(for we walk by faith, not by sight;)
Paul has just described the body as a temporary tent and admitted that while we are at home in it we are away from the Lord. Verse 7 drops in one short line about how a Christian lives in that gap, and it raises a hard question: how do you walk toward someone you cannot see?
An aside that covers the whole of life
The sentence is short, but one writer treats it as a rule over the whole Christian life, not a passing remark. It explains why our spiritual blessings never show up to the eye.
Verse 7 is a very important aside: "For we walk by faith, not by sight." It rules our whole life while we are still in a body of flesh and blood. All the spiritual blessings we have are real to faith, but we cannot see or touch them. We are away from the Lord, so we have not seen Him with our eyes. Yet faith carries great certainty, and Hebrews 11 says the same: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
What "sight" means here
The Greek word behind "sight" has been debated, and one commentator works through it carefully before landing on a sense that changes little of the meaning but sharpens it.
This verse has given scholars much trouble, though the general sense is plain enough… The way the New Testament uses the word leaves us with "appearance," unless we keep the sense of "sight" that the older English translators chose. That meaning is doubtful in any writer, religious or not. Either way it comes to much the same thing. We walk by faith, not by appearance, being absent from the Lord and heaven. We do look at the unseen and eternal, but we look by faith. We do not yet see the things or the persons themselves, as we will when we are there.
Not the way Israel was led
God led Israel through the desert one way, and He leads Christians another. The new way comes with someone to copy.
Nothing else given to a believer on earth compares with faith. More than anything else it honours God and the word of His grace, because it makes us lean on the good Shepherd through the Holy Spirit… For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Israel did not march through the desert that way. They were guided by the cloud and the pillar of fire, which they could see. The Christian now, whether a Jew or a Gentile, has to walk through faith, of which the Lord Himself was the blessed pattern and perfection.
The pull back toward a religion of the visible is not only ancient history. One writer sees it alive among believers now.
But there is always this great difference between the Jew and the Christian — "We walk by faith, not by sight." The Jewish religion was mostly by sight. "The law is not of faith." Sadly, much of what is in many believers is Jewish as well as Christian. So feelings, works and ceremonies take a large place with many.
The daily test
If the rule is real, it cuts into ordinary decisions — how we choose, what we lean on, where we look for direction.
This is where a Christian stands right now. If I am ruled by anything I can see, I have left the path of faith… The moment I am ruled by something around me that I can see, or treat it as my motive or my aim, or look to it for guidance, direction, or understanding about my path, I have left this simple, blessed path of faith. It is the path God has marked out for His own.
Living in two places at once
Faith is not just refusing to look at what is in front of us. It puts something else in front of us, and that lifts the heart above where we are. One writer pictures this with two places from Israel's story: Egypt, the land of their slavery, and Canaan, the land God promised them.
It was so then, and it is so now. "We walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7) "What we will be has not yet appeared." (1 John 3:2) We are shut in by the body here, "away from the Lord." In fact we are in Egypt, yet in spirit we are in the heavenly Canaan. Faith brings the heart under the power of divine and unseen things, so it can rise above everything down here, in this place "where death and darkness reign."
Confidence in life and in death
The verses on either side tie this way of living to confidence — in the body now, and in death later.
We enter into this glorious prospect by the Spirit, whom God gave as the guarantee of it, and so we are "always confident." If we are still at home in the body, and so away from the Lord, we are confident, for we walk by faith, not by sight. If called to pass through death, before the Lord comes, "we are confident," for this will mean the blessedness of being "present with the Lord."
Summary
- Absent. We cannot see the Lord now. While we are at home in the body, we are away from Him.
- Certainty. What faith holds is unseen, but it is not uncertain. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
- Contrast. Israel followed a cloud they could see. Faith leads the Christian instead, with the Lord Himself as the pattern. Drifting back into feelings and ceremonies is drifting back to sight.
- Test. The moment anything visible becomes our motive, object, or guide, we have stepped off the path of faith.
- Confidence. Nothing we can see shakes a walk that rests on the unseen. Not life in the body, and not death, which only brings us to the One we already trust.