Pure in heart
John MacArthur — Grace to You Blessed are a the pure in heart, forthey shall see God. Matthew 5:8 Throughout Scripture the heart is used metaphorically to represent the inner person, the seat of motives and attitudes, the center of personality. But in Scripture it also includes the thinking process, particularly the will. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (KJV). The heart is the control center of the mind and will, as well as emotion. Jesus said that it is in the inner person, in the core of our very being, that God requires purity. This was not a new truth but an old one long forgotten in ceremony and tradition. “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life,” counseled the writer of Proverbs 4:23. God has always been concerned above all else with the condition of a person’s heart. When the Lord called Saul to be Israel’s first king, “God changed his heart” (1 Sam. 10:9). Until then Saul had...