MAT 5:6 says, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled."

Every man whose hope is in Christ sees his purity in Him. In proportion as we learn the impurities of our hearts, we will learn to see our need to obtain mercy in Christ. The more we learn to see our spiritual poverty, the more we will see beauty in the riches there are in Christ.

As we begin to mourn spiritually over sin and start hungering and thirsting after righteousness and see our need for mercy, we will become beggars before the throne of grace for mercy. We understand that it is only in Christ’s imputed righteousness that we can obtain mercy and only through Christ’s purity that we can obtain purities in our soul.

1JO 3:3 says, "And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." What does the purifying do? Our eyes are lifted up to look to Jesus as our example.

When we understand PHI 2:8, "And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," we will see that obedience is the will of the Father. We will understand that righteousness is conformity of life to the divine law. We will hunger and thirst after righteousness because we want to see the purity there is in Christ.

There is such harmony in the Scriptures. 1PE 1:22-23 says, "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." When the rebellion is broke, when our heart is reconciled with God, when we start to understand true fear of God, the fruit is conversion. We will walk in the ways of the Lord.

Each succeeding beatitude rises higher than the one that comes before it. Purity in heart succeeds spiritual poverty, or humility. Purity in heart follows mourning over sin, or penitence. Purity in heart succeeds meekness. Purity in heart follows spiritual hunger and thirst. Purity in heart succeeds mercifulness.

The pure in heart understand all of these traits. The pure in heart understand what it means to be merciful because they have obtained mercy themselves.

In TIT 1:15 we read, "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled." What does 1CO 13:5 mean when it says that love "thinketh no evil?" To the pure in heart all things are pure. We see the wrong attitude in our fellow man when we have a wrong attitude.

When love proceeds from our heart, when the fruits of the Spirit, i.e., love, peaceable, gentle, longsuffering, are the fruits of our heart, we will find that unto the pure all things are pure. We will not judge our fellow person wrongly. We will realize that the other man may have misunderstood us, and we won’t rise up against them right away. We will condescend to men of low estate.

Verse 16 says, "They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." Verse 15 said, "Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled."

Do you see the difference? Even their mind and conscience is defiled. "They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate." What is reprobate? To be reprobate means to be void of sound judgment. The reprobate call good, evil; and evil, good.

The more Christ is revealed, the more we see our impurities. This is essential to understand. I will give an illustration of seeing the purity of Christ. A mechanic in a shop gets very dirty. Every morning, the mechanic starts clean. Throughout the day, he becomes dirty; but he does not feel overly dirty because he has been like that for days on end. When he looks at himself, he thinks he is relatively clean. He started clean in the morning, and he cannot see how filthy he has become during the day.

Imagine, however, if right after work, the mechanic went to a wedding. He tried to embrace the bride, who was wearing a pure white dress. All of the sudden, he realized that he was filthy. The purity of the white dress caused the mechanic to see his own impurity. So it is with the purity of the heart.