Seeing God Face to Face

“Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain.” 

Revelation 21:3-4

In Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” we will see two basic truths.  First, our happiness or the blessed life is tied to our heart’s condition, purity.   Jesus is saying that it is those who are pure in heart are blessed or happy.  Purity is not just a life cleansed from sin through Christ’s shed blood but also includes integrity or a life without hypocrisy. 

The second truth we see in this great beatitude is the condition for any of us to see God, which means to be in a relationship with Him now but also to one day see God face to face.  That condition again is purity or holiness. Hebrews 12:14 tells us that without “holiness no one will see God.”   It is that condition that ushers us into His presence with God now and one day in heaven itself, where we will see God face to face.

Jesus in this beatitude lets us know that those who have been cleansed by His blood, who now have a relationship with God, who show the reality of their salvation and relationship with God with a pure heart—they will see God.  There can be no greater promise in the Bible for us than to come face to face with the Creator of the heavens and the earth.  This should be our highest aim and our highest goal.

In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Martin Lloyd Jones put it this way, “this is surely the most amazing thing that has ever been said to man, that you and I such as we are, pressed with all the problems and troubles of this modern world, are going to see Him face to face.   If we grasped this, it would revolutionize our lives.  You and I are meant for the audience chamber of God, you and I are being prepared to enter into the presence of the King of Kings.  Do you believe it?” 

The Apostle Paul reminded us this way in I Cor 2:9 “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.”  Or later on in I Cor 13:12, “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face, now we know in part but then we will fully know just as we are fully known.” 

The book of Revelation at its end gives us a glimpse of heaven and what it will be like to be with God forever and ever, Revelation 21:3-4, “Behold the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain.”