“Who is pure in heart? Only those who have completely given their hearts to Jesus, so that he alone rules in them. Only those who do not stain their hearts with their own evil, but also not with their own good. A pure heart is the simple heart of a child, who does not know about good and evil, the heart of Adam before the fall, the heart in which the will of Jesus rules instead of one’s own conscience.… A pure heart is pure of good and evil; it belongs entirely and undivided to Christ; it looks only to him, who goes on ahead. Those alone will see God who in this life have looked only to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Their hearts are free of defiling images; they are not pulled back and forth by the various wishes and intentions of their own. Their hearts are fully absorbed in seeing God. They will see God whose hearts mirror the image of Jesus Christ” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

I read one time that purity of heart is to will one thing. There is no divide between my will and God’s will or what I want versus what God wants for me. True purity of heart means living surrendered to the point where God’s will is my will and God’s desire for me is my desire.

That’s not something I think we completely achieve in this life, but as we have this Christ life continually formed inside of us, we get closer to being pure in heart. Also, maybe being pure in heart is to grow so transparent that people who look at us see less and less of us and eventually only Christ in us.

“God blesses those whose hearts are pure,
    for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8, NLT).