As you read and reflect on today’s beatitude, please listen to this track from contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. We will feature this track throughout Lent.
The Beatitudes
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”
Matthew 5:8
The Bible reveals that God “dwells in unapproachable light whom no one has ever seen or can see” (I Timothy 6:16). Moses longed for and prayed to see God with his eyes, but God told him: “No one shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:18-20). What Moses and other Old Testament believers could only dream of is revealed to us in Christ Jesus: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18).
Jesus explained to His disciples: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). While Jesus’ disciples did see Jesus with their physical eyes, the truth is that we have not. But Jesus speaks a special blessing over people who have not seen Him with physical eyes, yet still believe in Him. To doubting Thomas Jesus said: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29). Here is Jesus’ special blessing for you and for me who see Jesus with the eyes of our faith.
The Apostle Paul describes the wondrous miracle that the Spirit of God works in us as we keep our spiritual eyes focused on Christ:
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit (II Corinthians 3:18).
We cannot make ourselves like Jesus; only God can do that! But as our eyes of faith keep focused on the glory of God revealed in Christ, we are transformed. It’s an interesting word that is rendered as “transformed”; it is the Greek word metamorphosis. It’s the word we use to describe the mysterious process of a caterpillar “metamorphosized” into a butterfly, or a tadpole wondrously transformed into a frog! Who can understand or explain it! But this is the wondrous mystery the Spirit of God works in us as we keep our hearts focused on Christ.
PONDER AND PRAY
“Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.”—II Corinthians 3:18, The Message
- “Nothing between us and God”. What a wondrous statement from the text above! Here is purity of heart, singleness of mind, focused on God. Are you today aware of anything that comes between you and God?
- What do you want Say To God?
