Purity Of Heart | Guest Post, Vernell Ingle

Purity of Heart | Guest Post
Vernell Ingle, Teaching Pastor
Christpoint, Galena, KS

*JVI | Rev. Vernell’s Study at dusk | 02.01.24*

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Matthew 5.8

The Hebrew concept of the heart is a comprehensive term of the totality of the human personality.

It is the center of who I am and who you are: my thoughts, my feelings, my intentions. Either those are balanced or unbalanced. It depends on the condition of my heart.

What is purity of heart?

The word purity in the Greek is katharos

It’s where we get the word cathartic.

Cathartic and catharsis in counseling is the idea that talking things out can have a cleansing effect. There are conversations that the counselor may pull out of you by asking certain questions. You open up and talk it out. Well, that is what is known as cathartic. Why? You are opening your heart. You’re letting things out that need to come out. Before an individual can experience healing in certain relationships, there are those who need that catharsis; need that cleansing of the heart.

So the idea of the word katharos in the Greek means clean, innocent. Here it is in a moral and religious sense. It’s a heart that is pure. It is a heart that is free from sin. It is free from impurities. It’s a heart that is without blemish. I am free from corrupt desire. I am free from guilt which is a result of corrupt desire. It is the singleness of heart.

It is not double-minded. If I obtain singleness of of heart, I do not become double-minded or two-souled. This is really what James talks about when he says people who are double-minded are unstable in all their ways (James 1.8). Double-minded there literally means someone who is two-souled. They’re one thing one moment, and they’re another thing another moment.

Well the pure heart speaks of someone who has singleness of heart. They are the same in private as they are in public. They are the same in all their relationships. There is a singleness of heart; no deceit, no duplicity, and no selfish interest. It is true and open in all things.

It is an inward purity of the heart.