Blessed Are The Pure In Heart

God knows what we do and say all our days;
Also, the feelings and thoughts of the mind.
In few of us are deeds and thoughts in phase;
Judgment for the unmatched might be unkind!
For he who rids his mind of hidden sin
And guards his acts and words as Jesus taught,
Will, in heaven, be near to God, drawn in
His inner circle, forever so taut!
But he whose heart nurtures pride and lust,
While outward works lift him high in Christ's church,
Might end his life as one of futile trust,
When judged a goat*, for the sheep he'd besmirch!
May my inner and outer lives be pure,
That in heaven I'll see my God for sure!

*"judged a goat" = be condemned

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." (Matthew 5:8)

By "pure in heart" Jesus meant a sinless mind, the inner nonpublic thoughts, feelings, memory, attitudes---that is, sinlessness on the inside, which, by the way, is much more difficult for the Christian to achieve than purity on the outaide. Like righteousness, purity of heart is probably unattainable to achieve in this life. You may well ask, then, how can anyone become perfect enough to be eligible for admission to heaven? The answer is, he cannot, not by his efforts; thank God, by His grace He adds to what we have struggled to improve in the flesh what we need for purity on the inside and outside, because everyone in heaven must have perfect purity. The greatest handicap to the Kingdom of God is the impurity evident in the lives of believers on earth, especially the gap between outward and inner purity of Christians. All Christians are, to some extent, hypocrites. This unhappy truth acts as a restraint to many non-believers. Mahatma Ghandi once said that he would be a Christian if he ever met one. What such an attitude reveals is a lack of understanding of God's grace---His unmerited mercy that adds to the meagre goodness that any human can achieve on his own.

The grace of God that makes us admissible to heaven is due to the atoning death of Jesus. Had He not lived and died in the flesh, no one could have entered heaven. That is the reason that Christians are so villified in postmodern thought for insisting that without belief in Jesus Christ no one can be saved (See John 14:6).

"being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6)

Paul is reassuring the Philippian Christians that Jesus will continue perfecting purity in them until the end of time, meaning that because of their trust in accepting Jesus as God He will work in their lives through the Holy Spirit to perfect their purity until heaven begins. There are many more scriptural references to God's adding that which our human natures have prevented us from achieving. A very good assurance is found in Zechariah 3:1-6. Here Joshua, the current high priest 500 years before the birth of Jesus, in a vision, symbolically appears before God in filthy garments (meaning with sin clinging to him). Satan is with him, acting like a prosecutor, accusing him of being unworthy to enter heaven. God (Jesus) orders the abgels to put spotless robes on Joshua, making him symbolically clearn, then berates Satan, saying, Wasn't Joshua a "brand snatched from the fire"? In other words, He compared Joshua, imperfect as he obviously was, to any other sinner snatched from condemnation to hell at the last minute and admitted into heaven by the addition of grace from God. Praise God! By His mercy we enter eternal life in heaven, not by our own goodness!