This does not all take place in an instant. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. It assumes our hearts have been purified by His initial cleansing, that we have received His Spirit, and are in the process of sanctification and going on to perfection. Proverbs 4:23 reads, "Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." Our Father directly addresses the book of Proverbs to His sons ( Proverbs 1:7). Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Obviously, the quality of the heart is the issue in this beatitude. It is synonymous with our modern use of "mind," since the mind is where we hold knowledge, attitudes, motivations, affections, desires, likes, and dislikes. The heart is central to this because in the Bible the heart stands for the seat, source, reservoir, and instigator of our thoughts, attitudes, desires, character, and motivation. The Beatitudes, Part 6: The Pure in Heart For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. In this vein Paul remarks:īrethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. Their desire to achieve purity before God is commendable, but Jesus clearly demonstrates that they chose to do it the wrong way, leaving their hearts unchanged. Relating strongly to much of what is written in the Old Testament, this standard is something the Pharisees vainly pursued through an obsessive observance of thousands of cultic rules they and others added to God's inspired Word. "Blessed are the pure in heart" is a beatitude expressing a standard that is extremely difficult to achieve. And, truth be told, it will never be completely changed until the resurrection from the dead. Only repentance and a renewed relationship with God would enable that to occur. man's heart is evil from his youth." But he wanted his nature changed from evil to good, from dirty to clean, from lies to truth. In other words, He wants people to change their natures, which only He can help us to do, as the last half of the verse explains: “And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”ĭavid is essentially repeating what God said in Genesis 8:21, ". In the next verse, he declares that God “desires truth in the inward parts” ( Psalm 51:6). In his way, David is telling God, “With all the sin around me, it's not surprising that I sinned too.” A baby is born a fairly blank slate, certainly having done no sin, but the influence of sinners along with his fleshly nature invariably get the better of him, and before long, he sins. Sin and sinful people had surrounded him his whole life. Put in other words, his mother was a sinner when he was conceived, and when he was born, the world was full of sin. He means that he was born into a sinful world, and even his mother, whom he probably loved more than anyone else other than God, was a sinner. Those who believe in original sin believe that David is saying that he was born a sinful person.
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