Matt 5:1–12 — The Dynamics of Kingdom Righteousness: Beatitude 6

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). This Beatitude introduces a profound subject: the beatific vision. “Beatific” means blessed, and the beatific vision is the blessed sight of God that his people will enjoy forever in the new creation.

When Christ returns, he will give us glorified bodies, remove all our sin, and make us perfectly righteous, fitted for eternal fellowship and communion with God. What does it mean that we will see him? We will consider the question of the vision of God, its prerequisite, and its mediator.

The Question of the Vision of God

Can we really see God? Scripture presents truths that seem, at first, to conflict. Jesus promises plainly that we shall see God. Yet elsewhere the Bible says that no one can see him.

The Invisible Creator

God is a pure spirit. He has no body and is invisible. In 1 Timothy 1:17, Paul breaks into a doxology: “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.”

This fits the distinction between Creator and creature. God is not a physical being within creation. He is its Creator, above space, time, and material reality.

At the end of the same letter, Paul describes God as dwelling “in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). Notice those final words. It is not merely that no one has yet seen God; no one can see him. Our created eyes cannot behold the infinite, eternal Creator.

As finite creatures, we cannot see God as he is in himself—what theologians call his divine essence. We can know him through his revelation in creation and Scripture, but we cannot see his essence.

The Longing to See God

Alongside this teaching, Scripture records the longing of God’s people to see him. That desire is natural to those who have been born again. The Spirit has changed our hearts, and we long to know God and behold his glory.

Moses expressed this longing in Exodus 33. Israel had just committed the sin of the golden calf, breaking the first commandment and provoking God’s anger. Moses interceded for the people, insisting that they could not go forward unless God’s presence went with them.

In that setting, he pleaded, “Please show me your glory” (Exod. 33:18). God told him that no one could see his face and live, but he would place Moses in a cleft of the rock and allow him to see his back as his glory passed by. Moses received a limited manifestation of that glory, rather than its fullness.

The psalmist expresses the same desire: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness” (Ps. 17:15). Moses and the psalmist long for what Jesus promises. How do we reconcile that promise with God’s invisibility?

Seeing God’s Face

We will never see God’s essence as he is in himself. Even if we understand “seeing” spiritually, as seeing with the eyes of the heart, we remain finite creatures. Yet Scripture promises that we will see God’s face.

The language of his “face” describes his revelation of himself, the manifestation of his glory in a form suited to creatures. Psalm 11:7 says, “The upright shall behold his face.” Psalm 17 speaks of beholding his face in righteousness, and Revelation 22:4 declares, “They will see his face.”

This language helps us hold the biblical truths together. We cannot see God’s essence, but we can see him as he reveals himself. Calling this his “face” does not mean that God possesses bodily features. It describes the outshining of his glory, a revelation appropriate to the creatures he has made. The promise preserves the distinction between Creator and creature while assuring us that God will truly make himself known.

In the Old Testament, such revelation takes the form of theophanies—manifestations of God, as in the burning bush, the cloud of glory, or the appearance to Moses in Exodus 33. These are not indications that God has a body. They are ways in which the invisible God makes himself known.

The ultimate revelation of God’s face is the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God. In him, God’s glory is made known in its fullest revelation to us.

This is wonderful news. We will see God as he has revealed himself in Christ. There is a physical aspect, since Jesus has a glorified human body that we will see. There is also a spiritual aspect: our hearts will be transformed and enlightened to perceive God through his revelation in the Son.

The Precious Gift of Sight

There is something especially precious about sight. I do not mean to rank it absolutely above hearing, touch, taste, or smell; hearing, too, has tremendous importance. Yet sight conveys a wealth of knowledge and meaning.

Those who are blind can learn much through hearing and Braille, but they lack access to a great range of visual information. We say that a picture is worth a thousand words. A video can communicate still more. Seeing brings a particular immediacy to knowing.

Sight also matters deeply in our relationships. Imagine being married to someone whose face you had never seen. A loving and intimate relationship is certainly possible, yet the inability to see that beloved face remains a loss.

This helps us appreciate the promise of seeing God. With all the qualifications we have made, it is a promise of intimate knowledge and fellowship. We will see Christ with our physical eyes, and with enlightened hearts we will perceive God’s glory revealed in him. This is the hope Jesus sets before us: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The Prerequisite of the Vision of God

Jesus identifies the prerequisite clearly: purity of heart.

Holiness and the Presence of God

Psalm 24:3–4 asks, “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer is, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”

Jesus appears to be alluding to this psalm. Ascending the Lord’s hill means coming to Mount Zion, the place of his glorious presence. Those with pure hearts are fitted to stand there and behold him.

There is another dimension to the Old Testament’s warnings about seeing God. We have considered the distinction between Creator and creature, but some passages also point to the barrier of human sin.

In Exodus 33:20, God tells Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” The warning concerns more than the impossibility of a creature comprehending God’s essence. It implies that sinful people cannot endure the revelation of his holy glory.

Judges 13 provides another example. After the angel announces Samson’s birth to Manoah and his wife and then departs, Manoah says, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God” (v. 22). Like Moses, he is conscious of being unfit to stand in God’s presence.

Jesus declares that the pure in heart are fitted to see God. Why must the heart be pure? Because God is perfectly holy, and those who receive him into their souls must be holy as well.

This sight is a spiritual receptivity to God. Its object is unlike any created thing. We are speaking of God himself, perfect in goodness and holiness. The heart that would behold him must be conformed to that goodness and holiness.

The vision of God is therefore more than observing him from a distance. We are not speaking merely of being able to point toward something and say that we see it. The sight of God involves union, communion, and love. To behold him in this sense is to know and love him intimately.

That is why purity matters. The soul must be receptive to the God who is seen, and this God is perfectly good and holy. A heart conformed to his holiness can receive him in love. The necessary change is therefore a change in the beholder, a spiritual transformation that fits us for fellowship with him.

Who Can Claim a Pure Heart?

That raises an immediate difficulty. Which of us can say that we are pure enough to see God? Proverbs 20:9 gives voice to our concern: “Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’?”

Even after acknowledging and repenting of our sins, we cannot claim to have purified ourselves completely. None of us can present a perfectly clean heart as our own achievement.

Yet Jesus is not using this Beatitude merely to expose guilt and leave his disciples wondering whether anyone can qualify. Like the other Beatitudes, it is a declaration of blessing addressed to believers.

The Sermon on the Mount speaks to those who have been brought by grace into Christ’s kingdom, who follow him as Savior and Lord. When he calls them poor in spirit and declares that the kingdom belongs to them, he encourages them with what is already true of them. The sixth Beatitude serves the same purpose.

Although our first response may echo Proverbs 20:9, we must also hear Jesus say that his disciples are pure in heart. We may hesitate to say this of ourselves because we remain so conscious of sin. Yet he is speaking words of encouragement to believers, not simply confronting them with a requirement that leaves them condemned. In a real sense, those who believe in him can make that claim. How is this possible?

A New Heart Given by Grace

The answer lies in the new covenant promise of Ezekiel 36:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart … I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

The New Testament repeatedly describes believers in terms of this promised cleansing. Hebrews 10:22 speaks of our hearts being “sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.” These statements assure Christians of what God has done for them.

In Acts 15, Peter recalls the conversion of Cornelius and his household. Gentiles had seemed unclean from the standpoint of the Mosaic law, yet God brought them into his people by grace. Peter says that God “cleansed their hearts by faith” (v. 9). Their hearts were pure because God had cleansed them.

This does not mean that believers are morally perfect. It means that God has given them new hearts through regeneration. He has changed their fundamental disposition.

Ezekiel’s promise speaks specifically of cleansing from idols. God takes hearts turned toward the creature rather than the Creator and transforms them into hearts that love him. We become those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

A disciple recognizes and confesses sin, trusts in Christ, and receives the Holy Spirit. Regeneration brings new desires, a new disposition, and a clean conscience. First Timothy 1:5 describes “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

Again, Scripture speaks of believers as having a pure heart. These statements do not deny our continuing need for forgiveness. They describe the new birth and the reality of the Spirit’s work within us. The person who once loved idols now loves God; the person whose heart was turned away from him now hungers for righteousness. We have not purified ourselves, but God has cleansed us in Christ.

Purity at the Center of Discipleship

This agrees with Jesus’ repeated emphasis on the heart throughout Matthew. In Matthew 12:33–34, he compares people to trees known by their fruit and says, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” In Matthew 15:19, he says that evil thoughts and deeds come out of the heart.

The problem is internal, and so is the change God brings. In fulfillment of the new covenant, those who heed Christ’s call to repent and follow him receive new hearts. This is the fundamental difference between the believer and the unbeliever.

By grace, we possess the purity of heart Jesus describes. We have not earned it through efforts at self-purification. God gives it and thereby makes us fit to see his face.

The work remains imperfect in this life, but he will bring it to perfection. One day we will enjoy uninterrupted communion with him.

“Prerequisite,” then, does not mean a meritorious condition, as though a pure heart earned the vision of God. It means that holiness is necessary for knowing, loving, and enjoying the holy God. By grace, he is producing that holiness in us and making us fit for heaven.

The Mediator of the Vision of God

How will we behold God? Through Christ, the mediator of the beatific vision. Seeing Christ, the image of God, we see God.

This preserves all the distinctions already made. We do not behold God’s essence, cease to be creatures, or cross the boundary between Creator and creature. Rather, God reveals himself ultimately and perfectly in his Son.

The Son Who Reveals the Father

You may ask where this comes from in the text. Jesus says, “They shall see God,” without adding “through me.” I believe his mediation is implied by the context of the Sermon on the Mount and his proclamation that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Jesus often speaks about God, the Father, and the kingdom without explicitly naming himself as mediator. Yet the identity of the speaker matters. He is the King who brings the kingdom, the one announcing its arrival and calling people to enter it. When he tells them to repent because the kingdom is at hand, or to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness, he speaks as the one through whom these blessings come. His role as mediator underlies the proclamation.

The Sermon on the Mount repeatedly speaks of the Father—seventeen times in Matthew 5–7. Jesus tells disciples about a relationship with their heavenly Father that is theirs through him. As the Son who reveals the Father, he makes it possible for them to call God their Father.

Matthew 11:27 states this explicitly:

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Christ is the only revealer of the Father. No one knows the Father except through him. This larger context supports the inference that the promise in Matthew 5:8 is a promise of seeing God through Christ.

Hearing the Promise from Jesus Himself

One reason I love the Gospels is that they give us Jesus’ own words. People sometimes object to red-letter Bibles because they may suggest that Jesus’ words are more inspired than the rest of Scripture. The whole Bible is God’s inspired Word, and every part has divine authority.

Yet there is something especially moving about hearing these promises from Jesus himself. He is our great High Priest and King, and he is also our Prophet—the ultimate revealer of God.

This is one reason I love John’s Gospel, with its many gracious promises spoken by Jesus. When he says, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out,” we hear our Savior personally inviting us and assuring us of his welcome.

The same truth has full authority when taught by an apostle. Yet hearing it from the lips of Christ, the final Prophet promised through Moses in Deuteronomy 18, brings a particular spiritual benefit. His words impress themselves upon our hearts and consciences.

Here, too, we hear him assure his disciples that those whose hearts he has cleansed by grace will see God. Take these words as the Savior’s own encouragement to you. He is describing those he has brought into his kingdom of salvation, and he tells them what awaits them. The one who gives the promise is himself the mediator of its fulfillment.

Seeing God in Christ

John 1:18 says that no one has seen God at any time, but the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known.

In John 14, Philip asks, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus answers, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (vv. 8–9).

To see God is to see Christ, his perfect image and eternal Son. This is what we will experience in heaven.

John Owen explores this hope in The Glory of Christ, published posthumously in 1684. I understand it to have been among his final writings, completed near the end of his life. Its central text is Jesus’ prayer in John 17:24:

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.

Owen argues, I believe rightly, that our vision will not be limited to Christ’s human nature. Our physical eyes will behold his glorified humanity, but with the eyes of our hearts we will also behold the glory of his divine person.

The Glory of the Incarnate Son

This is possible because of what theology calls the hypostatic union. Christ is fully God and fully man, possessing two distinct natures in one person. “Hypostatic” refers to this personal union.

Colossians 2:9 expresses the truth this way: “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Christ’s humanity remains truly human; it does not become divine. Yet because the human and divine natures are united in his one person, beholding his humanity becomes the means through which God reveals the glory of the divine Son to our hearts.

I cannot claim to comprehend fully how this will be experienced. Yet it seems to be what Jesus asks for in his prayer. He does not merely ask that we see his human nature, but that we behold his glory—the glory of the only begotten Son who became flesh.

Through God’s revelation in the flesh, we behold the divine person of Christ. This, I believe, lies behind the biblical language of seeing God’s face. We cannot behold his essence, but we can behold the revelation of his glory, whose fullness is found in the incarnate Son.

The Blessed Hope of Seeing Christ

Brothers and sisters, rejoice in this promise: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Jesus is not telling us to make ourselves pure through our own efforts so that we might qualify for heaven. That would be salvation by works. He is blessing disciples who, in fulfillment of Ezekiel’s new covenant promise, have received pure hearts by grace—imperfectly now, but perfectly after death.

By grace, we are being fitted to behold God’s face in Christ. This is the great blessedness of heaven. Its chief glory is not treasures, crowns, or streets of gold, but Christ himself: seeing the Lamb upon his throne and worshiping him forever.

For now, Scripture reveals these things to us, and we walk by faith rather than sight. One day faith will give way to sight. Knowing that we will see Christ comforts us now and strengthens us to persevere and serve him.

When the trials of this present age leave us tired, exhausted, and worn down, this hope sustains us like manna in the wilderness. We can endure because one day we will behold our Savior.

It also encourages holiness. We do not labor to earn purity, but seek to live out the purity God has begun in us by his Spirit. First John 3 promises that we shall see him as he is and adds, “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”

Let us seek grace to grow in holiness and sanctification, not to earn salvation, but to enter more fully into the joy of beholding Christ at the last day.