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"We Walk By Faith, Not By Sight"

2 Corinthians 5:7

Have you ever imagined that you were blind? I have tried many times to identify with those who are blind by taking just a few steps with my eyes closed. After a couple of steps I am totally disoriented. It is so unnatural for us to walk without looking where we are going, yet that is precisely what Paul says we Christians must do. "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). This principle has several applications.

Authority

Those who "walk by sight" depend for authority upon what they experience - not by visions they see, voices they hear, or emotional surges they feel. But a reliance upon the senses for authority is dangerous. An experience is inherently ambiguous and needs interpretation (see John 12:28-30). Further, the Bible teaches that not all sense-experiences are of divine origin; rather, God allows Satanic deceptions to delude those who "did not believe the truth" (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12).

Those who "walk by faith" confide in revelation for authority. In fact, our faith and the revelation of God's word are so connected in the Bible that sometimes the gospel message is referred to as "the faith" (Jude 3). After all, the only way to "walk by faith" is to walk as Scripture directs (Romans 10:17). Perhaps the most pointed statement of the supremacy of revelation to experience is in 2 Peter 1, where Peter says that he believed not only because of the great sight he beheld on

the Mount of Transfiguration, but also be cause of the "even surer prophetic word" (2 Peter 1:19, NASB marginal note).

Materialism

Those who "walk by sight" manage materialism with anxiety. Most people in our world are far more concerned with accumulating wealth than they are serving God. And on one level this is understandable, because you can see money and the attendant pleasures it yields, but you cannot see God. But the problem is that the eyes of man are never satisfied (Proverbs 27:20). The pursuit of wealth eventually becomes an obsession, a god (Matthew 6:24; Colossians 3:5), and man never reaches the point where he has enough. Yet, our material world fluctuates so much there is no guarantee that the fortune you have today will exist tomorrow. This is why Paul told Timothy to instruct the rich not to "fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches," a hope which "plunges men into ruin and destruction" (1 Timothy 6:17,9). It is this uncertainty that produces anxiety.

Those who "walk by faith," however, handle this world's goods with contentment. They realize that God has promised to supply our material needs if we have the faith to place His reign first in our lives (Matthew 6:33).

The apostle Paul is a good illustration

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