How to have spiritual simplicity or a pure heart? The Lord offers us advice like this: let your yes be yes and no be no, anything else (a perversion of our mind as a result of a defiled heart) is of the Devil. Yes (in our heart or thinking) be yes (in our deed and speech), and no be no, implies that our deed, mind, and heart are in one agreement or in perfect alignment. It means that we are honest with ourselves because we are sober and collected with all the tempers and all the ways of our heart. We KNOW our own self as God knows us. We can rein the mind of our soul under the mind of Christ in our inner man through our dependence and our education in and by the power of the Spirit. We can be one with the Father as a son just like Christ Jesus did in this mortal body.
Obviously, to keep our heart pure or simple is our own responsibility ultimately. We can’t blame anyone else for our inability to simply “hear and obey” God if we truly desire truth and life in Him. God puts that responsibility squarely on the shoulders and in the heart of each individual. Yet here lies the most simple and most complicated issue between God and man. Is it simple and easy to obey God? Different individuals come out with different experiences and answers to this vital and simple question. To some, it is almost incomprehensible to think that the heart and mind of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, or Paul, or many others are simple. They have such profound and deep revelations of God while each lived a complicated life on many terrains and in many dimensions of human existence. How can such a life be simple? It is the very opposite!
Well. It is because they have learned a life that is “other-worldly” or not of this world by having conformed themselves into a heart of faith and a mind of divine wisdom through “simply” having obeyed into the revealed truths of God of the living, and not of the dead.
Why is this simple or single or pure or of one nature and one substance? Because God’s revelation or wisdom is pure and “simple”, holy from man but fully graced to man. Therefore it is EASY for man to OBEY if we CHOOSE to obey. And IF WE OBEY, it leads us to the blessed result – “Now, you have tasted that the word of God is SWEET (good).” No bitterness, no regret, no unnecessary worries, no false concerns, no suspicion, no shadow or shade from a wondering and speculative mind. It is to us light of Light, and life of Life, honey out of the Rock. It is a precious pearl out of the sore tears of a tender life in the shell of an old self and in the deep of the human soul. A prize that only we can ALLOW God to form, first within, then without.
The Lord offers us another teaching on how to practice this spiritual single-heartedness while warning his disciples before he sent them off as His “sheep” into the “wolves” of man in the world: be innocent as dove, and wise (crafty or discerning) as serpent. In turn, after having practiced such a mind and heart, Paul explained that we are to be “innocent towards evil; and wise in doing good or being righteous”.
Evidently, they are all speaking on how to keep or guard our heart pure and holy in the midst of evil, and not in the absence of it. Unfortunately, today’s shallow and unhelpful Christian teachings have perverted this practice of divine self-discipline into a way of that is the very opposite of spiritual purity or simplicity. It often leads us to put the blame on others for our lack of spiritual zeal, truthfulness, and responsibility and unhealthily encourages us to claim self-assumed innocence and freedom. Yet all the while, in the inner man, our unclean conscience will continuously trouble if not torment us, because the Spirit of the Living God will not give up on alarming us that He is not endorsing our ways of thinking or living. Unless, of course, we have come to agreement with evil, and are entertaining a hardened heart and a reprobate mind. We become the rejected people of God and the target of His wrath, as Paul adequately explains to us in the opening portion of the Book of Romans.
How then can we know the blessedness of a pure heart? From its fruits. The peace, joy and righteousness from Christ within and the blessedness of our life of Godliness that we are to others. “If God is FOR (approve and help) us, who can be against us?” He is not our enemy, but our rock, our justice, our reward, and ever-present help.
How can we become such a person? We have to humbly learn and sincerely practice the SIMPLICITY in Christ, which was exemplified by Jesus. Be a newborn, be a child, be a young man and be a matured son as God commands and graces us into all the seasons of our growth in the Life of Sonship in Christ Jesus.
This is the law of life and this is a way of salvation.