Meditation on the Text of the Week

Things Are Never What They Seem

For we walk by faith, not by sight.
II Corinthians 5:7

The Unbelieving world interprets faith to be no more nor less than wishful thinking. The dominant world-view or religious system in our day is “scientific” materialism. This espouses the belief that the only reality which exists is that which can be known through the investigation by the five human senses. If it cannot be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted directly, or if it cannot be deduced from what those senses perceive, it probably does not exist. Any suggestion that something exists besides matter is nothing more than speculation—and, therefore, wishful thinking.

This means that the dominant religion of our day, which requires that all things be subject to the reifying senses of man, is at the same time a religion with persistent overtones of scepticism, agnosticism, and atheism.

In our text, Paul contrasts faith and sight. He lives by faith and not by his senses. “Ah hah”, says the Unbeliever, “this is what I am talking about. Faith belongs to that which is beyond the senses—it is concerned with the unknowable, the speculative, and the unreal.” The modern Unbeliever insists that the only reasonable course is to do the exact reverse of what Paul does: man must walk by sight (and the other direct and derived senses) alone. Faith is for children. The Unbeliever of our age consistently places the Christian faith in the same category as believing in garden fairies or Santa Claus. To “partake” you have to engage in a willing suspension of disbelief.

The Believer comes from a different mental “planet”. The Believer knows that nothing in this world makes any sense at all (if you would pardon the pun), including the data received via the senses, without presupposing the God revealed in the Scriptures. Therefore far from being wishful thinking or speculation, faith in God is the only ground which gives sensory perception any meaning. The fact that Unbelievers do find the senses give meaningful information evidences the Living God; the fact that Unbelievers still deny His existence tells us much about their sinful rebellion and culpability and nothing commendable about their particular religious speculations.

So when Paul says that we Christians walk by faith and not by sight he is not telling us to deny the veracity of our senses; rather he is reminding us that our human experiences are reflective of what is going on, but not determinative. In particular, Paul in this passage is discussing aging and approaching death—which is both very real and extremely tangible. Every day of aches and pains is a day of groaning, a vivid reminder of mortality.

But the tangible is the effect, not the cause. The cause, at the end of the day, is the decree and command of the Living God concerning all things. Because God is the Creator of all things out of nothing, what my senses and experience tell me is going on is a very low order type of knowledge. It is real, but unreliable. It is true, but not definitive. It is actual, but tentative.

The Believer knows that in the end experiential reality will conform to the decrees and directions of the Living God, not the reverse. Believing God—that is, believing that what He has said will indubitably and infallibly come to pass—is the highest order of knowledge and truth, because it is determinative of everything else.

Therefore, Christians walk by faith and not by sight. Far from meaning that Christians live in vain hope, wishful thinking, and empty speculations, the opposite could not be more true. When Paul says he walks by faith not by sight, he means that he is living according to that which is infallibly definite, certain,and true, rather than by that which is ephemeral, uncertain, weak, and transitory.

Believers live according to the way the world is coming to be, not according to the way that is now is. They mould their lives around the promises and declarations of God, not around the finite and feeble information of current human experience. Abraham lived his life according to what the Lord promised him was going to happen. He conformed and shaped his present existential experience of ephemeral and temporary reality to that coming certainty. He knew that God's Word was more certain than anything in existence. He knew that even if he were to sacrifice Isaac at the express command of God, Isaac would yet be raised up again and restored to him, for God had promised that his heirs would be numbered through Isaac. This is why Abraham is the father of all Believers. When we also walk by faith and not by sight, we are walking after Abraham, in his steps.

To walk by faith is to believer that existential and sensory reality will finally be completely conformed to the declarations and promises of God. It will be as God has said it will be. Anything else is the height of folly and madness.