(with Matthew 5:8)
Purity.
The two texts are two motives. With one voice they enforce purity; but each by its own argument and with its own persuasion. The one looks rather at the present, the other at the future; the one sets before us a practical effect of purity, the other a spiritual; one tells how it shall enable us to move healthily and wholesomely among our fellows; the other, how it shall fit and qualify us for that beatific vision which is, being interpreted, the inheritance of the saints in light.
I. St. Paul is addressing a beloved convert, charged with the temporary oversight of the young church at Crete. Now there was a power at work in the Cretan congregations, as everywhere, which St. Paul looked upon as the antagonist of the light and life which was in Christ Jesus. Strange to say, it took the form of a sort of ostentatious puritanism; it was an influence calling itself moral, sensitively jealous for law and sanctity, and dreading the gospel of grace as dangerous to virtue. St. Paul knew better. St. Paul had tried both systems, and he knew by experience that whereas law is weak, through the flesh, grace is mighty through the Spirit. He thought little of a righteousness isolating itself from atonement, or a purity dispensing with sanctification. He tells his converts where alone purity can be found; in the heart made clean by grace, in the life set free by the Spirit. Be pure in heart and all things are pure to you.
II. The pure shall see God. The motive was a strong one which said, "To the pure all things are pure." Be pure in heart, and you shall find, or else make, purity everywhere. Be pure in heart, and intellect shall be pure, and conscience; no film shall cloud the mental vision, no stain shall sully the mirror of duty. But "blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." This lifts the matter into a higher region still, and tells how not mind alone, not conscience alone, but the very spirit and soul of the man hang upon purity of heart for its welfare and for its life. There is a sight of God in the far future. There is also a sight which is now. If there be in any of us the desire, hereafter or here, to see God; if we feel that not to see Him is misery, that never to see Him would indeed be the second death we must become pure in heart.
C. J. Vaughan, University Sermons,p. 425.
References: Titus 1:15. Forsyth and Hamilton, Pulpit Parables,p. 116; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,3rd series, p. 12 2 Timothy 2:1. J. Halsey, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxiv., p. 393.Titus 2:10. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 284.