Those Whose Hearts Are Not Pure

“There are those who are pure in their own eyes, but are not washed from their filth” (Proverbs 30:12).

It is said that it takes at least two months to publish a book. Nevertheless, by the good hand of God helping me (Nehemiah 2:18), my insufficient book Those Who Are Pure in Heart came out quickly in about a month and a half, and I was able to give it as a gift to the members of our church and their neighbors during our church’s 30th anniversary combined worship service on July 4th. This cannot be anything but God’s grace.

After receiving the book I wrote, I read it over and over again. The first thought I had while reading it through was, “Ah, this must be why people don’t publish books.” That’s because even though I wrote it, reading it again made me think the writing was too lacking. When I read the book a second time, God planted even more deeply in my heart the prayer request, “God, please purify my heart.” This is because since publishing the book, the holy God has been revealing more and more the dirty, ugly sins in my heart.

It is not a sad thing. I was disappointed and saddened by myself as I faced the ugliness of my heart exposed in the holy presence of God. But this too cannot be anything but a joyful thing. Because by God revealing the sins in my heart, I realized I am a being who cannot help but rely more and more on the blood of the cross of Jesus.

Last night, as I was reading Proverbs chapters 29 to 31, my eyes stopped at today’s verse, Proverbs 30:12. Perhaps this was because of the phrase “those who are pure in their own eyes” (NIV). When I read it again in the English Bible, I thought of the title of my book, Those Who Are Pure in Heart, and that’s why my eyes stopped at that verse. Then I asked myself, “Could it be that I think I am pure?”, “Though my heart is full of filth, do I regard myself as clean?” What came to mind then was the pride in my heart. Truly scary and frightening is the pride that always lurks in my heart.

The reason pride is truly scary is that it makes me spiritually blind. In other words, pride blinds my spiritual eyes so that I cannot see my own sins with the holy, flaming eyes of God. Instead, pride makes me see the sins of others even more clearly, causing me to judge and condemn with my heart. That is truly frightening.

In other words, pride raises my eyes too high (Proverbs 30:13), so that I cannot see the sins of my own heart, yet it makes me look at the superficial sins of others with flaming eyes. Therefore, I think pride is really terrible. Though I hardly have enough time to see my own sins before the holy God, I am diligent in looking at others’ sins, despising, judging, and condemning them in my heart. I truly am a proud person. I am someone whose heart is full of filth, someone with an impure heart.

God, in His mercy, has compassion on this proud and impure-hearted person and is granting me grace. That grace is that God exposes the filth that fills my heart so that I may recognize sin as sin, confessing my dirty and ugly heart by relying on the blood of Jesus on the cross. And the Holy Spirit who dwells in me helps me to rely on Him, especially when I am weak and do not know what I should pray for, interceding for me with groanings too deep for words.

I want to have a pure heart. Of course, as the fourth stanza of Hymn 332 says, “Even if I correct all my evil deeds and abandon all sinful thoughts, I know I cannot boast of being pure before the Lord.” Still, what I ask of God is to abandon all sinful thoughts. I want to keep abandoning them until the day I die. Though often tormented by recurring sinful thoughts and sometimes seeing my heart harden as I continue holding onto them, I want to become one who has a pure heart by humbly repenting again and again, relying on God’s mercy, compassion, and grace.

“Oh Lord, purify my heart.”