Steadfast, Immovable, Abounding

This is the sixth installment in my series of posts on the beatitudes.

“‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Matthew 5:8

In Exodus 33, Moses says to the Lord, “‘I pray You, show me Your glory!’” God tells Moses that He will let His goodness pass by him; He will hide him in the cleft of the rock and he will see God’s back. What is the reason for this? The Lord explains in verse 20, “‘You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!’” God is more holy than our minds can even comprehend. Through sin, mankind has lost the gift God gave Adam and Eve – the gift of seeing Him and living in perfect communion with Him. Sin cannot be in His presence. Once we understand this, we see how truly gracious and compassionate God’s actions towards Moses really were. Had He shown Moses all of His glory, Moses must have died. But God chooses to not fully deny Moses his heart’s desire; He reveals a partial view of Himself. And because God’s back is turned toward Moses, the fallen man is not “in God’s sight.” Judgement is not executed.

If we want to see God, we must be pure in heart. But what is the point of Jesus blessing the pure in heart, promising them the sight of God, when no one is truly pure enough to see God anyway? Like many of the beatitudes, Jesus’ promise doesn’t make much sense from a worldly understanding. Purity of heart requires complete surrender to God’s will, always putting His way first and acting as Christ would. That kind of devotion isn’t possible for any of us to attain. Yet nothing God says is useless, so there must be some way that we, though fallen, can see the glory of the Lord.

In John 14:8, Jesus’ disciple Philip says to Him, “‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’” This is quite a bold request for Philip to make. He knew that God’s holiness allows no sin in His presence. He knew that even Moses, a righteous man revered by the Jews, would have died had he seen God’s face. Yet he still asks to be shown the Father of creation. Philip seems to suggest that, if Jesus would show them God, it would be the final proof that He is who He says He is (maybe that’s why he said, “‘it is enough for us’”). Jesus’ response in verse nine is definite: “‘Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, “Show us the Father”?’” Jesus speaks very plainly: if you have seen Him, you have seen God. But I don’t think He is talking about seeing His physical body while He was on earth. Any who come to know Christ, whether two thousand years ago or today, have seen Him and have experienced His glory. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

If Jesus is God, and no one can see God and live, then how is it that we can see Christ’s face yet gain eternal life? That is the mystery of Jesus’ sacrifice. He covers our unworthiness with His worth. His glory is my glory; His righteousness is my righteousness; His purity is my purity. And because of Christ’s act of grace, I have the undeserved privilege of drawing near with confidence to God’s throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16). Jesus knew that we could never achieve the purity required to satisfy God, so He took our condemnation in exchange for His innocence.

The beautiful thing about this picture is that the more we look at Jesus, the more pure we become. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:15-18, “But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” The things we fix our gaze on determines who we will become. If we look down at the wind and the waves around us, we will be as changeable as the sea. But if we look to the Savior who calls us to Himself, He will grant us the faith and strength to draw near to Him, rescued from the depth of sin. With each step, our hearts become more like the Lord’s.

1 John 3:2-3 wonderfully describes everything this beatitude promises: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” One day, our faith will be made sight; everything we have experienced with our spiritual senses, we will experience with our physical senses. In God’s presence, the struggle against sin will be ended, and our transformation will finally be complete. My heart has seen the Lord—I can’t wait for my eyes to see Him as well.