Posted on 04/20/2016 12:09:55 PM PDT by metmom
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8).
You have a part to play in becoming pure in heart.
Purifying a heart is the gracious and miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, but there are some things we must do in response to His prompting. First, we must admit we can't purify our own hearts. Proverbs 20:9 says, "Who can say, 'I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin?'" The implied answer: no one!
Next, we must put our faith in Jesus Christ, whose sacrifice on the cross is the basis for our cleansing. Acts 15:9 says that God cleanses hearts on the basis of faith. Of course our faith must be placed in the right object. First John 1:7 says, "If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin."
Finally, we must study the Bible and pray. The psalmist said we keep our way pure by keeping it according to God's Word, which we must treasure in our hearts (Ps. 119:9, 11). As we pray and submit to the Word, the Spirit purifies our lives.
That's how you acquire and maintain a pure heart. As a result you "shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). That doesn't mean you'll see Him with physical eyes, but with spiritual ones. You begin to live in His presence and become increasingly aware of His working in your life. You recognize His power and handiwork in the beauty and intricacy of creation (Ps. 19). You discern His grace and purposes amid trials and learn to praise Him in all things. You sense His ministry through other Christians and see His sovereignty in every event of your life. Life takes on a profound and eternal meaning as you share Christ with unbelievers and see Him transform lives.
There's no greater joy than knowing you are pure before God and that your life is honoring to Him. May that joy be yours today and may God use you in a powerful way for His glory!
Suggestions for Prayer
Ask the Lord for continued grace to live a pure life so others will see Christ in you.
For Further Study
Read Isaiah 6:1-8.
Describe Isaiah's vision of God. How did Isaiah respond to God's presence?
Studying God’s Word ping
It makes me nervous to hear John Mac. say we “have a part to play” and “we must” do this or that.
If we can’t come to Him unless the Father draws us, and He regenerates us, and He grants us faith and repentance, and He is sanctifying us, then what part is left to us other than to receive His grace with joy.
I have listened to hundreds of hours of John’s mp3 sermons and don’t recall him saying anything like it.
“’The pure of heart will see God,’ according to the Lord’s infallible word (Mt. 5:8), according to his capacity, receiving as much as his mind can sustain; yet the infinite and incomprehensible nature of the Godhead remains beyond all understanding. For ‘the magnificence of His glory,’ as the Prophet says (Ps. 144-5), has no end, and as we contemplate Him He remains ever the same, at the same distance above us. The Great David enjoyed in his heart those glorious elevations as he progressed from strength to strength; and yet he cried to God: Lord, ‘Thou art the most High,’ forever and ever (Ps. 82:19). And by this I think he means that in all the infinite eternity of centuries, the man who runs towards Thee constantly becomes greater as he rises higher, ever growing in proportion to his increase in grace. ‘Thou,’ indeed, ‘art the most High,’ abiding forever, and canst never seem smaller to those who approach Thee, for Thou art always to the same degree higher and loftier than th! e faculties of those who are rising. St. Gregory of Nyssa”
and
“As a blacksmith can do nothing without the help of fire, however skilled he may be in wielding his tools, so a man should do everything he can on his side to purify his heart, using virtues as tools for this purpose; but without fire of the Spirit, everything he does will remain inactive and useless for his aim, for by itself what he does is powerless to cleanse the soul of its dirt and foulness.” St. Simeon the New Theologian
That took me aback, too.
You are correct.
I’ve found even the people that I like the best occasionally say something that leaves me wondering.
It’s not even a matter of us cooperating with God.
HE works in us to will and to do according to HIS good pleasure.
The very motivation to seek Him comes from Him Himself. We can’t even do that without His enabling.
This business of us doing it and needing the *help* of God to make it worthwhile makes it us doing it in out own strength and God is added as necessary.
One of the reasons I chose the quote from +Symeon the New Theologian was this:
“but without fire of the Spirit, everything he does will remain inactive and useless for his aim, for by itself what he does is powerless to cleanse the soul of its dirt and foulness.”
Seems clear to me that you and +Symeon are saying, at base, the same thing. Theosis is from God, not from our works. Orthodoxy teaches that absent Christ’s Incarnation, Death and glorious Resurrection, we would be doomed to a futile eternity without God in the place of the dead.
What he said makes it sound like we do the works and then the Holy Spirit added to them makes them worthwhile and that with the Holy Spirit the works can then cleanse us from sin.
But I don’t see that as a teaching of Scripture.
But nothing can cleanse us from sin except the blood of Jesus. Works CANNOT do it.
The wages of sin is death, not the wages of sin is works and if you do the works your sin debt is paid off.
The blood of Jesus cleanses us and our sin debt is WIPED. Gone forever.
The works are a testimony to the grace of God at work in us to His honor and glory.
I’m seventy. I was born from above in the early seventies. For decades I’ve been learning how to turn to God to deal with the wiles of the father of lies. Yup, I’m a Saint. But I am so inept I need His presence every day. The part I play is asking HELP! then relying on His Grace to be sufficient. Asking and relying, that’s prayer and faithing ...
Thank you for the reply. I’m 61 and born from above 5 years ago.
I guess I’m still in the grateful stage. I’ll take whatever purification God has planned for me at this time.
I do the things John M. discusses, but only because God put the desire to do them in my heart.
I love Peter’s short prayer on the water, “help me Lord!”
Indeed, short and sweet!
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