At the present, if you are alive that is, you see God by faith.  At present we walk by faith and not by sight.  What is more, our “vision” of God now, by faith, is only adequate and apprehensive because the finite is not able to grasp the infinite.  However, there will come a day when faith will give way to sight.  But of what kind of sight are we speaking?  

“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).  I am captivated by this beatitude.  All of them are deeply searching and logical.  There is precision in every statement and in every promise.  But I am not alone in saying that this particular beatitude holds sway over them all, not in authority, but in fodder for meditation.  The divines of history have agreed.  The volume of material produced on this beatitude alone surpasses them all and it is not difficult to understand why.  As Christians we yearn to see God.  There it is.  That is what makes this beatitude so inviting, so engaging.  Pining for God is our calling, our chief end.

Now, at the present, if you are alive that is, you see God by faith.  At present we walk by faith and not by sight.  What is more, our “vision” of God now, by faith, is only adequate and apprehensive because the finite is not able to grasp the infinite.  However, there will come a day when faith will give way to sight.  But of what kind of sight are we speaking?  Paul wrote in his first epistle to Timothy saying, “no man has seen nor can see” God (I Tim. 6:16).  So, how in the world are we going to see the un-seeable?

Certainly in heaven there will be a seeing that is physical.  We shall see Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Second Person of the Trinity, who is the express image and exact likeness of God (Colossians 1:15).  Nevertheless, if we want to see God the Father physical sight, even in a resurrected body, won’t do us any good.  The physical cannot see the invisible.  Thus, how shall the promise of the beatitude be fulfilled which assures the pure in heart that they shall indeed see God?

In his sermon on Matthew 5:8 that great puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards writes, “But to see God is this.  It is to have an immediate, sensible, and certain understanding of God’s glorious excellency and love.”  For Edwards this seeing will be immediate and direct but not physical.  Rather “it is an intellectual view by which God is seen,” says Edwards, “For God is a spiritual being, and is beheld with the understanding.”

Now, there are some if not many among us who believe that the movie is better than the book, or the video is better than the simple song, surely video did kill the radio star. Thus the massive screen image is better than imagination, which is a primary function of the intellect.  However, this is only true for those of us living AT (After – Television).  Prior to the television era the image was what you thought not what you saw.  It is striking that Jesus was referred to as the incarnate “Word” of God, not the incarnate “image.”

Nevertheless, Edwards, contrary to the television generation, believed that “a more perfect way of perception than by the eyes of the body” was the “apprehension of God by the understanding.”  Thus, the ultimate glory is not seeing friends in heaven.  The ultimate reward (Genesis 15:1) of every Christian is the view of God Himself; the beatific vision; the amor intellectualis Dei.  In a sermon on Romans 2:10 Edwards says that this intellectual vision “is the chief bliss of heaven.”

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