"Blessed Are the Pure in Heart" (Matthew 5:8): An Address

“Blessed Are the Pure in Heart (Matthew 5:8)”
24th August 2023
Calvary Homes
Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Israel’s first king was a magnificent physical specimen. 1 Samuel tells us that he was a “handsome young man”―indeed, that “there was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (1 Sam 9:2). And in the early days of his reign, the promise and potential he had shown seemed to be fulfilled impressively. He won great military victories, he united the nation, he was humble, and the Spirit of God was upon him.

But unfortunately, the story of Saul―as you all know―ends as a tragedy. God rejects Saul as king, and so gives the prophet Samuel the unenviable task of anointing a new king while Saul was still on the throne. He is sent to the village of Bethlehem to speak to the family of a farmer and sheep-herder named Jesse, the grandson of Ruth and Boaz. And so he sets up a sacrifice and invites Jesse’s family to attend (1 Sam 16:5). When, as the family arrived for the sacrifice, Samuel caught a glimpse of Jesse’s first son, Eliab―big, strong, rugged―he immediately thought―he should have known better!―“Surely this is the LORD’s anointed” (16:6). But the text says, in verse 7 of 1 Samuel 16, “Do not consider what he looks like or his height, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see things as people do; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (trans. JRM).

Our text this morning is from the Gospel of Matthew. It’s a very simple text: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8). This verse is the sixth of the eight (or nine)ⁱ “Beatitudes” recorded by Matthew that introduce Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. In the context of Matthew’s Gospel as a whole, the Sermon on the Mount functions as a précis or summary of Jesus’ moral vision. The great subject or theme of Jesus’ teaching and preaching was the kingdom of God,ⁱⁱ the long-anticipated kingdom of the end times in which God would finally, at long last, fulfill his ancient covenant promises and manifest his saving sovereignty for all the world to see. Matthew, by portraying Jesus as going “up onto the mountain” and “sitting” there (Matt 5:1), intends us to see him here as a new Moses proclaiming his “law” to his people.ⁱⁱⁱ This new Torah of Jesus, as the sermon bears out, comprises the radical will of God for men and women who would be citizens of that kingdom.^iv

Right at the outset―and here is where it, as we will see, potentially gets tricky for those of us who are Protestant―Jesus delivers a manifesto of sorts. In the Beatitudes Jesus boldly proclaims who is “in” and who, by implication, is “out” of the kingdom. Note, if you will, the first and eighth beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3); and “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (5:10). By ending each of these in the same way, Matthew “sandwiches,” as it were, the entire section and thereby signals to his readers that all the verses in between likewise describe the type of people to whom the kingdom belongs.^v These are the types of people who are citizens of the kingdom now and who will, when the kingdom arrives in its fullness, experience all the future blessings which are promised in the intervening beatitudes.

This list of people is an all or nothing list. Even more shocking―and, make no mistake, the Beatitudes were meant to disturb―is that the list looks nothing like what we, let alone Jesus’ 1st century Galilean audience, would have expected it to look like. Look at who Jesus congratulates: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the persecuted―in other words, the kinds of people many of their fellow Jews (not to mention not a few Americans), especially those who were favorably disposed to the venerable, nationalistic tradition of zealotry, would have considered “losers.” By contrast, Jesus blesses those who didn’t fight for their own or their nation’s rights, but who instead looked to God for their help and protection, and who waited patiently for God to fulfill the covenants he had made.^vi Indeed, in these verses Jesus is speaking the language of eschatological reversal. For implied in the Beatitudes is the notion that other people, many of whom may have assumed their pride of place in the kingdom to be assured, are not so “blessed.” Those people, instead of blessing, could instead expect judgment when the kingdom came.^vii

At this point, however, as I mentioned earlier, matters get potentially tricky for those of us who are Protestants. Indeed, in my youth the Beatitudes made me somewhat uncomfortable, conditioned as I was by an evangelicalism that took its cues from John and Paul when it came to the doctrine of salvation. For Jesus here congratulates, not only the poor and oppressed, but also those who are meek, who are pure in heart, who work for peace, who hunger and thirst for justice, and who themselves show mercy to others. Does this not look, at first glance, like Jesus is listing so-called moral and behavioral “entrance requirements” for the kingdom?^viii My youthful self instinctively asked, What about John’s call to faith or Paul’s emphasis on grace alone?

As I came to realize, however, such initial qualms, born of the interpretive lenses through which I read the text, were unwarranted. Yes, it’s self-evident that the Beatitudes contain, at the very least, implicit commands. What makes all the difference, however, is the framework in which we understand these implicit exhortations. And it’s quite clear, if we reflect carefully, that one text in the Hebrew Bible, to which the first three Beatitudes allude, provides the needed framework. This text is Isaiah 61:1-3,^ix which reads:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

        because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the poor,

        to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

        and release to the prisoners;

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

        and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

        to provide for those who mourn in Zion—

        to give them a garland instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

        the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

        the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 

        (NRSV, alt. JRM)

If we read the Beatitudes in this light, it becomes quite clear that their primary purpose is not to moralize, but rather to comfort or to console. Jesus, on the mountain, is not just the new Moses; he is also assuming the prophetic role of Isaiah’s Spirit-anointed herald. And the implicit claim he is making is as brazen as it is astounding: his followers, as they are now―not those of the other various Jewish factions that existed in 1st-century Palestine―are the “meek” or “poor” God was going to vindicate against their proud, rich oppressors when God, at long last, inaugurated his promised kingdom.

If this is so, then to worry, as I once did and some still do, that the Beatitudes list so-called “meritorious virtues” that qualify people for the kingdom is to bark up the wrong tree. Instead, the Beatitudes describe men and women who already have been, in the language of Paul the Apostle, recipients of grace.^x They describe the patterns of thought and behavior that befit the kingdom Jesus was announcing and, even then, inaugurating in his ministry^xi

In the sixth Beatitude, Jesus pronounces blessing^xii on the “pure in heart.” The word “heart” is one that, I suppose, most think they understand. But sometimes I’m afraid that we use it, like other biblical terms, without thinking very deeply about it. When I was a Bible professor, at times I heard students grumble something like this: “I’m here at a Christian college, and I’m getting a lot of ‘head knowledge,’ but I’m not getting ‘heart knowledge.’” Now, I think I understand what they meant when they said this. But when the Bible uses the term “heart,” it means something that embraces the head. It means something that embraces the emotions. It means something that embraces the will. It means, really, the core of one’s being or, as Professor Dale Allison put it, “the human principle of integration.”^xiii Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (NRSV). It’s the heart that controls everything, for the heart is the center of one’s personality. And as Samuel was told that God looks on the heart, we need to remind ourselves that it is with the heart that God is most concerned, and that it’s those whose hearts are “pure” (καθαρός, katharos) who are to be congratulated.

What, then, does it mean to be “pure?” Well, the word means, basically, to be “clean.” We all understand something of cleanliness. In fact, as Americans, cleanliness is something of a cultural obsession. I well remember a story an old seminary professor of mine told of an American basketball player in Italy. This player, because it was hot in Italy and he was dirty and sweaty, was taking three showers a day. By doing so he was driving his landlord absolutely crazy, because, apparently, once a week there was considered sort of the norm. In fact, in some places it’s not at all uncommon for people to wash their hair only once a week―whether they need it or not. Now, we chuckle at that because, as Americans, we have an obsession with cleanliness. But our cleanliness is just, as it were, skin deep: we are fixated on physical cleansing.

The Bible, though, is concerned with two other kinds of cleansing. In the Old Testament frequently―in fact, some 500 times―we encounter the distinction between something or someone being “clean” or “unclean.” You might immediately think, “well, cleanliness is next to godliness. That proverb is true after all.” But, of course, the Bible isn’t talking about physical cleanliness or purity at all in these instances. Rather, it’s speaking of what we might term “external,” “ritual,” or “ceremonial” purity: one who desired to participate in the worship of God must be ritually “clean.” And so, if one found herself “unclean” due to contact with a corpse, or to the birth of a child, or to menstruation, for example, she had to wait the prescribed time or go through a certain ritual so as to become “clean” once again. In Jesus’ day, many Jews were consumed by their concern with this ritual purity. Most notable among these, of course, were the Pharisees, who in their effort to prepare the people for YHWH’s return to Zion, sought to extend the holiness and, hence, purity of the temple throughout the land of Israel as a whole.^xiv

Already in the Old Testament, however, this original notion of “purity” was extended metaphorically to refer to interior dispositions, what we might refer to as “internal,” moral,” or “spiritual” purity. And this contrast between moral purity and ritual purity later found its way into Mark’s Gospel (Mark 7:14-23) in a story subsequently taken up by Matthew in chapter 15 of his Gospel. There we read that Jesus said to the crowds, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles … Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles” (Matt 15:11, 17-18, NRSV). Jesus here is unambiguous: purity of heart takes priority over ritual purity. Even more startling: the road to defilement is a one-way street.^xv Interestingly, despite persistent misperceptions, Jesus wasn’t alone in this assessment. For example, the late New Testament scholar E. P. Sanders cites the 3rd/2nd century BCE document, The Letter of Aristeas, which states that Jews “honour God, and this is done not with gifts and sacrifices but with purity of soul (ψυχῆς καθαρότητι, psychēs katharotēti) and holy conviction.”^xvi

Importantly, the Old Testament authors realized that people could go through the all required ceremonies and yet remain spiritually unclean. The Psalmist, for example, repenting of his sin, implores God to “create in [him] a clean heart” (Ps 51:10).^xvii Likewise, Isaiah, in the midst of his famous vision of God in the temple, cries out, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean (LXX: ἀκάθαρτα, akatharta) lips” (Isa 6:5). The prophet, confronted as he was by God’s transcendent holiness, understood that the prescribed Temple rites were, ultimately, only pictures of deeper realities. They themselves could do nothing to change the state of human hearts.

The greatest of all illustrations, I think, of the need for moral cleansing occurs in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth. Macbeth is a Scottish noble, and he and his wife kill good, old King Duncan. As Macbeth comes back from stabbing Duncan in his bed, he is carrying the bloody daggers and is shaken to the core of his being because he has, of course, committed murder. And a significant thing happens as he passes down the hall. It was customary for a nobleman, when somebody said, “God bless us,” to respond, “Amen.” But when Macbeth heard someone say “God bless us” as he was walking down the hallway, his conscience wouldn’t let him respond. He realized that sin had cut him off from the blessing of God. When he comes to his wife, he is still carrying the daggers. So Lady Macbeth rebukes him for holding on to them, and then takes them for herself in order to frame those who were watching over the king.^xviii Their plot at first appears successful, as Macbeth ascends to the throne. But after several more murders designed to consolidate Macbeth’s power, the sin Lady Macbeth has repressed begins to work inexorably on her. She is guilty in her heart, and her guilt begins to affect her mind. One night, her lady-in-waiting and physician watch her as she walks down a hall in the castle with a candle in her hand. As she walks, she stops dead in her tracks and proceeds to rub her hands, perceiving on them a spot of Duncan’s blood. In anguish she cries out:

Out, damned spot! Out, I say! … Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? … Will these hands ne’er be clean? … Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.^xix

 

It’s a very gripping scene, for the physician, when he recognizes what has happened, says, “This disease is beyond my practice … More needs she the divine than the physician. God, God forgive us all.”^xx

Yes, what Shakespeare portrays in the “Scottish Play,” Scripture consistently affirms to be the universal human condition: sin has penetrated to the deepest recesses of our hearts. For example, the prophet Jeremiah observes that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” (Jer 17:9, NIV). Now this puts us on the horns of a dilemma, does it not? On the one hand, Jesus congratulates the pure in heart. On the other hand, all of us are by nature impure in heart. We see, then, that the heart isn’t just the seat of our personality. It’s the seat of our troubles as well.

If this is true, then what does Jesus mean when he speaks here of a pure heart? Throughout church history there have been various suggestions.^xxi One dominant thread, from the ancient church all the way through the unfortunate 21st century evangelical emphasis on “purity culture,” has been to understand such purity to refer to a lack of contamination from sinful desires, in particular sexual desires―hence, chastity and what I would consider an unhealthy emphasis on asceticism.^xxii

Yet this is unlikely to be the sense intended here in Matthew 5:8. For Matthew’s language in this beatitude clearly echoes that of Psalm 24:3-6. There we read:

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
        And who shall stand in his holy place?
Those who have clean hands and pure hearts,
        who do not lift up their souls to what is false
        and do not swear deceitfully.
They will receive blessing from the Lord
        and vindication from the God of their salvation.
Such is the company of those who seek him,
        who seek the face of the God of Jacob. (NRSV)

We also may discern that the Sermon on the Mount itself later fleshes out what cleanness or purity of heart entails. Matthew 6:1-18, for example, develops the necessity of a piety unconcerned with outward show and wholly directed towards God. Matthew 6:19-21 directly correlates the state of a person’s heart with what that person treasures. And Matthew 6:24 famously disallows the possibility of serving both God and money simultaneously. Our Lord’s brother James also may reflect knowledge of this beatitude^xxiii when he writes, “Make your hands clean (καθαρίσατε χεῖρος, katharisate cheiras), you sinners, and purify your hearts (ἁγνίσατε καρδίας, hagnisate kardias), you double-minded (δίψυχοι, dipsychoi) (James 4:8, trans. JRM).^xxiv

A pure heart, in other words, is a heart that seeks God alone, a heart whose allegiance is directed exclusively to God, a heart that accordingly devotes itself to God’s priorities. The 19^th century Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard nicely summed up what is meant in his 1847 work entitled Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing.^xxv The pure heart, as St. Augustine put it,^xxvi is the single heart, unalloyed by the destabilizing influence of idolatry and self-seeking.

The problem remains, however. How is it that these “pure in heart” people, people whose hearts are totally directed toward God, become pure in heart? Once again, the Old Testament provides a clue, for there we learn that it is God who alone can change the heart. Quite a few times there we find the call for the people to “circumcise” their hearts.^xxvii But, as so often in the Bible, the “ought” does not imply a corresponding “can.”

Moses, who called on the people to circumcise their hearts in Deuteronomy 10, understood this. After forty torturous years of dealing with Israel in the wilderness, he is sadly aware that the people’s heart is not right with God. In his closing remarks to the people, in Deuteronomy 29, he wistfully says, “But to this day the LORD has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear” (Deut 29:4, NRSV). However, in the same speech, in Deuteronomy 30, he looks forward to a time, on the other side of judgment and exile, when “the LORD your God will circumcise your heart … so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (Deut 30:6, NRSV). The Hebrew prophets later pick up on this hope. The exilic prophet Ezekiel, in particular, points to this day in chapter 36 of his prophecy, where God promises, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek 36:26, NRSV).

It’s the uniform testimony of the New Testament, reflected in Jesus’ beatitude in Matthew 5:8, that this promise of a new heart has found its fulfillment in and through Christ. One of the great texts of the Bible is found in Acts 15, where the apostles gather in Jerusalem to discuss the terms of Gentile inclusion in the people of God. At issue was whether or not they had to be circumcised to join the covenant people of Israel. After much debate, Peter got up and said:

My brothers, you know that long ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles would hear from my mouth the message of the gospel and become believers. And God, who knows the heart, testified for them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in purifying their hearts by faith (καθαρίσας τὰς καρδὶας αὐτῶν, katharisas tas kardias autōn), he has made no distinction between them and us. (Acts 15:7-9, trans. JRM).

He purified their hearts by faith. In other words, through Christ and his work on the cross, the wait for the new heart is over. As a result, those who believe in Christ are purified from sin and receive the Spirit of God as the effective agent both of inner renewal and ongoing purification.^xxviii

In C. S. Lewis’s children’s novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there’s a little boy named Eustace Scrubb who, because he stole a bracelet from a dragon’s lair, is turned into a dragon himself. Eustace then meets Aslan the Lion, who shows him a well that he can go to to get washed. But first he had to undress. The problem was that, after working long and hard to remove his scaly suit, the scales grew back immediately. After two more unsuccessful attempts, finally Aslan says to him, “You will have to let me undress you.” So Eustace lies down, and Aslan proceeds to tear his claws into him right into his heart, and the scales come off, painfully, one layer at a time. The boy then goes to the well, takes a dip in it, and comes out with a brand new set of clothes.^xxix

What Lewis is picturing for us, rather transparently, is the fact that we, as sinful humans, can’t change ourselves. It is God who must change us. Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart.” But to be pure in heart, one must first have their hearts purified by the finished work of Christ.

Our text in Matthew goes on to tell us what benefit will accrue to those who are pure in heart. It says the pure in heart―those whose hearts have been purified and are, consequently, turned exclusively to God― will see God. Their good fortune is that they will experience the beatific vision, the vision of God.

What this “vision” will entail―and whether or not it can be attained, if only in part, in the present world―is a matter of perennial dispute and speculation.^xxx This isn’t surprising, for the Bible seems to speak out of both sides of its mouth on the matter.^xxxi On the one hand, the Bible says it is impossible for human beings to see God. People in ancient Israel, who no doubt conceived of their God in embodied form,^xxxii longed to get a glimpse of God. Moses, for example, who had already seen YHWH indirectly in the form of a burning, inextinguishable bush (Exod 3:1-12), asked God in Exodus 33 to show him his glory (Exod 33:18).The Lord, however, in no uncertain terms, responded by saying that no one could “see him” and “live” (Exod 33:20). The New Testament goes even further. 1 Timothy tells us that God is “invisible” (ἀόρτος, aortos) (1 Tim 1:17)^xxxiii and that he dwells in “unapproachable (ἀπρόσιτος, aprositos) light” (1 Tim 6:16).^xxxiv John even makes the claim that “no one has ever seen God.” For him, only Jesus, the “unique” or “only begotten” one, himself God by nature (μονογνὴς θεὸς, monogenēs theos), has revealed and expounded him (John 1:18). But back in Exodus, in response to Moses’s petition, God condescended and allowed the prophet a glimpse―a backward glance, as it were―of his “goodness” and “glory” after he had passed by. But even here Moses had to be covered by God’s “hand” and stand in the cleft of a rock (Exod 33:19-23).

Yet, on the other hand, the Bible also holds out the possibility, indeed the promise, of seeing God.^xxxv Particularly important here are those texts in the Psalms in which the Psalmist anticipates going up to the temple to “see” the “face of God” or behold his “beauty” there.^xxxvi Among these texts is one that, as we have seen, serves as the basis of our beatitude, namely, Psalm 24:3-6: “Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? … Those who have clean hands and pure hearts … They will receive blessing from the LORD … Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.” If indeed these Psalm texts provide the background for what Jesus is saying,^xxxvii it suggests to us that the notion of “seeing God” speaks, at the very least, of experiencing God intimately and perceiving his presence at the temple, God’s dwelling place.

With this in mind, I turn your attention in closing to the final book of the Bible, where John the Theologian in Revelation 21-22 provides us with a magnificent vision of the new heavens and new earth, where the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven (Revelation 21:1-22:5). This city is described as cubic in shape (21:16). What this symbolizes becomes clear when we remember that the original Holy of Holies was a cube (1 Ki 6:20), and that Ezekiel likewise pictures the new, eschatological temple the same way (Ezek 45:2).^xxxviii But in John’s vision on Patmos, the new Jerusalem had no temple, because its sanctuary (νάος, naos) was “God the All-Powerful” (ὁ θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ, ho theos ho pantokratōr) and the Lamb (τὸ ἀρνίον, to arnion) (Rev 21:22). Indeed, the vision of the descent of the new Jerusalem suggests that the entire new earth is to be a vast temple, and that God’s presence fully suffuses the eternal home of God’s people.^xxxix Most remarkably, however, God’s people themselves are portrayed as priests serving in this eternal temple; for, as John writes, “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Rev 22:4).^xl

This is our hope, the vision of God―the direct, unmediated perception and experience of God, of being known even as we are now known (1 Cor 13:12),^xli and of being transformed to being like he is (1 John 3:2).^xlii We have this hope vouchsafed to us by Jesus himself in his promise that the pure in heart shall see God. More than half a century ago the late British New Testament scholar George Bradford Caird wrote:

The martyrs have protested, ‘If only we knew how it was all going to end’. And this is the true end of man, the beatific vision, which is also the transforming vision; for those who enjoy it bear his name stamped on their foreheads, because they have also come to bear the impress of his nature on their lives.^xliii

What a day that shall be! To God alone be the glory.

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i The eight primary beatitudes (Matt 5:3-9) are bound together by an inclusio, with the first and eighth ending with the identical, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” the present tense ἐστιν (estin) contrasting with the future tense in each of the promised blessings in the intervening verses. The ninth apparent beatitude (5:11-12), not only is much longer and addressed to “you” rather than third person objects as in verses 3-9, but also is an expansion of the beatitude addressed to those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” in verse 9. Interestingly, this same pattern of pithy beatitudes followed by a much longer one at the conclusion of the list is also found in a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls (4Q525; text found online @http://nextstepbiblestudy.net/index.php/tag/4qbeatitudes/).

ii On the kingdom of God, still classic is George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974). Cf. Also N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 2; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) esp. chapters 6-10.

iii Gk. ἀνέβη εἰς τὸ ὄρος (contrast Luke 6:17, which states that Jesus “stood on a level place” [ἔστη ἐπὶ τόπου πεδινοῦ]). Note this phrase is found multiple times in the LXX of Moses ascending Sinai (e.g., Exod 19:3; 24:15, 18; 34:4). For “sitting” as the posture of an authoritative teacher, not least that assumed by the rabbis, cf. Matt 13:2; 15:29; 23:2; 24:3; 26:55; Luke 4:20; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 5.20; m. ‘Abot 1.4. On the Moses typology involved here, cf. esp. Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2013) 172-80.

iv It is not insignificant that Matthew distinguishes between the “crowds” and his “disciples,” and makes clear that the addressees of the sermon were the latter (Matt 5:1-2; cf. also Luke 6:20; note that Luke places his “Sermon on the Plain” immediately following Jesus’ choice of twelve apostles [Luke 6:12-16]).

v Gk. αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν. Dale Allison suggests that the present tenses are futuristic presents, meaning that the outcome of the final judgment is here being announced by Jesus: the poor and the persecuted “will be given the kingdom” (W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, 3 vols. [ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988-97] 1:445. I am inclined, however, to believe the present tenses in these verses deliberately contrast with the future tenses in verses 4-9, and that Matthew is playing on the “already/not yet” character of he kingdom in Jesus’ ministry, and in New Testament theology more generally. Yes, such people will be given the kingdom, but they already are, as it were, citizens of the kingdom and participate in the blessings associated with its irruption into the world in the midst of the present age.

vi Cf. Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation; A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) 97: “The counterintuitive paradoxes of the Beatitudes alert us to the fact that Jesus’ new community is a contrast society, out of synch with the ‘normal’ order of the world.” An instructive contrast to Jesus’ Beatitudes are those found in the Book of Sirach (ca. 200-170 BCE), in which ben Sira conventionally asserts the blessedness of those who seek wisdom, obey the Torah, and have a healthy home life (Sir. 14:20-27; 25:7-11). Cf. Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount (The Story of God Bible Commentary; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013) 34-36.

vii See, e.g., Matthew 8:11-12. Indeed, the rhetorical opposite of “blessing” is that of “woe” or of being “cursed.” Cf. Matt 23, where Jesus pronounces “woe” on the scribes and Pharisees seven (!) times. Many, going back to Johann Albrecht Bengel in his famous Gnomon in the 18th century, have posited a correlation between the Beatitudes and the woes of chapter 23. See., e.g., N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 1; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 386-87. On the theme of eschatological reversal implicit in the Beatitudes, see James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Christianity in the Making, vol. 1; Grand Rapids and Cambridge, Eerdmans, 2003) 412-14; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7 (trans. James E. Crouch; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007) 190.

viii The language comes from Robert A. Guelich, “The Matthean Beatitudes: ‘Entrance Requirements’ or Eschatological Blessings?” JBL 95 (1976) 415-34. Guelich argues for the latter option.

ix On this, cf. esp. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:436-39. Cf. Matt 11:5 and Luke’s programmatic use of the text in Jesus’ introductory synagogue reading at Nazareth in Luke 4:16-21.

x On the function of the Beatitudes in placing “grace” before “imperative” and “blessing” before “demand,” cf. Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1:439-40.

xi Cf. N. T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2010) 103: “God’s future is arriving in the present, in the person and work of Jesus, and you can practice, right now, the habits of life which will find their goal in that coming future” (italics his).

xii Because of the archaic and fusty nature of the term “blessed,” not a few translators and writers have attempted to substitute various other locutions for it for translating μακάριος (makarios). One of the least happy of such alternatives is indeed the term “happy” itself. Not only does the term “happiness” in modern English connote a feeling or psychological, existential state tied to what we may refer to as “happenings;” the term, for Americans, inevitably recalls the words of Thomas Jefferson, for whom the pursuit of happiness is an “unalienable” right bequeathed to us by our Creator. But the “happiness” of the Beatitudes, reflecting the Hebrew term ’āšrê, speaks of a person’s eschatological situation. Jesus here is congratulating these people for the fortunate position they find themselves in. Though at present they may be the poor and oppressed, Jesus provides consolation by assuring them of their future vindication in the kingdom which was, even then, breaking in as a mustard seed.

xiii Dale C. Allison, The Sermon on the Mount: Inspiring the Moral Imagination (Companions to the New Testament; New York: Crossroad, 1999) 51. Cf. F. Baumgärtel and J. Behm, TDNT 3:605-14; BDAG, 508-09; A. Sand, EDNT 2:249-51.

xiv Cf. Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Revised and edited by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973-87) 2:396-400.

xv Interestingly, Matthew does not include Mark’s parenthetical comment, “Thus Jesus declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19), a perspective later implied in Acts 15 and stated cryptically in Titus 1:15 (“To the pure all things are pure”). Matthew’s omission certainly fits the context of Jesus’ ministry―he hardly would have advocated ignoring the Torah’s explicit commands―and likely reflects his intended audience of Jewish Christians who, even in the years after 70 CE, would certainly have, by and large, continued to keep the Torah as part of their Christian identity. On the history behind the passages, cf. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 573-77.

xvi Ep.Arist. 234. Cf. E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin, 1993) 219. Interestingly, Sanders―to highlight the parallel with Jesus?―replaces Aristeas’s “soul” with “heart” in his translation. To be sure, Matthew’s Jesus polemically excoriates his most significant critics, the Pharisees, for their emphasis on―indeed, intensification of―the Torah’s ritual demands in comparison to what he considered their relative neglect of what he termed “the weightier matters of the Law,” i.e., justice, mercy, and faith (Matt 23:23; cf. 9:10-13). They “strained out a gnat” before drinking wine―in obedience to the command of Leviticus 11:20-23―but were oblivious to their willingness to swallow the equally unclean, and infinitely larger, camel (23:24; it is likely that Jesus’ absurdist witticism was made even more memorable in its historical context by means of a play on the Aramaic words for “gnat” [qalmâ] and “camel” [galmâ]). Likewise, in the very next “woe,” he accuses them, metaphorically, of scrupulously cleaning the outside of plates and cups, but failing to do the same to the insides, which were “full of greed and self-indulgence” (23:25). The point is concisely articulated by R. T. France: “Ritual purity without moral cleanness is a sham” (The Gospel of Matthew [NICNT; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2007] 875). As for the Pharisees themselves, they would have viewed their meticulous observance of the ritual commandments to be the necessary outworking or expression of a pure heart.

xvii LXX Ps 50:12 (καρδίαν καθαρὰν κτίσον ἐν ἐμοί ὁ θεός)

xviii Shakespeare, Macbeth, II.2.

xix Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.1.31, 35-36, 39, 45-47.

xx Shakespeare, Macbeth V.1.53, 68-69.

xxi For a concise, selective account of the history of interpretation, cf. Rebekah Eklund, The Beatitudes through the Ages (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021) 196-213.

xxii For example, the late 2nd century apocryphal work, Acts of Paul and Thecla, has an extended commentary of sorts on Jesus’ beatitude, in which he interprets the blessed as “those who have kept the flesh chaste” (οἱ ἁγνὴν τὴν σάρκα τηρήσαντες) and “the self-controlled” (οἱ ἐγκρατεῖς). Cf. Jeremy B. Barrier, “A Critical Introduction and Commentary on the Acts of Paul and Thecla” (Ph.D. diss., Texas Christian University, 2008) 119-26.

xxiii James here clearly alludes to Psalm 24:4, but it seems a stretch to imagine that he and Matthew/the oral tradition behind the “M” texts in his Gospel, drew upon the psalm independently. Assuming a date for Matthew some time after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the Jacobean authorship of the Book of James (or at least the letter’s contents which were later edited), since James the Just was killed in 62 CE (Josephus, Ant. 20.200), this means that James would have drawn from the pre-literary form of the Jesus tradition, from which Matthew also later drew in composing his beatitude.

xxiv The term δίψυχος, literally “two-souled,” is not found in extant Greek literature prior to James. For the Jewish/Old Testament background of the term, cf. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) 74-75.

xxv Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, trans. Douglas V. Steere, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Brothers, 1948 [1847]). Cf. Clifford Williams, The Divided Soul: A Kierkegaardian Exploration (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2008).

xxvi St. Augustine of Hippo, On the Sermon on the Mount, trans. William Findlay (Jazzybee Verlag: Altenmünster, Germany, 2017 [1830]) 1.8: “For that is a pure heart which is a single heart.”

xxvii Deut 10:16; Jer 4:4. The implication, of course, is that the people of Israel, though circumcised in the foreskin, were uncircumcised of heart (Jer 9:25-26).

xxviii The notion of Christ’s work “purifying” his people is found in a broad range of New Testament documents. Cf. Tit 2:14; Heb 9:14; 1 John 1:7.

xxix C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: HarperCollins, 1994 [1952]) 113-16.

xxx On the history of interpretation of “they shall see God,” cf. esp. Dale C. Allison, Jr., “Seeing God:(Matt. 5:8),” in Studies in Matthew: Interpretations Past and Present (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005) 43-63; cf. Also Eklund, The Beatitudes through the Ages, 215-34.

xxxi For a convenient laying out of the various biblical, Jewish, and early Christian texts dealing with the matter, cf. Allison, “Seeing God,” 44-45n.7.

xxxii Those of us reared with a worldview rooted in Western philosophy might find this a bit surprising, if not off-putting. But we do well to consider how ancient Jews would have understood the anthropomorphic descriptions of God which are routinely understood as metaphorical today, not to mention the fundamental biblical conception of human beings as created in the image of God. Indeed, as Allison has demonstrated (“Seeing God,” 45-48), belief in an embodied deity was widespread in Second Temple Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, and the early Church (e.g., Tertullian, Against Praxeas, 7.8-9; Allison thinks it plausible, based in part on Matt 18:10, that Matthew himself conceived of God in this fashion). Influential in turning the tide away from such literalism were Origen and Augustine. Cf. Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount, 1.8: “How foolish, therefore, are those who seek God with these outward eyes, since He is seen with the heart!” For a recent defense of a corporeal view of God, cf. Puttagunta Satyavani, Seeing the Face of God: Exploring an Old Testament Theme (Carlisle, UK: Langham, 2014).

xxxiii Paul also speaks of Christ as the “image of the invisible God” in his famous Christ-hymn in Col 1:15. Cf. also Heb 11:27.

xxxiv These two texts are correlated in the wonderful 1867 hymn of the Scottish Free Church minister Walter Chalmers Smith, “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,

Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,

Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.

xxxv Besides the texts we discuss here, see also Job 19:26; 1 Cor 13:12; Heb 12:14; 1 John 3:2. The hope expressed in these texts, as in Matthew 5:8, is an eschatological hope. Nevertheless, the desire to have a vision of God in this life, if only partial and provisional, has persisted in both Jewish and Christian history. As early as the 1st century BCE a strand of mystical Judaism appeared that developed spiritual exercises designed to lead to the vision, found in Ezekiel 1, of the heavenly chariot, with God enthroned above it (still classic here is Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition [New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1965]). For the Christian tradition of attaining to the beatific vision in this life, see now Hans Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018).

xxxvi E.g., Ps 11:7; 17:15; 24:3-6; 27:4; 42:2; 63:2. Cf. Also 4 Ezra 7:98; T. Zeb. 9:8.

xxxvii See Mark S. Smith, “‘Seeing God’ in the Psalms: The Background to the Beatific Vision in the Hebrew Bible,” CBQ 50 (1988) 171-73. This is deemed the “simplest” suggestion as to the text’s meaning by Allison, “Seeing God,” 59.

xxxviii Ezekiel’s measurements technically make the New Temple a square, with the height of the Temple implied rather than explicitly spelled out.

xxxix Cf. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans,/Carlisle: Paternoster,1999) 1093-93; idem, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011) 553.

xl It is surely no coincidence that the phrase, “Holy to the LORD” was to be engraved on the gold head plate worn by Aaron, the high priest (Exod 28:38; 39:31).

xli “For now we see in a mirror, indirectly; then we will see face to face. Now I know in part; then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known” (trans. JRM). Paul here alludes to Numbers 12:6-8, which contrasts Moses’ “face to face,” direct encounter with God’s glory (LXX; MT “form”) with God’s indirect speaking to other prophets in visions and dreams. Even Paul, as he later told the Corinthians, beheld God’s glory indirectly, via the face of Jesus, God’s “image,” who had called him on the Damascus Road (2 Cor 3:18). The hope of Christians is that we will, like Moses, be privileged to “see” God face to face, which Paul characterizes as the experience of knowing fully even as God has fully known us. Cf. Roy Ciampa and Brian Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans/Nottingham: Apollos, 2010) 658-60.

xlii For arguments to the effect that in 1 John 3:2 the object (αὐτὸν) of believers’ transforming, future sight is God, not Christ, cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (AB 30; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1982) 394-95.

xliii G. B. Caird, A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Harper’s New Testament Commentaries; New York: Harper & Row, 1966) 280-81.