Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 5:8

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." — Matthew 5:8 (ASV)

Pure in heart — Here, as with the poor in spirit, the noun determines the region in which this purity is to be found: the “heart,” representing desires and affections, just as the “spirit” represents the will and higher personality. The purity described is not the outward and ceremonial ideal of the Pharisee. Nor is it limited, as the common language of Christians too often limits it, to the absence of one specific form of sensual sin. Rather, it excludes every element of baseness—the impurity of hate or greed of gain, no less than that of lust. Not without cause, however, has the evil of the latter sin so overshadowed the others that it has almost monopolized the name. No single form of evil spreads its taint more deeply than that which “lets in contagion to the inward parts.”

Shall see God — Does the promise find its fulfillment only in the beatific vision of the saints in glory, seeing God as He is (1 John 3:2), knowing even as also we are known (1 Corinthians 13:12)? Doubtless, its full fruition—which we now wait for—will be found there and there only. But “purity of heart,” to the extent that it exists, brings with it the power of seeing more than others see in everything through which God reveals Himself: the beauty of nature, the inward light, the moral order of the world, the written word, and the life and teaching of Christ. Although for now we see through a glass, as in a mirror that reflects imperfectly, yet in that glass we behold the glory of the Lord (1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 Corinthians 3:18).