Clean in Heart

The Sixth Beatitude

Blessed are the clean in heart, because they will see God!

The more I write on the Beatitudes, the more I realize in my soul—my heart—that I am far from the fulfillment of any of them in myself. 

However much I may aspire to, or perhaps in brief moments see, even one of these beatitudes actualized by God in my life (never fully), the truth is that these are all far from my personal reach. 

Only Jesus embodied these, the very one who preached the Sermon, and only in submitting myself in abandon to Jesus will these characteristics—unknowingly—work themselves out in my life. 

The second that I think I am humble, I am no longer humble. 

The second I think I am poor in spirit, I am no longer. 

Besides God, only others can see any of these, and imperfectly; I cannot see them in myself because in the seeing they disappear.

Only in singleminded devotion to God without seeking these will they ever happen.

Which leads me to this sixth beatitude.

However this beatitude is translated, I am not there. 

Only Jesus is.

The vast majority of English translations follow the KJV and use “pure in heart” to translate katharoi tē kardia. And that is fine, except we must define “pure” and “in heart.” Some use “clean in heart,” which I have chosen. 

Heart

Heart first.

Kardia (from which we get “cardiac” etc.) can refer to the literal heart, the organ that pumps blood, but that is virtually never the case in the Bible—heart (Hebrew lb/lbb; Greek kardia) is used more than a 1000 times in the Bible and I have only found six literal instances: 2 Kings 9:24; Psalm 37:15; 73:26; Jeremiah 4:19; Hosea 13:8; Nahum 2:8. 

Heart is almost always used to indicated the totality of mind, emotions, and desires (heart is often paired with and almost the same as “soul”).

“Love the LORD with all your heart.” “Pharaoh hardened his heart.” “Their hearts melted within them.” “Take heart!” “Uncircumcised hearts.” 

Looking at all of the ways heart is used throughout the Old and New Testaments is a great exercise in understanding all of the problems of humanity. 

We have a heart problem. 

Our hearts are anything but what Jesus says is “blessed” in this beatitude.

We need new hearts—heart transplants from God.

Pure

When Jesus used pure/clean (Heb. tahor, Gr. katharos), Jewish listeners would immediately have thought of all the purity laws in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy for food, body, diseases, and so many other things. In the religious culture of Jesus’s day, purity laws dominated the Temple cult and Pharisees tried with sincerity to personally keep them, as did the Essenes at Qumran and other places. 

No one stayed ritually clean all of the time, though some prided themselves on trying (we might reckon trying to live a morally upright life today as a reasonable comparison—those who do “all the right things” can become “Pharisaical” in their opinion of others).

In my Israel travels we saw dozens of mikva’ot, stepped pools for ritual cleansing, in places far from the Temple. These were especially numerous at the time of Jesus. Many people were obsessed with keeping ritually pure.

A huge mikveh at Qumran

A recently discovered mikveh in Jerusalem

But Jesus knew that outward purity is nothing before God, only the pure heart.

The lexicon gives the possible terms <clean, pure, free, undefiled, clear> to render the adjective katharos, and the Old Testament contains all of these uses (Heb. tahor). 

If you take the totality of these words and put them together, I think you begin to get to what Jesus intended by katharoi tē kardia: the clean, pure, free, undefiled, clear in heart.

Purity of heart is the heart unfettered and free from any influence of the world.

There is only one focal-point for the eyes of the pure heart: God.

Those clean in heart will see God, because God is the only place they are looking.

And no human but Jesus has ever fulfilled this ideal. His entire life he had a clear-eyed focus on his Father.

Yet … the listeners to Jesus (at least his Jewish ones) would no doubt hear the echo of two well-known Psalms of David, Psalm 24 and 51, and perhaps Isaiah 6.

Who shall ascend to the mountain of Yahweh and who shall go up to His holy place? The clean of hands and the pure of heart who does not lift his soul to vanity nor swears falsely (Psalm 24:3-4).

David himself knew that to truly enter into God’s presence in the tabernacle (“the Holy Place” on Mt. Moriah/the Temple Mount) meant not just ritual preparation but an upright life—clean hands and a pure heart—exemplified first by not looking away from God (in this verse vanity—all those shiny things of life) and second by truth-telling (not swearing falsely—in anything).

The entire Sermon can almost be summed up in that one verse!

Create for me a clean heart, O God, and renew within me a steadfast spirit (Psalm 51:12).

David himself fell far short of clean hands and a pure heart. He came to understand that the only access he had to a clean heart was God’s creating hand to do it for him.

Ditto for us. 

Create for me a clean heart!  Replace the other one that is totally corrupt!

The only way that you or I will ever have the heart of purity and integrity that Jesus speaks of in this beatitude is to cast ourselves on the mercy of God (who has mercy upon us) to do the work that we can never do on our own. Isaiah experienced this very cleansing (Isaiah 6:1-7).

Jesus himself, the only One pure in heart, prepared and made the way for us to do this through his shed and purifying blood on the cross.

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An Invitation

Are you interested in learning New Testament Greek? I will be teaching an intensive course with 50 hours of live instruction via Zoom from June to August. Please contact me at jack.painter@gmail.com or go to https://www.rightonmission.org/intro-to-new-testament-greek for more information. I would love to have you!

As indicated since the beginning of this Substack, I have intended to make some materials available for paid subscribers only. Today I begin to put the “Observations on the Greek Text” in this area. I soon plan to put more extensive Greek instruction and materials on Bible interpretation in general in the paid subscriber area. If this material interests you, please consider a paid subscription!

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Observations on the Greek Text

μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται.

The Dative Case of τῇ καρδίᾳ

All of the translations (including mine) have “in heart” for τῇ καρδίᾳ. Yet the word “in” (ἐν) is not there, only the dative case, thus a “pure” dative. I briefly mentioned this dative in the first beatitude: οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι.