What is purity of heart

And all these signs came to pass that day. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. It also praises the good wife, as in this passage from the Book of Sirach:. Happy is the husband of a good wife; the number of his days will be doubled. A loyal wife rejoices her husband, and he will complete his years in peace.

A good wife is a great blessing; she will be granted among the blessings of the man who fears the Lord. Whether rich or poor, his heart is glad, and at all times his face is cheerful.

Sirach ; see also Proverbs However, to make this discovery we need to take a look at the distortions that concupiscence has caused to the original conjugal meaning of the body. In this sense, we speak of the personal meaning of the body, that the human body was meant to reveal the human person precisely as a person and not as an object or something impersonal. In the case of marriage, we speak of the conjugal meaning of the body: the capacity God has inscribed in the bodies of man and woman to express to each other their conjugal love always opened to life.

The body of the woman was meant to express her true femininity to man, and the body of the man his true masculinity to woman.

However, original sin distorted by means of concupiscence the original meaning of the human body as designed by God. Concupiscence distorted the original meaning of the body by misdirecting the look and the desire of the human person.

This misdirection consisted in changing the intentionality of the human person towards others from looking at them as persons to looking at them and desiring them as objects. In the case of a man looking with unbridled lust at a woman, we are witnessing a complete change of intentionality.

The man who looks at a woman in this way not only wants to appropriate her as an object of his lustful desires but can even fall into the extreme of thinking that all women want to be looked at and desired in this way by men. His change of intentionality from the purity of original innocence to the impurity of original sin is such that he has completely redefined human existence to suit his evil desires.

Jesus knew that the lustful or impure look can also be a look from a woman to a man. But he emphasized the situation of a man looking at a woman, because the distortion caused by concupiscence works in a kind of different way in man and woman. The descriptions of the effects of original sin in the man-woman relationship in the wisdom passages we just cited above indicate this difference.

In both cases, man treats woman as an object of selfish desire and woman treats man as an object of selfish desire. But the predominant tendency in man is to look and desire the woman as an object of pleasure for himself, whereas the predominant tendency of woman is to become herself an object to be looked at and desired by man. In both cases, we are dealing with a terrible process of objectification and of de-personalization of the human being.

Jesus is very consistent in his teaching. If a sexual desire is misdirected by concupiscence, then this distortion can also occur within marriage. Or how can we speak of the redemption of the body that Christ also wants to effect in us? How can we be in both body and soul the new human persons Jesus wants us to be? We cannot give up our process of sanctification by caving to concupiscence , which is, recall, the inclination to sin that was caused by original sin. For a fuller account of concupiscence in its threefold manifestation, see 1 John The ethos that Jesus wants to teach us is for both body and soul.

But such ethos must begin in the heart. Notice that impurity defilement is not limited to sexuality, but actually refers to the distortions caused by concupiscence in all areas of our moral life. Likewise, purity of heart refers to all areas of our moral life. Purity of heart is purity of intention, and purity of intention is fundamentally looking and treating others as persons, as ends in themselves, as gifts of God. Purity of heart is nothing else than pure love springing from the heart, to love others for themselves and not for the sake of our selfish desires.

The opposite of purity is not only impurity but hypocrisy. The latter vice consists essentially in not loving others for their own sake, but for our selfish motives. Jesus hated hypocrisy, especially when it distorted our religious duties see Matthew chapter Indeed, purity has to do with cleansing.

But notice also how Jesus rejected a legalistic reduction of the virtue of purity by limiting it to the washing of hands. Purity indeed has to do with cleansing, but of the heart, not of the exterior part of the person. A pure heart is a clean heart, clean of concupiscence and all evil. Where there is no such love for God and for people, the heart is void of purity. Our hearts must full of faith. This seems like something that all Christians have already, but the sad fact is that the opposite is true.

They may know all the details in the heads, but they do not live for the Lord from the heart. All mouth, no heart is the spiritual condition of many today. True faith is found in the heart. Faith that is in the head is simply religion. Our hearts must be full of honesty. Our hearts must be full of humility. Do we really think that God dwells where pride exalts itself?

This virtue is an beautiful trait found in those who have a pure heart. The short list above can be expanded to cover other areas of the Christians life, but we at least see that purity of heart is more than just saying we have it.

God does the work, but we must live it out in our daily lives and in our interactions with other people. Purity of heart is imputed by God, but it is also evidenced by practical holiness and godly living. Those who have it will be glorified with Christ.