Scripture portion: Matthew 5:8- “BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART: FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD”
Introduction: In the previous chapter, we have seen that mercy and holiness are the two qualities which prepare us for our ministry. We meditated deeply about being filled with mercy. We also learned that those who can show the same mercy as that of God’s to others will obtain mercy to climb up to the next step of their spiritual journey in this world. In this chapter we are going to meditate on that next step, which is being pure in heart. By the mercy of God, we will start our journey to be pure in heart. By doing this, we are not only being prepared for our ministry in this world, but are also being prepared to meet our Bridegroom, Lord Jesus, in the second coming. The level and quality of ministry you are going to do for the Lord in this world directly depends on the level of mercy and purity (holiness) to which you have attained. The more you are filled with mercy and holiness, the more you can do wonders for the Lord, and also the more you will be prepared as a bride to meet your Bridegroom, Jesus.
Firstly, we have to understand the mercy of God by seeing this world through the eyes of God and also by experiencing personal salvation. Then, we have to show the same kind of mercy towards others. To show this kind of mercy, it is not just enough for us to experience salvation and see this world through God’s eyes, but also we have to undergo a lot of trials and tribulations. Those who will bear with patience and keep strong faith in God, in all these tribulations without grumbling against Him, will be able to show mercy towards others. Those who can do this will obtain mercy from God to climb the next step of being pure in heart. This is a summary of what I have been saying in the last chapter. I hope I am clear in what I have been trying to explain to you. Now, we shall concentrate on becoming pure in heart by the mercy of God.
Our God is a Holy God. If you ask me, “What is the most important quality of God?”, I will say without any doubt that it is holiness. Even love comes second, because, love is a part of holiness. Every good quality, whether it is love, or mercy, or grace, or patience, or meekness, is a part of holiness. In Galatians 5:22, we can see the fruit of Spirit. There Paul says, “the fruit of Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering----.” If we observe the words of Paul carefully, we can find that, even though he is listing many qualities, he is still considering them as only one fruit. He is saying “the fruit of the Spirit is” instead of “the fruits of the Spirit are”. By these words we can understand that all good qualities including love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, etc are a part of a final fruit. In this final fruit, are contained all these qualities. So, what is this ultimate fruit? We can find the answer in Romans 6:22. This fruit is Holiness. The fruit of the Spirit is holiness. How can Holy Spirit bear another fruit than holiness? His name itself indicates His nature. Holy Spirit is Holy. Therefore the fruit of Spirit which Paul is talking about in Galatians 5:22 is nothing other than holiness and not love as is generally being preached. Love is only a part of the main fruit. Do you want proof? Then, let me ask you a question. Can God sacrifice His holiness for love? No! Can God sacrifice His love for holiness? Yes! (This is the very reason He had to create a place called hell!). It is true that God is love, but more than that, God is holy. The archangels and the cherubs in Heaven are not singing day and night, “Loving, loving, loving, Lord God Almighty”, but they are singing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.”! Therefore, we have to understand that love is only a part of holiness. Holiness also constitutes of qualities other than love as given by Paul in Galatians 5:22. I am not trying to lessen the importance of love. Without love, holiness is not complete, because love is a part of holiness. I am only trying to tell you that holiness means more than love. There is more to holiness than just love.
God wants you to be a loving person. But more than that, God wants you to be holy. Jesus is saying that it is the pure in heart who will see God, not just who are filled with love. It is possible for you to be a loving person, overflowing with love, but at the same time not holy. Wondering how it is possible?! Then turn to the first epistle written by Paul to the Thessalonians. In that book, if you read the first nine verses of the fourth chapter carefully, you can find that the Thessalonians are filled with love, but coming to holiness, they are not up to the mark. Here, Paul is exhorting them to flee from uncleanness but he is not exhorting them to show love. This is because, they have love, but they do not have holiness. This again proves that holiness is the ultimate fruit of the spirit, and that love is only a part of holiness. It takes more than just love to be pure in heart. That is what Jesus is expecting from every one of us when He is saying, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
Therefore, to become a successful God’s servant, and also to be fully prepared to meet Lord Jesus in His second coming, we should not only be filled with mercy as we have seen earlier, but also we have to be filled with holiness.
Now, the next question which arises is, “How can we be filled with Holiness? Or, how can we become pure in heart?”. Before we can see the answer to this question, it will be helpful for us to recollect what we have meditated on how we could be filled with mercy. We have seen that, to be filled with mercy, firstly we have to experience God’s mercy in salvation; secondly, we have to see this world through God’s eyes to get a correct knowledge of His mercy; thirdly, we have to experience a lot of trials and tribulations to be filled with that kind of mercy. It is the same with holiness. We will now concentrate on how we can achieve this. May the Holy Spirit of God lead us.
A natural man (or an unbeliever or an unsaved person) cannot perceive the holiness of God. The degree of the holiness of God is so great that our limited human brains cannot comprehend it. The Holy Bible in John 1:18 declares that no man had ever seen God. Therefore, it follows that no man has ever understood true holiness. Many people, throughout the ages, gave up every thing and became sages in the pursuit of holiness. They lived the strictest, hardest, and the most disciplined lives possible to live for a human being. But, did they attain holiness? Can anyone of those great sages put their hands on their chest and declare without hesitation that they have experienced true holiness? No, even the Holy Bible asks, “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? (Proverbs 20:9)”. No one had said “yes” to this question. The only way to get a feel of holiness is to see God. Jesus came into this world with the same intention of making us see God. The Bible declares in John 1:18- “No man hath ever seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him”. Jesus came into this world. He revealed God, whom no man had ever seen. Therefore, anyone who wants to get an idea of what holiness is, should come to Jesus. There is no other way. A man who comes to Jesus and experiences salvation gets a fore taste of the holiness of God. A man who believes in Jesus and repents of his sins and asks forgiveness of his sins will be washed by the Blood of Jesus. While he is being washed by the Blood of Jesus for the first time, he comes to know for the first time about what it means by the holiness of God. He stands in awe seeing the power of the Blood of Jesus in making him pure from every kind of sin and uncleanliness. He glorifies God with unspeakable joy, wonder, fear, and awe because of what he had newly found: The Holiness of God! Prior to experiencing salvation, he could never imagine that God is so holy. But now, because of Jesus, his heart is crying out loudly without ceasing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty”. This was and is and will be the first encounter of any human being in this world with the true God of Holiness. But wait. This does not mean that all those who have experienced salvation have attained to the level of holiness of God! What actually happened during the time of salvation is, the person who got saved has been completely cleansed from his previous sins and just got an idea of the holiness of God. There is still more than this to be achieved. He has to pursue, or follow after, or try to reach that same holiness which he had seen in God through Jesus. This is a life-long process and continues into eternal life.
Now, the newly born-again believer, after his encounter with the holiness of God, will begin to see this world and even himself (or herself) as God sees him. He begins to perceive how filthy and unclean this world has become in the sight of God. He can feel the Holy Spirit of God grieving with unutterable moans seeing the sin in this world. The same burden of the Holy Spirit fills his heart. He will come to know what a great sinful nature he has within himself. He will realize how God grieved because of his sins. His heart will break. He earnestly prays with the burden given to him by the Holy Spirit, for this perishing world. He shares the burden of the Holy Spirit in prayer. He strongly desires that every one should come to realize how sinful they are and how greatly they have grieved the Holy God. In the mean while, he earnestly takes the decision not to make the Holy Spirit grieve any more because of his own sins.
But alas! He is not able to overcome his sinful nature. No matter how much he tries to keep himself holy, he fails again and again. He had tasted the holiness of God. He experienced what it means to be completely pure without any pricking or complaining of the conscience, when he was first washed by the Blood of Jesus. He knows how greatly the Holy Spirit of God mourns when he falls into sin. But, none of this knowledge is stopping him from sinning again and again. He desperately wants to be holy. He does not want to grieve the Holy Spirit any more. But it seems out of his control. He is helpless. He is crying. He is almost mad. Like Paul had once cried in Romans 7:24, he also is crying, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death!”
But, he little realizes that the Almighty Hand of God is leading him safely through these mysterious and agonizing experiences. We have seen that it is absolutely necessary for us to go through trials and tribulations to be filled with mercy. In the same manner, it is absolutely necessary for us to be tempted again and again by sin to be filled with holiness. This is a kind of spiritual warfare. Those who come out victoriously will be blessed with holiness from the Heaven above. Those who lose will be bonded with uncleanliness. Jesus Himself was led by none other than the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by none other than satan for forty long days, that too with fasting! The same Holy Spirit, who led Jesus, will lead us into the wilderness to be tempted by satan. Jesus overcame every temptation (only three kinds of temptations are recorded in the gospel of Matthew), and came out victoriously, ready for the ministry. All those who come out victoriously will be ready for ministry and also for the second coming of the Lord, being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Dear reader, remember this. If you are a saved person, then a time will definitely come in your spiritual life when you will be continuously tempted to commit sin. You will be overwhelmed by sinful thoughts. If you are an angry person you will be tempted to be angry again and again. You will be tempted in your weakest area again and again by satan. During that time, do not get confused. You should then realize that you have been led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by satan. During this period, you will be tempted with many kinds of sins. The temptations will be so strong that you will start feeling that the gentiles who do not know about Jesus are living much holier lives than you do. You may fall many times to those temptations. In fact, you may become a worse sinner than you were before you were saved. At this point, questions will arise in your mind such as, “What is the use of salvation?”, or, “Jesus, you have chosen the wrong person. I can never overcome these temptations. I can never become holy. It is of no use. Do not try to make me better. It is impossible. Leave me…..”. But, you will little realize that the Holy Spirit is in full control of your situation. It is He who had led you into this situation. The Holy Spirit had led you into the wilderness. It is the Holy Spirit who has given permission to satan to tempt you in every possible way. Why did the Holy Spirit do like this to you?! You are wondering, aren’t you? The Holy Spirit wants to teach you some lessons in holiness.
Firstly, He wants you to know clearly that it is impossible to be holy by yourself.
Secondly, He wants you to teach to endure temptation (just as it had been written in James 1:12). He wants you to resist temptation with lot of patience. If you are never tempted, then you will never learn to show endurance or patience. You are being tempted to commit a particular kind of sin repeatedly. But the Holy Spirit is saying, “Endure, endure, and endure”. Be patient. Learn to endure temptation. Enduring is what we can and must do while we are being tempted. Overcoming temptation is not in our hands. It is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Listen carefully. We can only endure temptations, but we cannot overcome them. Only the Holy Spirit can make you overcome temptations. Unless you realize this truth, you will be tempted by sin continuously. All the wise sages, or so called holy men, or who ever they are, had only endured temptations, but they never overcame them. Their goal was to overcome temptations, but they had to be satisfied only with enduring temptations. Holiness comes not by enduring temptations, but by overcoming them. If you think that you can overcome temptations by yourself, then you will never come out of the wilderness into which the Holy Spirit had led you. But, if in the wilderness you realize that the only thing you can do is to endure temptations, and that to overcome temptations is not in your hands but in the hands of the Holy Spirit, then you will come out of the wilderness. Our role is limited to enduring temptations. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to make us overcome temptations.
Thirdly, the Holy Spirit wants to teach us to seek the mercy of God in keeping ourselves holy. He wants us to cry out like the publican in Luke 18:13: “God be merciful to me a sinner”. The mercy of God will save us from falling for temptations. God is merciful. He knows fully that we cannot keep ourselves holy. When we do sin, we will not come to the Throne of Grace immediately, thinking within ourselves, “How can I approach God? I have sinned. I will only come to Him after I have stopped committing this sin”. This kind of thinking only reveals that we have not got ridden of our pride and self-righteousness. Those who think like this are still of the opinion that they can keep themselves holy. As a result God will never help them to be holy. But those who realize that they are nothing but sinners, and that they cannot keep themselves holy, will continuously come to God seeking for His mercy, every time they commit sin, without any hesitation. They will not feel shy or insulted to come to the Throne of Grace revealing fully their sinful nature to God, because they gave up pride and self-righteousness completely. These people will obtain mercy and forgiveness from God. They will also be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome temptations (not just to endure temptations).
Also, at this point, the mercy which you had shown to others will come to your rescue, because it is written in Matthew 5:7- “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy”. If you are merciful and forgive all those who sin against you, then you will obtain mercy from God not only for the forgiveness of your sins but also for the indwelling of the power of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of overcoming temptations. You will not hate sinners, but will be filled with mercy for them, because you too are going through similar kind of temptations. If you never experienced the kind of sinful temptations that people are experiencing, then you will definitely hate and despise them. But if you are tempted with the same kind of sins and endure them with patience, then you will know the agony they are going through in overcoming them. You will be filled with mercy for them instead of hatred. You will pray from the bottom of your heart to God to forgive them because they are weak in overcoming their temptations. While you are praying like this out of mercy from your heart, you will obtain mercy from God to overcome your own temptations, by the power of the Holy Spirit. This process will gradually make you holy. Your holiness will increase day by day. You can see God. The more holy you become, the more clearly you can see God. Each time you come to the Throne of Mercy for help in your temptations, you will see God.
Now that you have seen God, you are ready to represent Him in this perishing world. You are now eligible to be called a servant of God, to preach about the God who is ready to forgive the worst of sinners. You have experienced God’s mercy. You have been filled with the mercy of God by experiencing tribulations and temptations. You showed mercy to sinners. You have obtained mercy to overcome temptations and became pure in heart. You have seen God at the Throne of Mercy. You are now fully prepared as a bride to meet the Bridegroom, Lord Jesus, in the second coming. Now you are fully equipped to enter the ministry and do the will of your Master. Jesus is speaking about this ministry in Matthew 5:9 to 5:12. We will meditate upon them in the next chapters. God bless you. Amen.
