I don’t know if it’s appropriate to have a favorite Beatitude—one of the wisdom blessings offered by Jesus at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount—but if I had to pick one, it would be the sixth: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt. 5:8).
I linger over this one, in part because “purity of heart” encompasses several aspects of the Christian life. There’s the pursuit of inner purity and righteousness as opposed to lust and deceit. There’s the purity of vision that interprets the world according to the scaffolding of goodness and love as opposed to a tainted and skewed vision of everything through the smudged lens of sinfulness. There’s the purity of intention expressed in single-minded devotion (Kierkegaard’s dictum—“Purity of heart is to will one thing”) as opposed to the double-mindedness warned about by the prophets and by James the brother of Jesus.
Promise for the Pure in Heart
The more I meditate on this saying of Jesus, the more I sense the distance between its radiance and the shadows of my heart. I give thanks for the only One with clean hands and a pure heart who ascended the mount of Golgotha to pay the price for all my impurity. Jesus’s love for me then galvanizes my affections with a renewed commitment to rely on his power to live into this identity he has pronounced over me, to bring my life more and more in line with this wondrous description.
Why? Because of the promise. The pure in heart will see God. Imagine that. We will see God. My heart leaps at the thought of all that’s entailed in the future that awaits God’s children. What happiness is promised here? What joy? What intensity? What does it mean to see God? The historic Christian answer has been called “the beatific vision”—the vision of God his people will enjoy forever.
Vision That Stirs Up and Satisfies Desire
Throughout church history, our forefathers and mothers in the faith have contemplated the meaning of this everlasting gift. In his homilies on 1 John, Augustine linked the present reality of not being able to see God (except in part) to the longing for holiness that should mark every Christian’s life.
Because you cannot at present see, let your part and duty be in desire. The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire.
In The Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa pondered the beatific vision in similar terms yet claimed our desire will be ever-satisfied and ever-renewed.
The true sight of God consists in this, that the one who looks up to God never ceases in that desire.
For all eternity, we’ll be simultaneously satiated by God and stirred up with desire for more of God. And because we’re finite and he’s infinite, we’ll never come to the end of tasting and craving his glory. One of my favorite prayers included in the 30 Days prayer series comes from Anselm and begins with the acknowledgment he hasn’t yet seen the Lord, then climaxes in this paradoxical expression of longing:
Teach me to seek you. I cannot seek you unless you teach me or find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you, let me love you when I find you.
Pondering the Beatific Vision
Samuel Parkison’s new book To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice is one of those academic books that digs deep into theology with the intent to make the reader’s heart sing. Parkison comes at this doctrine from various angles, explaining its development through theologians of the Great Tradition and into the Reformation era and beyond. He also considers why the doctrine has fallen out of favor in recent decades and makes a persuasive case for reclaiming this promise as part of our heritage and hope.
As we behold the glory of the Lord by faith in this present life, we’re transformed. And as we grow in holiness, we’re given greater and greater glimpses of God in his glory, in anticipation of the promise of glorified sight that will make us like him as we see him as he is (“What we will be has not yet been revealed,” 1 John 3:2). Here are a few of the astounding truths Parkison expounds in this book:
- It’s a vision of love in a resurrected state. “The beatific vision is a vision of love, a participatory vision of God’s essence, in resurrected bodies, wherewith we will see this vision immediately and everywhere, particularly in the person of Christ, on account of our union with him.”
- We contemplate today the God we’ll see forever. “The object of our contemplation by faith now (i.e., God in Christ) will be the object of this beatific vision forever—him whom we delight to behold by faith now we will continually delight to behold in glorified vision hereafter.”
- We’ll see God through God. “United to Christ, his perfect vision of God will be our perfect vision of God, for he is the author and perfecter of our faith, our forerunner and perfect federal head and restorative source.”
- This vision totally fulfills and satisfies our every desire. “This vision is the full satiation of every creaturely desire and the absolute telos of the image-bearer. Every happiness that has partial fulfillment here will be realized in full in this vision, since this vision is the destination to which all natural desires lead.”
- Yet the nature of this fulfillment will be ever-growing thirst and satiation for all eternity. “The realization of this hope is one of perpetual growth and expansion—where the saint’s capacity for delight in the blessedness of God grows with his reception of that delight, and his thirst increases simultaneously with his satiation. Thus, the saint is full to the brim with satisfaction even as his capacity for satisfaction grows forevermore.”
- The vision is the consummation of our bond to God. “It is the consummate fellowship and communion with the believer’s bond to Christ—who is the Spirit. Thus, the beatific vision is a spiritual vision of divine love—where the believer is brought by the Spirit into the Trinity’s own beatitude, further up and further in, forever.”
Further up, and further in. This is our hope. The promised land. The new Jerusalem. God’s holy mountain. The Holy of Holies. Eden’s eternal Sabbath rest.
And we won’t be alone, Parkison says. “The individual saint’s delight of this vision is enhanced by the presence of other saints and angels, for there love will be perfectly expressed, and true love for neighbor will overwhelm the individual saint with delight—the joy of neighbor will increase the joy of oneself.”
No wonder Jesus includes the pure in heart in his list of Beatitudes. We will see God, together, forever rapt in wonder, love, and praise. What more could we ask for?
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