The hardest teaching of Jesus for brothers! Matthew 5:21-22

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Matthew 5:21-22 

I am the middle child of 5 and all of my siblings are about 1.5 years apart...and we are all pretty competitive. Let's just say the quote below from Phillip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew hit close to home!

"Growing up with an older brother, I fretted this verse. Can two brothers weather the storms of adolescence without relying on words such as "stupid" and "fool"?

We must remember as we look at this verse what we talked about last week...that Jesus introduced this part of the sermon by stating that unless our righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees we will not enter the kingdom heaven. I like what Yancey wrote about the six "You have heard that it was said/ but I say to you" statements that Jesus makes in the sermon on the mount. In fact, I like them better than I feel that I can write about them, so most of this post will be his writing. First he points out that,

"Using the Torah as a starting point, Jesus pushed the law in the same direction, further than any Pharisee had dared push it, further than any monk has dared live it....Jesus made the law impossible for anyone to keep, then charged us to keep it."

But then he says,

"For years I had thought of the Sermon on the Mount as a blueprint for human behavior that no one could possibly follow. Reading it again, I found that Jesus gave these words not to cumber us, but to tell us what God is like....Why should we love our enemies? Because our clement Father causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good. Why be perfect? Because God is perfect....How could I have missed it? Jesus did not proclaim the Sermon on the Mount so that we would...furrow our brows in despair over our failure to achieve perfection. He gave it to impart to us God's Ideal toward which we should never stop striving, but also to show that none of us will ever reach that Ideal. The Sermon on the Mount forces us to recognize the great distance between God and us, and any attempt to reduce that distance by somehow moderating its demands misses the point altogether.

The worst tragedy would be to turn the Sermon on the Mount into another form of legalism; it should rather put an end to all legalism. Legalism like the Pharisees' will always fail, not because it is too strict but because it is not strict enough. Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper throwers.... We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace."

We say we know it...that all sins are equal before God. But we never think twice about losing our temper with our families or with a particularly worrisome, annoying, or selfish person in front of us. And we typically feel justified in our lashing out. Do we not take seriously Jesus' instruction about bursts of anger being liable to the fires of hell? Are we willing to bet our eternal souls that He didn't really mean what He was saying and was simply exaggerating to make a point!? Or do we despair, because try as we might to change our attitudes and control our tongues, the fire keeps fanning into flames that burn our families and neighbors occasionally?

The answer in Christ...is a resounding neither.

We aim for God's "absolute Ideal," as Yancey calls it, with everything that we have...not out of legalism, but out of desire to imitate the love that we have seen and experienced in God. Picture it as a child who looks pitifully cute standing in his daddy's clothes that are way too big for him to fill. But he puts them on anyway because he wants to be like his daddy. And the scrawny little boy trying to fill his daddy's full-grown clothes couldn't possibly make his dad any prouder.

Yes, we aim for the absolute Ideal and when we fail and fall short of it, we glory even more in God's grace as we see through scripture his smile at our desire to "wear his clothes." And that smile causes our desire to be as forgiving and as loving to others as our Father is to us grow even more. And one day...even if it is the day we meet Jesus in the air, we will finally fill out those clothes and they will fit perfectly naturally for the rest of our eternal lives.

BUT WE MUST AIM AND NOT SETTLE FOR BEING "GOOD ENOUGH" AND/OR BETTER THAN THE MURDERERS 

FOR OUR GOD IS PERFECTLY RIGHTEOUS!

What are you aiming for? What are you trusting in? What would it look like for you to aim for God's patience, God's "slow to anger" nature, God's love, and God's forgiveness this week?

Surpassing Righteousness- Matthew 5:20

PD-US

 

 

"For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

Matthew 5:20

I have to admit....I was pretty tied up yesterday and wasn't able to get to writing the VOW. However, part of the reason for that is that I was a little taken back when I read verse 17-20 and had to do a little digging. I made peace with verses 17-19 yesterday, but was still having trouble with verse 20 until just now. Take a minute to read the context of verse 20 and then I'll explain why I needed a little more time with it.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ¹⁹ Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

 Up until this passage, Jesus has really been just setting the stage...giving the introduction. He flipped everything about religion on its head with the Beatitudes and then called those who would heed his words to view themselves as salt and light. And then before he gets into the practical aspects of living that are the rest of the sermon, He makes it absolutely clear to the Jewish audience He was preaching to that He was in no way going to teach that the Law of Moses was anything but the inspired word of God and direction for life. It was to be held and followed by those who would follow God. Now before you run to the nearest sheep farm for a live sacrifice because Jesus did not in fact set the law aside, remember that while he said he didn't come to "abolish the law," He did say that he had come to "fulfill the law." Read Colossians 2:9-15.

⁹ For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰ and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. ¹¹ In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, ¹² having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴ having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Well, in my mind, that is the answer to verses 17-19. Jesus didn't cancel the law, He finished (fulfilled) it! His fulfillment of the law meant that the law wasn't "cancelled" for us, but the "charge of legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us" was cancelled and nailed to the cross!

I hope you are screaming "AMEN" at the computer screen right now, because that statement in itself is enough to celebrate! If the impact of it hasn't hit you yet...go back and read through the books of the Law and behold the love and the severity of God and then come back and shout "AMEN" for joy!

But what about verse 20? Jesus' message throughout His ministry and the message throughout the NT was that we can't trust in ourselves and our righteousness. Take a look at Isaiah 64:6 which says that "all our righteous acts are like a filthy rag." Translating it as a "filthy rag" is a pretty polite way of putting it. The Orthodox Jewish Bible puts it "garments of menstruation." He wanted us to be very clear in our understanding that we can NEVER earn our way into God's favor with our righteous living, because when we compare it to God's, it doesn't look anywhere near what righteousness actually is.

Then why did Jesus say that "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven"?

I think I've always had the reverse "pharisee and the publican" attitude when I've read that. "God, I thank you that I'm not like the self-righteous pharisee!" I understood Jesus' instruction to be saying that they were really just hypocrites and weren't really righteous at all. Well...that was true for a lot of them. But what about the sincere ones...the ones who did believe and put their faith in Jesus? Besides, even without them, there is still the problem of having to "surpass" anyone's righteousness as a means of getting into heaven! And we've already established that no amount of our righteousness can do that!

And then it finally hit me while I was just staring at the verse. He had already answered the question back in verse 17 when he said, "I have come...TO FULFILL THE LAW."

Jesus' whole point with the question in verse 20 was to reiterate that we can't do it ourselves! The Pharisees and the teachers of the law worked harder than anyone to be righteous and they failed miserably! But if they had to stand on their own righteousness in front of the almighty, righteous God, He would have cast them aside just like we would trash a "filthy garment!" (read the note above for the specific imagery if you've forgotten...it's not pretty!)

So how do we "surpass the righteousness" of them and enter the kingdom?

WE DON'T. JESUS DID. 

AND BECAUSE HE DID AND HE BECAME SIN ON OUR BEHALF, WE CAN NOW BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD! (see 2 Cor. 5:21)

And so, not by our might or by our power, we surpass the righteousness of the pharisees and the teachers of the law.

Does that not give you reason to rejoice today!?

Next week, as we start looking at the practical instruction on day-to-day living in the sermon on the mount, I think it is absolutely necessary that we establish and keep in our minds exactly where "surpassing righteousness" does and does not come from. I am so thankful that it depends on God instead of me!

The Light of the World- Part I

photo by Osezaki_lighthouse.jpg

Originally, I was going to write about this passage as a whole this week. However, the more I think about it, the more I don't want to rush past the first statement to the second. So next week, you'll have to join me again if you want to talk about the absurdity of a lamp under a bowl! :) Today, I just want us to let the first seven words really sink in.

You are the light of the world.

First, before we even begin discussing it, in order to really let it sink in, change the "you are" to "I am" so it is easy to apply personally. Then read it out loud several times but with slightly different emphasis. (Don't worry, it will only take a minute!)

1. Emphasize the "I"- Stop thinking about what anyone else is or isn't doing. Jesus is talking to you.
2. Emphasize the "am"- Don't let it just be a neat churchy statement. This is a fact for a Christian.
3. Emphasize the "the"- What if you were the only Christian left? Could the world see? The truth is that you might actually be the only light that someone sees.
4. Emphasize the "light"- It won't really do any good for me to point out the different aspects of how we are lights. What does it mean to you?
5. Emphasize the "world"- Do you really believe that God has purpose and designs for you that will have an impact on the world or do you secretly just want to not cause too much trouble while you are here?

If you just spent that time meditating on that one statement, that would be enough. I hope you'll stay with me for a few more paragraphs to think about what it means to be the light of the world, though. :)

How are we the light of the world if Jesus is the light of the world? The statement that Jesus is the Light of the world is made several times by Him and about Him especially in the book of John. (See John 1:4, 9; 8:12; 9:5; 12:35-36, etc.) Is it possible for Christians to be the Light of the World and for Jesus to be the Light or do the two statements contradict?

John 12:35-36 ties the two statements together beautifully.

"Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. ³⁶ Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them." (Emph. mine)

C.S. Lewis said, "Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else."


I was talking to my wife last night about The Bible miniseries and the enormity of someone playing the part of Jesus. Isn't that a little presumptuous!? But the truth is that anyone who has sworn their allegiance to Christ has done just that in a sense. Paul says it as if we wear Christ like a costume, "for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Galatians 3:27). He uses the clothing wording again in Colossians to say that we "have taken off (our) old self with its practices ¹⁰ and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Col. 3:9-10). He also says that God "made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). If I am understanding it correctly then it is both our job to assume the role of Christ in our section of the world much the same way that an actor assumes a role in his world. And it is the Spirit's job to slowly transform us more and more into the actual image so that we are no longer acting, but being.

So for us, the question is simple. If you are the light of the world, then what are the people in your world looking at? Is your light shining at all? Verse 14 says, 

"Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

 Marshall Keeble used to say, "The Bible does not say to make your light shine, but it says to let it shine!"
How will you do that today?
Marchall

Forget the blood pressure...we need more salt! Matthew 5:13

Salt is in pretty much everything! Just look at the contents of any processed food. Better yet, just check your blood pressure! Today, most of us see salt as an enemy. We try to limit our intake of salt. We jokingly ask the person sitting next to us if they would like a few fries with their salt!

But the fact of the matter is that it is absolutely essential.
Hyponatremia. That's what it's called when you don't have enough salt in your blood.

"Symptoms of hyponatremia include nausea and vomiting, headache, confusion, lethargy, fatigue, loss of appetite, restlessness and irritability, muscle weakness, spasms, or cramps, seizures, and decreased consciousness or coma." Don't worry, I collected that information from Wikipedia, so it must be accurate! :)

In order to really understand what Jesus was telling us, we're going to have to think more like a 1st century Jew  who viewed salt as an incredibly valuable commodity, necessity of life, and symbol of everlasting covenants than as a 21st century American who views salt as something that sure tastes good but is typically something to be avoided because we already over do it with the salt on our french fries!

Did you know that God commanded every grain offering to be seasoned with salt? (Lev. 2:13)

Of course we know that salt is and especially was a preservative. Without refrigeration, it was absolutely necessary. That helps us to see at least one aspect of what Jesus was saying. As followers of Christ and children of God, we are called to come into contact with the rest of the world in order to keep it from going completely rotten! If that is true, then we should probably look around and ask, "how's it going?"

Seriously.

How is it going? 

If the world is getting more and more sexually immoral, could it be because the Christians are watching the same shows, wearing the same clothes, telling the same jokes, and dating the same way? If the world is getting more and more violent, could it be because Christians are rejecting Jesus' calls for submission and sacrifice? If the world is getting more and more addicted to technology and constant updates via cell phones, could it be that Christians are not modeling an addiction to the bread of life and the everlasting water? If our school systems are seeing more and more cheating, could it be because Christians are also buying the idea that the end justifies the means?

Sadly, Jesus already knew that many Christians would simply become like the world. And "if salt loses its saltiness how can it be made salty again?" The answer, of course, is that it can't. At that point, it serves no better purpose than to be thrown in the street.

It's a ridiculous thought to think about salt not being salty. It's even more ridiculous to think about Christians becoming more and more rotten along with the rest of the world because instead of being transformed, we are conforming (Rom. 12:2).

Conforming to the world as a Christian won't just kill your soul it will cause the world around you to become rotten even quicker!

What a shame to see the rest of the world experiencing spiritual hyponatremia (Symptoms include nausea and vomiting from guilt, headache from stress, confusion from failed and misguided dreams, lethargy from selfishness, fatigue from being slaves to sin, loss of appetite for real food from God due to indulgence in cheap imitations of God's good gifts, restlessness and irritability from lack of purpose in life, muscle weakness due to never restraining impulses, spasms due to lack of emotional control, or cramps, seizures, and decreased consciousness or coma- i.e. the walking dead)

What an even greater shame for all of us who are Christians to cluck our tongues at the world's sickness and fail to see that hyponatremia is due to a lack of salt in the world...while we are the salt.

Do you really believe enough to quit complaining? Matthew 5:10-12

"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

- Matthew 5:10-12

!!!HYPOCRISY ALERT!!!

Warning! I am about to write an entire post about something I don't really believe! Please continue reading with the understanding that the author is a big hypocrite in this area.

Before I'm labeled as a heretic that doesn't believe the words of Jesus, let me explain! My head believes it absolutely...my heart and my emotions just haven't quite caught up yet. I'm praying that one day they will!

Do you remember what happened the first time Peter and the apostles were arrested and beaten for preaching about Jesus? You can read about it in Acts 5. Here's the cliff's notes version. Peter and the rest refused to obey the religious leaders and quit talking about Jesus because obeying God was more important to them (Acts 5:29).   Gamaliel, an incredibly well-respected Jewish leader, convinced the other leaders that they needed to let Peter and the others go because, after all, they might be wrong about Jesus not being from God. If it Jesus was from God, Gamaliel argued, you can't do anything about it anyway (Acts 5:39). And lo and behold, his argument won the day! But... just for good measure, they went ahead and flogged Peter and the others, anyway, and told them one more time to quit talking about Jesus!  

I think it's worth mentioning that a flogging for the Jews meant being hit 39 times with either a rod or some sort of pretty barbaric whip. Do you know why it was 39 times? Because the law only allowed 40 times for fear the person would die if they took too many more. To be sure they didn't violate the law by miscounting, they stopped at 39. Pretty considerate, huh?

And do you remember how much Peter complained about the hypocritical leaders beating him after acknowledging that they might be wrong and Peter might just be right about Jesus after all? Do you remember how the apostles told everyone in Jerusalem how unfair the council was therefore proving that people should listen to the apostles instead of the council? Do you remember that?

No, you don't. And here's why:

"So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ."   - Acts 5:41-42

 Wanna know the worst that anyone has ever done to me? They've talked about me behind my back, assigned false motives for different decisions that I've made and twisted my words to say what they wanted them to say. Wanna know my reaction? I felt sorry for myself, complained to my wife, my dad, my brother, and my father-in-law, and eventually complained to God about it and asked God to fix the situation.

And that is why I have to admit that while I believe in my head that Jesus was telling the truth in the last beatitude above about being blessed if you are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, if I'm honest, I have a lot of trouble believing it enough to put it into practice the way Peter did. I feel very confident that when Peter left the council beaten and bloodied, the first words that went through his mind were those of Jesus saying, "Rejoice and be glad! For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you!" And Peter obeyed. He rejoiced and he kept at his work joyfully. I imagine it was a discipline for Peter to remind himself to rejoice instead of complain when he painfully rolled out of bed the next morning. I imagine it was difficult at first to train his mind to think, "Blessed am I!" instead of "woe is me!" each time his scabs were reopened. 

But I know that the same Holy Spirit that filled Peter and gave him enough strength and enough faith in Jesus' teachings to allow him to rejoice also fills me and offers the same strength and faith to me today. And he does the same for you if He is in you through Christ!

So how about it? What do you need to quit complaining and start rejoicing about today?

Caught in the Middle! - Matthew 5:9

Drawn by Lindsay Bradford

"Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called sons of God."

  Matthew 5:9

Have you ever been caught in the middle of an ugly fight? Maybe it wasn't even that big of a deal, but as a Christian, you've read God's admonitions for Christians to be known by their love (John 13:34-35), for brothers to work out their problems (Matthew 5:21-26), and for followers of God to live peaceably and in harmony with each other (Philippians 2:1-5; 4:2-3). Not only have you read them, but you have felt compelled to help others live them out as well as yourself.

In Philippians 4:2, Paul begged Euodia and Syntyche  to get along and then in verse three asked Syzygus to help  them get along. In other words, Paul asked him to come between these two women to help them make peace. Why? Because the rest of the world understands conflict, selfishness, and war. They need to be shown the different and better way of the kingdom of heaven. They can see that better way when the subjects of the kingdom are sometimes willing to give up their individual rights when necessary in order to live in peace with each other.

Perhaps you have found yourself in the place of Syzygus...trying to bring two parties together who are at odds with each other. And you know what happens as often as not when someone tries to come between two battling people, right? The peacemaker gets caught in the cross fire. Both sides turn on him because he is speaking the truth about the faults that lie on both sides. He is calling for both sides to repent instead of choosing sides. Because his eyes are opened to both of their faults and he loves them anyway enough to point out those faults, he is accused of being blinded by "the other side."

Is that where you are right now?

If so, there is good news in this Beatitude, because while being caught in the middle is often a miserable and thankless place to be, Jesus assures us that inside the kingdom of heaven, that person is called a son of God!

Dallas Willard points out that

"under God's rule there is recognition that in bringing good to people who are in the wrong (as both sides usually are) you show the diving family resemblance, 'because God himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked' (Luke 6:35 REB). The peacemaker deals precisely with the ungrateful and the wicked, as anyone who has tried it well knows" (The Divine Conspiracy. p 118).

I guess the challenge & really the comfort for this week as you notice conflict brewing and are trying to decide whether or not it is worth another ulcer if you jump in the middle is to simply remind yourself that as miserable a position of peacemaker usually is...it is also a position that is referred to as a "son of God."

Does that make the decision to intervene more attractive?

Who are the "pure in heart?"- Matthew 5:8

 

"Blessed are  

the pure in heart,

for they shall see God."

 

Matthew 5:8 

I've tried to reiterate each week the approach I am taking in looking at the beatitudes, but I'm not sure I've done a good job of explaining it. As I've said before, I'm not entirely sure this is the absolute correct approach, but in many ways, it makes more sense to me than other approaches. The idea for looking at the Beatitudes as facts of kingdom living rather than as what we are to do to get into the state of blessedness inside the kingdom comes from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy. I don't agree with all of what he says or teaches, but I appreciate his approach to looking at scripture at least in this book. (I am not too familiar with his other works.) Anyway, I thought it might be beneficial to use his words to try to explain this view of the Beatitudes a little better.

We have already indicated the key to understanding the Beatitudes. They serve to clarify Jesus' fundamental message: the free availability of God's rule and righteousness to all of humanity through reliance upon Jesus himself, the person now loose in the world among us. They do this simply by taking those who, from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God's blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God's touch and abundant provision from the heavens.

This fact of God's care and provision proves to all that no human condition exludes blessedness, that God may come to any person with his care and deliverance. God does sometimes help those who cannot, or perhaps just do not, help themselves. (So much for another well-known generalization!) The religious system of his day left the multitudes out, but Jesus welcomed them all into his kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any other. They still can. That is the gospel of the Beatitudes (Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 116).

 I would encourage you to look into the book a little more if anything I've said has peaked your curiosity.

I, do, however, disagree with Willard on his assessment of the "pure in heart."

Based on his assertion that Jesus is only looking at the "lowest of the low," Willard describes the pure in heart as the perfectionist who is never satisfied because nothing is ever good enough for them. They are hard on others and harder on themselves. But inside the kingdom, yes, even they will be blessed because one day, they will finally actually see and realize perfection because they will see God and therefore finally be satisfied.

While I agree with the truth of that principle, I have a hard time agreeing that Jesus is using the "pure in heart" in that negative sense. It seems to go against the desire for purity of heart that we are encouraged to have everywhere else in scripture (2 Sam. 22:27; Ps 18:26; 24:3-5; 73:1; Is 52:11; 2 Cor 11:2-3; Phil 1:10; 2:15; 1 Tim 1:5; 5:22; 2 Tim 2:22; Tit 2:5; 1 John 3:3). When talking about being pure, we are talking about being free from contamination. My understanding of "pure in heart" then is all about  being absolutely pure in our devotion to God. There is no desire in our heart that competes with the desire to know God. I think of Paul's words in Philippians 3: 7-11:

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,...

 The only possible way I could agree with Willards idea that Jesus is referring to the pure in heart in a negative sense would be more in line with someone who is pure in their own eyes. Proverbs 20:9 speaks to that when it says "Who can say, 'I have kept my heart pure. I am clean and without sin?'" But that context doesn't seem to fit naturally with Jesus' words.

So what could Jesus be saying then?

I believe it's very simple. The principle of the openness of the kingdom of heaven to all who will enter through Christ is still the same. Jesus has talked about those who are spiritually poor being able to be welcomed and blessed inside the kingdom, but at the other end of the spectrum, those, like Saul of Tarsus, who have tried their entire lives to serve God, but have failed- those who are "the pure in heart"-  they are ALSO beautifully and wonderfully welcomed and blessed inside the kingdom! And that which is their heart's greatest desire- to see God- will be given them!

To me, this is a message of comfort as much as anything else. What person who is seeking to follow God's will in their life but gets confused about the details does not get frustrated and impatient for God to show up in a more obvious way? What Christian who is pure in heart doesn't ask the question with Paul about which is better- to die and be with Christ or to live and serve him longer on the earth (Phil 1:22-24)? And to that person, Jesus says, "you can be blessed! You can rest assured that you will be given what you so earnestly desire. You  WILL one day see God!"

That's great news to me! What difference will it make in your life today?