring more. A sight so significant, we can say in truth that it is the goal of the Christian life. Only one sight can be all this. The sight of God. But seeing God will only occur for a certain person, the pure in heart.
As we continue on in the Sermon on the Mount, this is the great matter before us this morning.
But first, as we’ve done before we must begin by backing up. Remember the Beatitudes are called Beatitudes because they’re the road map to true blessing, true happiness, and true flourishing with the Lord. They’re not stand alone truths, there’s an intentional order and progression to them. See the ordering thus far.[1] First, the beatitudes begin by pointing out our lost condition. From seeing this we deeply feel our lack and need as sinners, realizing our spiritual deadness and poverty. Then second, being awakened to our sin leads to us mourning and grieving over our sin and lost condition. Third, this leads us to give up justifying or excusing our sin, it leads to a lowliness, a humility, as the strut has been knocked out of us by God as He makes us meek. Fourth, all this together reveals our great spiritual emptiness, and so naturally we then begin hungering and thirsting to be filled. Filled with what? With righteousness.[2] Specifically the righteousness of Christ, to be covered by Christ, to grow in Christ, and to walk in the ways of Christ.
These first four Beatitudes are all internal, all within the soul of the Christian, as the Christian deals with God. They lead to the next four Beatitudes that are all external, all outside the Christian, as the Christian deals with the world. Notice how the first outward characteristic of the Christian, is mercy, where the Christian extends the same mercy to others that they’ve received in the gospel.
This brings us to the second outward characteristic of the Christian. Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” What a feast is here for us. See first…
Purity of Heart
Many things come to mind when we think on the word purity. Perhaps you think of positive things like crystal clear waters, the brilliance of diamonds, or a melody sung or played flawlessly, these things are pure. Or perhaps a more negative picture comes to mind when you think of the word purity. The chief example I can think of is purity culture, usually a negative word, describing a community that vilifies the body, highlights shame, while all the rules of what not to do are far more in view than the good things we’re to pursue, so much so that to cross these lines is to be exiled, canceled, or written off by such a group.
But if we back up a bit we come to see that purity isn’t just a modern issue, it was an issue in Jesus’ day. Those hearing the Sermon on the Mount would’ve been familiar with a kind of purity culture too, led by the Pharisees and other religious leaders. These leaders often boasted of being pure, clean, unpolluted, and because of this they distanced themselves from anything and anyone they deemed impure. Yet ironically, for all their talk of being so pure, it was a sham. They had a kind of purity yes, but it was a ritualistic purity, an outward purity, a ceremonial purity that had very little to do with the inward life, or the health of the soul, and the condition of the heart.[3]
Contrasting these religious leaders is the Lord Jesus. God Himself in the flesh, no One is purer than He, and yet He was criticized of breaking all kinds of purity rules. He went places holy men should not go. He touched people that were considered unclean. He did not always abide by the ceremonial laws of His day. Yet, the wonderfully mysterious thing about Jesus is that when He touched someone unclean, He did not become unclean, no, the unclean person became pure.
Such is the spirit of this sixth Beatitude. v8 is a call to purity, absolutely, but the kind of purity is far deeper than mere outward do’s and don’ts. v8 is teaching us of a purity of heart, a true uprightness, a genuine cleanliness.[4]
So we have an idea of the purity this calls us to, but what exactly is purity, what does purity demand of us, how should we pursue it? I think of all that could be said of biblical purity, I want to make and explain two statements. Both of these statements are true, simultaneously, though they seem to be opposed.
First, Christians are already positionally and objectively pure. This is the foundation of our purity. And I mean it when I say it, each and every Christian is considered by God to be 100% pure, objectively speaking. To explain this, think of a book. Say this book in my hand is the summary of your life. It has your name on it, and holds within it every thought, action, attitude, and word you’ve ever spoken. Yikes right?! Most of us think this would be a dreadful book to open. Yet such is the human heart and life. Now think of what happens you become a Christian. You repent and turn away from sin and trust in Christ, and He saves you! All of the sudden His blood cleanses us, washing away all our foul and vile sins. The inner contents of our book are clean and pure. But notice, our book is empty now. Our sins would’ve brought us condemnation, but now ask the question, can such a blank slate be enough to enter into heaven? No. God requires a perfect righteousness from us, and our pages in our book are empty with nothing to show. This leads to the glory of our redemption. The blood of Jesus doesn’t only wash away our sins, Jesus does more. He gives us and credits to us His very righteousness as a gift. All the righteousness He lived in and built in His sinless life is given to us as a free gift for all who believe. Now, our pages are no longer empty, they’re filled with the righteousness of Christ. Yet, our name is still on the cover, and the book is still a summary of our life. So when the day finally comes, God opens our book, sees the righteousness of His own Son, and welcomes us home. Not because of what we’ve done, but because of what Jesus has done for us.
This then is how God now sees each and every Christian. 100% pure. Do you know this? Do you see yourself like this? If you believe in Jesus, you should! The first thing we must say about purity is that every Christian, from the moment they first believed, is seen by God as absolutely pure. This is our position before God, and that will never change.
Second, Christians are to actually and subjectively progress in purity. This is no contradiction to what I’ve already stated. Our objective position in Christ is fixed and firm forever. We are pure in Christ, because of Christ. This leads to something. This position we have in Christ leads to us desiring to grow in Christ. This then, is our call to purity in v8. We don’t pursue purity hoping one to be holy and pure one day, no. Having been made pure positionally in Christ, the Christian now pursues purity progressively in Christ. In other words, we seek to grow into what we’ve already been declared to be.
What does this look like in life? Ironically, think of where we’ve been in the Beatitudes. The pure in heart are those who know and embrace their own impurity and spiritual poverty.[5] This is the beginning of all true purity, because only from seeing our impurity of heart are we awakened and sobered and spurred on to become pure. Jesus even spoke of this when He said in Matthew 15 that “…out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” The heart has always been our biggest trouble, and yet, how glorious is it then to experience our hearts become new in our redemption? The Christian has been made new, entirely new, and that newness is to be lived out in this sinful world. How do we live this pure life out?
We chase after…purity in thought. Purity in speech. Purity in doctrine. Purity in devotion. Purity in praise. Purity in prayer. Purity in our relationships. Purity in our public lives. Purity in our private lives. Purity among our families. Purity among the church. Purity before the watching world. For the Christian, purity of heart is indeed the mother of all virtues.[6] It’s not just avoiding the wrong things, it’s pursuing the right things. It’s not just turning away from wicked things, it’s pursuing holy things. It’s not just denying worldliness, it’s embracing godliness. Purity, for the Christian, is a way of life.
Above all to be pure is to be like Christ, to live as He would live, truly in and among the world, yet truly unstained by the world. Think of our lives as a boat and the world as the ocean. Problems don’t come when boats get out in the water, that’s what boats are made to do. Problems occur when water gets in the boat. Such is the Christian in the world. In it yes, but not of it. Such a pursuit of purity is our call, and by God’s grace we can truly make great progress in our pursuit of purity.
The Happy Sight
v8 concludes with a stunning reality, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
This raises a problem, doesn’t it? ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ people say, but is not God always out of sight being that He is invisible?[7] Also in Exodus 33:20 God tells Moses that man cannot see God and live. How then are we understand or interpret this beatitude? Is Jesus contradicting the Bible? Not at all. We must remember redemption. Ever since our expulsion from Eden, man has lived at a distance from God, such that the sight of God is now not just prohibited, but dangerous for us. Why is this? The problem is not physical as if our eyes were the issue. The problem is spiritual, our sin has caused our distance from the presence of God and our blindness to the glory of God.[8] Yet, because of the gospel of the Lord Jesus, His saving work for sinners, we can once again come back into God’s very presence. So Paul says in 2 Cor. 3:16-18, “…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed…with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” So while the sinner cannot see the Lord, the Christian can and ought to pursue a greater and greater sight of Him, leading up to that day when we see Him face to face.
Now that this problem of distance and blindness is solved we have more questions, aimed at understanding the end of v8. Questions such as, how exactly do we as Christians see God? Is this a physical thing, as if we’re seeing with our physical eyes? Or is this seeing God more a spiritual thing, as if we see with the eyes of our souls? And, what exactly do we see of God? Do we see all of God or just parts of God? And again, how can we see God at all if God, as John 4 teaches, is spirit and does not have a body?
Well, throughout Church history there has been volumes and volumes written on seeing God, so I don’t presume to be able to distill all of it here for you in a quick manner. So let me just give a grand overarching principle here: a Christian sees God in two ways. We see God by faith in this life, and we see God by sight in the life to come.[9]
There is a vast difference between the manner in which the Christian sees God in this and in the next. In this life we see God by faith. Meaning, faith is the instrument by which the Christian grabs ahold of God here. Faith is the way we appropriate, or seize, or lay ahold of God in this life. St. Augustine lingered on this a lot in his many writings, saying once that the fight to see God by faith is mainly a fight over desire. His thought goes like this. Because we’re sinful we’ll always struggle with our desires. We feel the tension between desiring the Lord and desiring to indulge in sin, and it is this very struggle that keeps us and blinds us from seeing the Lord as we ought to here in this life. So Augustine says, “because you cannot at present see, let your duty be in right desire. The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire” to see God clearer, to take hold of His promises deeper, and to trust Him greater.[10] He then says this holy desire stirs something deep within us. The more we lean into desiring to see God by faith in this life, the more our faith will start to stretch forward longing to see God in the life to come.[11]
Thus, the fight for purity in this life is just that, a fight. It’s a fight over desires. It’s a fight to not give room to fleshly desires, but to give wide room to holy desires. Or we could say, the fight for purity in this life is a fight to see God. The purer our souls, the more of God we’ll see and enjoy here below. And the more we see and enjoy God here below, the more we’ll long to see Him above.
So while we see God by faith in this life, we’ll see God by sight in the next. This is the great blessed hope and goal of the Christian life, the Beatific Vision, the ultimate blessing, of seeing the Lord face to face. John tells us of this in 1 John 3:1-3, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that bit did not know him. 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. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” What a moment, seeing God face to face as He is. But let me caution you. Don’t view this seeing of God as a static point or an end point, but a kind of perpetual wonder where we will see Him, yes (!), and continue on in our upward ascent into a blessed contemplation of the Lord forever.[12] In this way, our seeing of God in the life to come by sight is a perpetual pursuit, and an ever expanding pursuit.
Conclusion:
Church, much of our life here is caught up in a fight to see or to be seen. This the reason we seek glory and fame and likes and follows. These desires are hard wired in us by God for our great good and His glory. But our sin has perverted this in us so we desire to see all the wrong things and seek to be seen for all the wrong reasons. So Church, lift your eyes higher. Look, linger, see, gaze upon God. Adam and Eve enjoyed this in Eden, Moses enjoyed this while hid in the rock, Job longed for the day when he would see God, Moses and Elijah enjoyed this in a heightened manner on the Mount of Transfiguration, and now all who look to Christ, truly behold the glory of the Lord. So lift your eyes higher, Church, look to Christ…you were made for this!
“God of truth, I ask that I may receive so that my joy may be compelte. Until then let my mind meditate on it, let my tongue speak of it, let my heart love it, let my mouth preach of it. Let my soul hunger for it, let my flesh thirst for it, my whole being desire it, until I enter into “the joy of the Lord” (Matt. 25:21) who is God. Three in One, blessed forever. Amen”[13]
[1] A.W. Pink, An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1969), 25.
[2] Many thanks to Isaac Kent for this insight.
[3] Pink, An Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, 33.
[4] Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture, NAC (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 1992), 100.
[5] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon of the Mount (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 108.
[6] Calvin’s Commentaries, Matthew 5:8, accessed via Accordance Bible software, 9.11.24.
[7] R. C. Sproul, Matthew, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 66.
[8] Sproul, 67.
[9] Samuel G. Parkison, To Gaze Upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024) 69.
[10] Augustine, quoted in Parkison, To Gaze Upon God, 76.
[11] Augustine, quoted in Parkison, 77.
[12] Parkison, 64.
[13] Parkison, 83.
