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We Walk By Faith
We Walk By Faith
James E. Cooper
"Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord — for we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:6-7)
The Bible often uses "walk" as a metaphor for one's manner of conduct. Life is a journey; we are merely "sojourners and pilgrims" here. An old hymn says, "This world is not my home; I'm just a passing through." In the body we are "absent from the Lord," but like Paul, we "walk by faith" and "make it our aim to always be well-pleasing" to God (2 Cor. 5:2-9). Our choices are made with respect to things, which are unseen, rather than to those which are seen (cf. 2 Cor. 4:16-18).
Although we cannot see God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Heaven with our eyes, we have complete confidence that they are real, & we act accordingly.
Whether we see or do not see does not alter their nature or importance, nor does it make it improper to act with reference to them.
Faith enables us to see when the eye cannot. It makes easy the most self-sacrificial service required of us (cf. Abraham, Gen. 22). It enables us to endure sore trials without murmuring. When dangers arise, it lights our path and gives us courage. It enables us to overcome doubt and temptations for we believe that "Faith is the victory that overcomes the world!"
We do not "walk by sight." One walks by sight when he is motivated only by the approval of other people. He walks by sight when he makes mammon his god … when he lives for getting and hoarding, or spending and squandering … when he estimates worth by wealth, or property. A man walks by sight when he cannot control his appetite or passion; when he cannot put aside things "good for food and pleasant to the eyes" for the sake of tomorrow's sickness, or a life of disgrace; when he finds himself again and again yielding to the same temptation from which he has suffered. Weakly lives and miserably dies the one who is a slave of what his better nature condemns and despises, but to which his fleshly appetite, long made a tyrant by yielding to it, ties and binds him.
