God’s Favor Is on the Pure in Heart

Judaism in the day of Jesus knew something about purity rituals. Following the Law of Moses, they had purity rituals for any number of situations. The book of Leviticus covers a number of situations that result in impurity and prescribe a ritualistic solution that serves as a confirmation of cleanness. These rituals were meant to safeguard the community, prevent the spread of disease, and set the people of God in Israel apart from the people groups surrounding them. But by the time of Jesus, ritual purity had become more important than moral purity.

Near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tears into the Pharisees with a series of prophetically condemnatory indictments and one of the things Jesus says is:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

He continues:

27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Jesus then ends this prophetic rant with these words:

For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Now I want you to go back to Matthew chapter 5 and the sixth Beatitude where Jesus says,

God’s favor is on the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

There’s all the outward purity and ritual of the religious elite and Jesus says that they will not be able to experience God’s kingdom community, that they will not be able to see him until they recognize him for who he is. In the sixth Beatitude, Jesus continues to turn the world upside down with another command that reverses the entire focus of what the religious elite thought it meant to be pure. God’s favor is not on those who are outwardly the best people, who have purity before people; but those whose purity is within them. Those are the ones, Jesus says, will receive the kingdom and be received into the presence of God.

What this Beatitude shows us is that Jesus is primarily concerned with our heart. Have purity of heart and the rest will flow into place. This has been a theme of the Beatitudes. They do not work from the outside in, but begin in a poverty of Spirit that allows God’s Holy Spirit to take a place of prominence. Then, from within—bubbling out of a brokenness over injustice and a desperate hunger for righteousness—there comes those outward actions to put into practice the commands from the prophet Micah:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

    And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

    and to walk humbly with your God.

All of the religious works and appearances mean nothing if they do not stem from a purity of heart. Theologian Leonard Ravenhill says:

“You can have all of your doctrines right—yet still not have the presence of God.”

The aim of Jesus Christ is not to reform the manners of society or ensure doctrinal propriety, but to change the hearts of sinners—and society will then be changed through it.

This is not to say that external attempts at rule-following before there are internal desires to rule-follow is wrong. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, speaking about his attempts to bring about racial justice spoke of the necessity to do so in the political realm as well as the religious realm.

While it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me.[i]

Legislation has its place and its purpose, but it is not the end of the line. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Joni Eareckson Tada, an influential figure in disability justice. She recalls that, in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she and the rest of the National Council on Disability were celebrating and the executive director of the Council Lex Frieden, said to them

“This law is great in that it has removed discriminatory policies so that now more qualified people with disabilities can find jobs…And that more restaurants have ramps…And that one day, buses all across America will have mechanical lifts.” And then he stopped and said, “But this law will not change the heart of the employer, or the heart of the maitre’d at the restaurant, this law will not change the heart of the bus driver.” And then he raised his glass and said, “Here’s to changed hearts.”

Changed hearts. That’s the goal of Jesus. That’s the purpose of the Gospel. The heart is utterly crucial to Jesus. What we are in the deep, private recesses of our lives is what he cares about most. Jesus did not come into the world simply because we have some bad habits that need to be broken. He came into the world because we have an internal brokenness in our heart that must be purified.

In the kingdom of God, the law does not matter. The law is an external restraint. It’s a chain that keeps us from doing the wrong things that we have a desire to do. In God’s kingdom, that restraint is broken and we do not do the wrong things because, through the Spirit, we no longer have a desire—or we have an internal restraint—to not do them. We move from external barrier to internal desire. And when we have that purity of heart, God’s favor is upon us and we shall see God.

The whole idea of seeing God is an interesting one in Scripture. In a previous session on God’s favor being on the merciful, we talked about how God’s presence in some fashion sat upon the ark of the covenant and that only one person, the high priest, on one day, the day of atonement, for one purpose, the atonement of sin, could approach God. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we’re told about how Moses goes up on Mount Sinai to receive the law of God and, in some fashion, sees God face to face. To see God means to be admitted into his presence.

Not to see God from far away, but to come into his presence and interact with him as God. This was the purpose of Eden. God makes humanity and humanity lives in the presence of God. We’re told that, in some fashion, the Lord God walks through the garden. And it is sin that destroys that closeness. And from then on out, that closeness is only seen rarely through special mediators in special ways. But all that changes in Jesus. John says in his gospel.

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[b] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

My dad loves to tell this story about my grandfather shortly before my grandfather died.

My dad had gone to see him and my aunt, who was there with my grandfather. My aunt knew my dad was coming and was trying to convince my grandpa that he could wait on his nap.

Now Grandpa was stubborn and wanted to take his nap. “You can’t go to sleep yet, Dad. Jamie is coming out to see you.” So when Dad showed up, he sits down, “Hi, dad.”

“What are you here for, boy?”
“Dad, I came out to see you.”

Now Grandpa was mostly blind at this point.

“You got your eyes open?”

“uhhh…yeah?”
“Great. Now ya seen me.”

And he stood up and shuffled off to bed.

Fortunately for us, God isn’t like that. He doesn’t get old. He doesn’t get tired. He doesn’t just give us a perfunctory appearance. To see God is to be in relationship with him—and later, after his nap, I will say that my dad got to talk with Grandpa for a few hours before going back home. To see God is to be in his presence and to relate to him for who he is.

And a second thing is that, when you have this purity of heart, not only do you gain entrance into the presence of God, you begin to see how God’s presence has been around you the whole time. Max Lucado writes:

We are always in the presence of God. There is never a non-sacred moment! His presence never diminishes. Our awareness of his presence may falter, but the reality of His presence never changes.[ii]

God’s favor is upon those who allow the divine presence to purify their hearts and direct their actions. In this Constitution of the Kingdom, Jesus is not set up laws but tearing them down. He’s instead sharing with us a better way of living—one that has been transformed from the inside out.

[i] MLK Convocation at Illinois Wesleyan 1966

[ii] Max Lucado, Just Like Jesus