Matthew 5:8

Matthew 5:8 ESV

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Have ever seen God? Oh I have seen the presence of God in people. I've seen the joy and the glow in their faces that comes from His love. I've seen God in loving actions. When I serve those in need, I see God. I feel God and sense God's powerful presence. I feel peace, joy, tranquility, and satisfaction. But I've never actually seen God with my own two eyes, like Moses saw God. I've never seen Jesus, like Peter and the early disciples saw Jesus, both living and glorified in His resurrection.

There's a part of me that deeply longs to literally see God, see Jesus. I'm not satisfied with the figurative incarnations I've mentioned before. Like Queen sang, "I want it all and I want it now"! Is that wrong? Wanting all of God is not wrong. Demanding all of God's fullness now is childish, and fails to reflect a mature understanding of the spiritual life.

Seeing God unfiltered in all His majesty is a life threatening proposition for mortals. Think of the moments those who encountered the angel of the Lord.

The parents of Samson were afraid.

Judges 13:22 ESV

And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, for we have seen God."

Isaiah the prophet was afraid.

Isaiah 6:5 ESV

And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!"

The patriarch Jacob was amazed he survived his encounter with the stranger.

Genesis 32:30 ESV

So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered."

Those who carelessly approached the sanctuary of the Lord without the proper religious preparation as prescribed by the law of Moses, sometimes died or were stricken with disease. God is holy and He does not receive the filth of sinful humanity without atonement.

That gets to the crux of Jesus teaching. The pure in heart will see God. Purity means clean, unblemished, not dirty, stained or soiled. God is holy and pure. Think of the air we breathe. We all need oxygen to survive, but if you were to breathe pure oxygen, your lungs would burn and you would die. Breathable air is a blend of nitrogen, oxygen and argon with trace levels of other gases. The proportion of nitrogen to oxygen is over 3 to 1. In the same way an unfiltered experience of God may very well kill a sinful mortal.

Jesus was fully human and fully God. His mortal frame carried the divine presence in all His fullness. We have the same possibility for our lives through our faith in Christ, to become pure as He is pure.

What makes the heart impure? Sin does. Sin stains the soul and separates us from God. Since we all sin how can we ever hope to have a pure heart? Our thoughts are sinful. Jesus said if you curse someone you've committed murder in your heart. I've murdered a lot of drivers in my heart on my way to work! No. I have no chance of seeing God, except by the grace of God.

God chose Moses and Moses met with God face to Face. Jesus told His disciples,

John 15:16-17 ESV

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

We are chosen in Christ to become the pure of heart. Put yourself in places each day to receive God's love, that love might force from your heart sin, fear, loathing, envy, lust and everything else that does not love.

I end with these words from the beloved apostle John. You will see God in God's time. Therefore pursue that perfect love that drives out fear and fills us with the purity of Christ.

1 John 4:12-19 HCSB

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world’s Savior. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God — God remains in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because He first loved us.