Pure part 2
A pure heart is a clean heart. That's one of the things that was accomplished on the cross. God made in us a clean heart and renewed a right spirit--He revealed HIS heart in our chest by cutting away the flesh of human effort with the circumcision made without hands, and He gave us HIS Holy Spirit so that we could receive and release His love. And that's why--that's HOW--the pure in heart can see God. We see God when we see love. And we see love through the eyes of grace. Through the Holy Spirit--our love receptor. A pure heart, a clean heart, is an undefiled heart. There's nothing in God's heart except love. There's no mixture. No duality. Look at Dictonary.com's definition of pure, "free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind; free from extraneous matter." So full of God's love--the God who IS love--that there isn't room for anything else. That's one of the things we sometimes miss in Jesus' parable in Matthew chapter 13. He likens the Kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed. The mustard seed is the only seed that cannot cross pollinate in order to become something else. A mustard seed is pure. And from that pure seed grows a tree--the Tree of Life. See, in the garden of Eden there were two trees, and one of the trees dealt with two things (the tree of knowledge of good and evil). That tree wasn't pure. It couldn't see God, it could only see exterior actions. And when Jesus came to the fig tree (which represents that tree of death) He cursed it because even though there were leaves on it--even though it LOOKED good--there was no fruit on it. THAT tree couldn't produce anything. Before Jesus finished the work on the cross people saw Him... but they couldn't SEE Him. They didn't have a pure heart. They struggled with actions. Good and evil. Surface stuff. What was buried underneath--the inner man, the hidden man of the heart--couldn't be seen. So Jesus cleaned up our mess. He cut away the flesh. God--who is a consuming fire--burned away all the chaff and revealed Himself to us and in us and through us and as us! He showed us what was pure by washing away everything else. Hebrews 10:22 puts it like this, "Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." Did you catch that? Pure water. The living water that flows out of our bellies (or hearts). He washed us with it, and filled us to overflowing with it. He took out all the contaminants of an evil conscious and showed us that pure heart. Showed us how to see Him. And when we see Him, we be Him. We behold what we become. A pure heart is what allows us to see God--in ourselves and in each other. A heart that is free from anything different than love. A heart that beats with love, love, and only love!