Christianity is a religion of the heart because God’s concerned about your heart. He seeks a genuine heart. The Christian religion is about each individual, not a sum of all followers. Christianity is about who you are as an individual person, and who God is.
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) is a pretty well-known scripture. It opens with what is known as the Beatitudes, where Jesus claims a series of unexpected characteristics as being “blessed.” To grasp this part of the sermon, we must realize that being blessed doesn’t mean being happy, which our society wrongly defines. Blessed is a state of being, as a result you can be blessed without being happy. Being blessed is grasping who you are. There’s a deep desire within to be blessed. You can only experience these blessing if you grow and mature spiritually.
Being Blessed
One of these blessings that Jesus speaks of is purity of heart. In Matthew 5:8 Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In order to see God, your heart has to be pure. Someone with a pure heart is someone who’s heart aligns with God. This doesn’t mean perfection, instead it means being who God created you to be. You’re seeking and pursuing God’s intentions and desire for your life. You aren’t hiding behind current trends or trying to be someone you’re not meant to be. You aren’t thinking one thing, then doing another.
You’re true to yourself and are in line with who God created you to be. This means you have integrity. Your heart is integrated with the Lord’s. God isn’t interested in who you think He wants you to be. No one is. He’s interested in the person He created you to be. He wants to see you master your identity.
When you see who you are and realize how small and immoral you are compared to God, that’s when you begin to grasp God’s goodness. When you see the purity of God, you naturally don’t believe God would accept you the way you are. Your sinful nature wants to hide and change your real identity because it’s horrid compared to God. But, offering whatever sin or shortcoming you’re holding onto is a genuine act of a pure heart. You can’t understand who God is through your own, minimal experiences. You have to understand His identity as something so much greater than anything you can ever comprehend. That’s what the Bible is all about. You’re ugly compared to God, all humans are. But Jesus changes that by making you beautiful – a prized possession.
Being Loved
Society sees love as a fairy tale between two people. But the ultimate love you sincerely desire isn’t the love of a prince charming. It’s the love of God. Love is a vulnerability that you cling to. You heart must be purified to encounter the true love you desire.
Purify doesn’t mean live a perfect, sinless life. It doesn’t mean being untainted, wholesome, innocent or virtuous. It isn’t some unobtainable reality that you must strive for endlessly. Purity means being real, authentic, clear, certain, complete, absolute. Purity means letting Christ come into your life – the good parts and the bad. It means being real and vulnerable with Him and letting Him exclaim your beauty. Purity means knowing you are good because God makes you good. Purity means knowing you don’t deserve what God’s going to freely give you, but He’s going to give it to you anyway. Purity means His love for you is true.
