“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8)
We finally reach the point where we can talk about the greatest aspect of the blessing of this beatitude. There are differing ways to understand this blessing, though a few of them are certainly linked. This is certainly linked with the Old Testament beatific sight of the glory of God. But we must also not miss the New Testament bringing of the sight of God in Christ. In the Old Testament there was the belief that if a person ever saw God that person would die. There is an element of truth to that but it was primarily in the physical realm. But there is also the great and wondrous sight of God given to the soul.
We must first ask what it means to see God. Is this sight physical, mental, or spiritual? 1 Pet 1:8 gives us an idea of this: “and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, & though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” There is the sense from this text that the people had never seen Him and still did not see Him. However, they still believed, loved, and greatly rejoiced in Him with joy inexpressible. Clearly the way that Christ was not seen was with the physical eyes and yet He was perceived by the soul. Not only just perceived, but they saw Christ and were utterly certain in the way they saw Him.
1 Timothy 1:17 sets out the impossibility of seeing God with the physical eyes: “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” God is invisible and cannot be seen, though we must stress that His invisibility is to the physical eye. Hebrews 11:27 tells us how Moses saw God: “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen.” Surely this was what he was praying for in Exodus 33:18: “I pray You, show me Your glory!”
David saw God in this way too in Psalm 63:1-3: “A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory.
3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You.” We then have the majestic passage in Isaiah 6:1-5 where Isaiah saw the Lord: “”Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” While some might argue that Isaiah did see God in this passage, John 12:41 and its context tells us that it was Christ that Isaiah saw: 39 “For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, 40 “HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.” 41 These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him.”
We also know that Adam walked with God in the Garden, but that does not mean that Adam saw God in the brilliance of His uncreated and infinite glory. It might mean that God was with Adam in an especial way or it might mean that God appeared in some form as He did many times in the Old Testament. We also know that Jacob is said to have wrestled with God, but again it was a theophany of some sort and not the infinite and spiritual God. There is simply no way a person can see God in this world with physical eyes as I Timothy 6 sets out: 15 “which He will bring about at the proper time– He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen.” No man has seen that part of God with his physical eyes and can never see God with physical eyes.
Clearly Holy Writ does not allow for seeing God with the physical eyes. Yet the promise in this beatitude is that the person that is pure in heart is blessed because he sees God. We must stop once again and try to grasp what is going on here and try to focus on some of the implications of this. If this is true, then all of our efforts at trying to see God in the physical realm and to see physical manifestations of Him are simply worthless at best and deceptive to the soul at worst. If we do not understand the nature of what it means to see God, then we are going to be running around trying to see God in the wrong way. If we see Him in the wrong way we will pursue spiritual growth in the wrong way and perhaps be deceived about our own salvation and the salvation of others. Those with charismatic tendencies should take note on this point.
However, let me try to encourage anyone reading this to pursue the true sight of God. The great promise and hope as Christians is to see God. It is not to have great riches and all the things that the world offers; it is to have a sight of God. These are the beatitudes and this sight of God is called the beatific vision, that is, blessedness that comes from seeing God. As Christians we are to pursue our blessedness in God. Our greatest blessedness and reward, at least we try to say, is God Himself. We cry out as Moses did to have Him show us His glory. Eternal life is the knowledge of Him (John 17:2-3). God can give us nothing greater than Himself. So we can desire nothing greater or better than God. Our desire is to see and know the Beloved. That drives us on and on to pursue holiness and a pure heart that we can and may see Him. Let us not grow weary in this, but let us strive to know what Scripture teaches us about what it really means to see God.
II Corinthians 3:15-18 points us in the way this is done and the blessedness of seeing God. 15 “But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; 16 but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18 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 sight of God that we see is not just any sight, but it is of His glory. We cannot see God in the very essence of His being, but we must see the shining forth of God in His glory. By analogy we never really see the very essence of the sun and in fact if we moved much closer we would be burned up by it. But instead we see the outshining of the sun and we see by its light and feel its warmth. The basic point here is that the promise to see God is really a promise to see His glory and not His very essence.
John 11:40 is very instructive in this: “”Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” It is by faith that a person beholds the glory of God in the events that happen in the world. The context of John 11:40 is the death and resurrection of Lazarus. Many people saw what happened, but only those with faith saw the glory of God in it. The others saw the miracle but did not see the glory of God. Now we can see the centrality of faith in Scripture. Faith is the “organ” of the soul that sees the glory of God in the world. Faith is that which penetrates through the clouds of the world and focuses on the things that are spiritual and are ultimate reality.
Let us back up a bit and read II Corinthians 3:15-18 again (see two paragraphs up). It is when we behold the glory of the Lord by faith that we are transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another. It is not just having an academic understanding of this glory that changes us into His image, that is, to be like Him and to share in that glory, but it is to see it by faith. It is not only to see it by faith, but to drink in His glory and for the Spirit to change us to be like that glory. That only happens by faith. But there is another side to this as well. If there is no true faith, there is no sight of the glory of God. If one does not see the glory of God, then one does not know God and so does not have eternal life (John 17:3). If one does not see the glory of God, then there is no true spiritual growth no matter how moral the person is. If true faith must behold the glory of God in order to see God, then true faith must shine forth the glory of God as its morality. We were not made to be moral, we were made to be like God and He is a God of infinite glory.
Surely it is obvious why a person must pursue a pure heart in order to see God. One reason we can “see” God with a pure heart is that the heart is the vision of the soul. A pure heart has unclouded vision to the degree it is pure. A heart is like the glasses or lens of the soul. Sin gets the glasses dirty and out of focus which obscures the vision, but purity is like clean and focused glasses which help us see. Another reason is that a pure heart is the work of the Spirit working the character and life of God in us. So the more we are like God the more we can see Him. The blessings of the pure heart are in the ability to see God and the more pure the heart is the more of the glory of God it sees. That in itself is a blessing, but the blessing continues in seeing and drinking in more and more of His glory.
Do you have a pure heart? Do you desire a pure heart? If not, why are you settling for such insignificant things rather than the glory of God? Why are you content to settle with religion, theology, worldly riches and honor when the glory of God is shining forth? The reason that you are willing to settle for so little is that your heart is impure because of self-love. Your heart sees the glory of self and desires more. It does not want to be abased and do nothing but live for the glory of God. Here we see man’s utter helplessness before God and the need for a full grace. God only opens the eyes to see His glory by the glory of His grace. Works will never do it.
God Loves... Himself 
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