" For we walk by faith, not by sight." (Read 2 Cor. 4:6 -5:96For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 7But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. 8We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; 10Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 11For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. 12So then death worketh in us, but life in you. 13We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; 14Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. 15For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. 16For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 1For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 5Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 6Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7(For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. (2 Corinthians 4:6‑5:9).)
To a certain extent it is, doubtless, true, that every real Christian may be said to walk by faith, and not by sight. But the largest charity will not allow us to think that, all Christians at all times, in their course through this world, are, according to the force of the principle enunciated by the apostle, as gathered from the connection in which it stands, practically and characteristically, walking by faith, and not by sight. Nay, if we turn in upon our own consciousness, it may be asked which of us is found, day by day, and in all the varying circumstances of life, so giving to the things which are unseen and eternal their due and controlling power in the soul over the things which are seen and temporal, as to be habitually, and in the sense of the apostle, walking by faith, and not by sight?
To be saved by faith is one thing, to walk by faith is another. And Scripture does not present these things as so conjoined that where the one exists the other, without our care and concern, and without our watchfulness and warfare, will necessarily follow. " By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God." This casts us upon God as the gracious and sole author of our salvation, thus endearing His character to our hearts while it gives them their sure and eternal ground of confidence in His favor. But Scripture also speaks to us thus: "Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and please God, so ye would abound more and more." This throws the soul inward upon itself, to see how far its habits and principles, its conduct and feelings, or, as Scripture beautifully expresses it, " The issues of life," are in accordance with the will of God. " For (adds the apostle) ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus." " For this is the will of God, even your sanctification," &c.
The balance of Scripture is destroyed where the mind is occupied alone with privilege and grace, and is impatient of the aspect of duty and obligation. And it is to be feared on the part of those who profess to be separated from the general corruption of Christianity, but whose separation is a thing of naught if it be not a separation to God and holiness, that there may be springing up amongst them a new and subtle kind of Antinomianism, in constantly looking at the Church's abstract position and perfectness in Christ, as if the mere mental recognition of that secured to each individual a position and acceptance with God which could never be forfeited, and beyond which it was impossible he should be advanced. Every word of God is true; but it is true in application only so far as it is truly applied. Truth is not truth to me until it is reduced to living act. Every distinct proposition of the word of God asks for itself a definite reception by faith, " faith which works by love." The ends of a divine revelation are not accomplished in us except as it brings the soul and God together, in the harmony of truth communicated and truth obeyed. This, and not a light kind of second-band dealing with the terms in which truth is expressed either in Scripture or by men whose hearts have felt its power, is the obedience of faith.
" We walk by faith (says the apostle) not by sight." This is not equivalent to the thought that we are saved by faith, however true that may be. To walk is indicative not of a point but a progress. Neither can walking by faith be reduced to the vagueness of a general principle, leaving it to the individual mind to fill up the undefined outline of its application. Nothing, I think, can give more definiteness and force to this simple but comprehensive proposition, " For we walk by faith not by sight," than the way in which it is interjected by the apostle in the passage under consideration. It is presented in connection with the most wonderful unfolding of the character and consequences that mark the reception of the Gospel by the soul which are traced onward through all the vicissitudes of our earthly course, giving a victory over every trial and even over death itself; linking every sorrow and suffering, that is met in the power of faith, with eternal glory; pointing the soul, in the dissolution of all its present associations, to a " building of God, a house not made with hands;" and intermediately giving to death this simple character of being absent from the body and present with the Lord; in issue landing the soul in this simple purpose of life, " endeavoring, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to him."
In the first place he glances at the condition of the world, of men who are in estrangement from this gospel, and in a few emphatic words presents a melancholy picture to the mind. He says, " If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (Chapter 4:3,4.)
He connects a veiled or hidden gospel and lost souls and Satan's power, whatever men may think to the contrary or say. But while this should stir our pity and rouse our energies to make this gospel known, it comes in here in the way of enhancement of that work of God which it is his object to unfold. He says, " For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, bath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (Ver. 6.)
There is an overwhelming kind of feeling produced by the realization of this aspect of the gospel. It brings God so near to the soul. It shows Him who, in His sovereign power in creation said, " Let there be light, and there was light," bringing in by a power and agency, as direct and immediate, the light of that revelation by which He is made known in grace to the heart. " It is He who has shined in our hearts;" not to reveal something already existent there, but to make Himself known where all was darkness and estrangement from Himself before.
To dwell only upon the effects of the gospel in its saving power toward men, is to lose sight of the true and substantive character of the gospel itself. That which is hidden from men, to whom the gospel is hidden, and which leaves them in a lost condition, is the good tidings of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And that which is revealed by the light shining in the heart, is to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the, face of Jesus Christ, whether this be in its apprehension in the soul, or for its outshining in testimony in the darkness of this world. And at this point, as throughout, how necessary it is to bear in mind the principle, " For we walk by faith, not by sight." Faith only will keep the soul in companionship, if I may so speak, with this wondrous disclosure of what God is, and how near He is to us, in this gospel which we all profess.
The next point which is presented is the effect of this revelation in us, and the purpose of God in the conditions of its display in the circumstances of this world. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." If the knowledge of God is introduced into the heart, it produces a permanent effect there. As the Lord Jesus says, " This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." It is the in-shining of God to the soul; but then we must remember that it is characteristic of the nature of God that He is light. Doubtless, He is love also; but it is said, " God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." And when the eternal life is manifested in this world in the person of Him of whom it is said, " He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of his person," it is declared, " In him was life, and the life was the light of men;" or, reciprocally, " the light of men was the life." Again, the Apostle John, speaking of a new commandment which he was writing to them, says, " which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." He refers to what is expressed by the Lord in John 13:3434A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (John 13:34), " A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you (καθὼς), that ye also love one another." This, as the apostle recognizes, necessitated a participation in the nature from which this love flows, which is the nature of God Himself. Hence, as already quoted, in repeating this new commandment, he says, " which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth." It is the linking together the two statements of his gospel, " the light shineth in darkness," &c., and " In him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Thus far to rescue the expression, we have this treasure," &c., from any vagueness of meaning. If God shines in our hearts, it is to produce there, through the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, a specific and eternal result. It is to produce His own image there, to impart His own nature. Doctrinally it is stated, " God bath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." " The true light now shineth." But if the rays of this light shine into the soul, it is not to leave there a mere photographic image, a fixed and dead shadow of the living object it represents. It first gives the life—" the life was the light of men"-and eventually it will change its objects into the glory, which is the proper home of the life. " We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (Chapter 3:18.) " When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." And farther, the Apostle John, " We shall be like him: for we shall see him as he is." This is the final transformative power.
I again repeat, " For we walk by faith, not by sight." And if it be not so, I ask, wherein does the common familiarity with the statements of Scripture, which is not lacking amongst us, differ from a cold and uninfluential dealing with the terminology of some obscure and obsolete record? " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." " If we believe not, he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself."
" But we have this treasure in earthen vessels." And this not simply and of necessity from the condition of our nature here in this world, but in order to illustrate the divine power. This brings in the necessity of our knowledge of God's purpose concerning us in our daily walk as Christians in the world, and in our testimony for Christ; and also the concurrence of our souls in the conditions in which the divine power is to be displayed. Doubtless, the apostle made a great advance in his personal knowledge of this, when, in answer to his prayer concerning his " thorn in the flesh," he got this reply from the Lord Jesus, " My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness." And the immediate concurrence of his soul in these conditions of the display of divine power in a human vessel, an " earthen vessel," is seen in his subjoined declaration " Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me," dm It was the personal, individual illustration of the truth before us, " Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." (Ver. 10.)
There is a proportion and correspondence between the manifestation of the life of Jesus, and our bearing about in the body His dying. If this be entered into in the energy of divine grace, and in enlarged and self-denying service for Christ, as in the case of the apostle, it displays, as from within, the power of this life. But it is not dissociated from the divine care, and watchful ordering of external circumstances for this issue by the Lord, as he says, " For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." (Ver. 11.) There is the purpose of heart which, by a voluntary consecration to the service of Christ, seeks to be made conformable to His death; a voluntary " bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." But there is also the weakness of nature, together with a lack of full spiritual apprehension, which, if unchecked, would induce in the most energetic servants of the Lord a not unfrequent turning away from the constant pressure of the cross; and, to that extent, would defeat the desire to manifest the life of Jesus. To counteract this, therefore, and that the desire for Christ's glory may be divinely accomplished in His servants, there is the ordering, variously by the Lord, of outward circumstances, so that, as the apostle says, there should be a delivering up unto death for Jesus' sake: the ordering of the Lord coming in, in aid of the weakness of the earthen vessel in which this divine treasure is deposited. Hence, especially, in the service of the gospel, the apostle had to say, " So then death worketh in us, but life in you."
But the secret of all this willingness to meet death-death not outwardly only, but in all the inward purposes and principles and objects of a man in the flesh-what is this? It is the conscious possession of a life that death cannot touch; a life whose triumphs are now seen in the mural death of all that nature, apart from God, must needs value and cherish; a life sustained by its alliance with God amidst " deaths oft" in its course through this world; and a life, finally, that resurrection will give its triumph to when even the earthen vessel that contained it is broken, and lying like a dishonored potsherd in the grave. It was this which urged the apostle onward in his fervid course, as he says, " We have the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you" (ver. 13, 14); and then adds, " For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day." (Ver. 16.)
But here again how needful is it, if these things are not to be to us mere empty words-words of Scripture, it is true, but to us wholly uninfluential-to remember the declaration of the apostle, " For we walk by faith not by sight." How otherwise is it possible that the summing up of the apostle's estimate of his whole course of suffering and sorrow and affliction in this world should appear to us to be anything but a mere rhapsody, instead of the utterances of a man soberly weighing up the issues of time, with its passing and checkereda scenes, and of eternity with its impending glory? " For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (Ver. 17, 18.)
The eye that is steadily directed to the world that is unseen and eternal, will bring home to the soul a thousand intimations of coming glory and of attractive goodness, which are missed entirely by the Christian even that is unduly occupied by the things of this world and time. The spectacle of the starry heavens and all the glory of the celestial sphere may be alike the object of the contemplation of the astronomer in his observatory, and the midnight traveler as he lifts his transient glance ever and anon to the spangled canopy on high. But while the one gazes with wrapt wonder on the limitless fields of space, and has his senses bathed in all the glory of revolving suns and spheres, as through his telescope they are seen to thread their mazy way through never-ending galaxies of brightness; the other beholds little more than an outstretched pavilion of blue hung with its tiny lamps, which, twinkling with glowworm brightness, shed their feeble rays to guide him in the bewilderment of his steps. The objects of contemplation are the same to both, but how different are the emotions awakened by them in the mind of each! So is it with the Christian that steadily gazes with the eye of faith into the disclosures of that world which faith alone can apprehend, and the Christian that does not indeed disbelieve the record of those things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but who, in a practical sense, could hardly-at least in the apostle's application of the phrase-be said to " Walk by faith and not by sight."
In infinite grace, we know that God so watches over the feeblest and faultiest of His children, in their course, as to make all things work together for their good. But this is far wide of the truth. which was before the apostle's mind in the passage now before us. Here the scope and purpose and entire bent of the soul, whether in active labor or in patient suffering, are directed to the things which are unseen and which are eternal, to the exclusion, as to any dominancy over the soul, of the things which are seen and temporal. Nor can it be said, I think, where Christ and His service, His cross and coming again are not the ruling objects of the heart, that the language of these verses can suitably be applied. Though if human estimation be regarded, it is granted that in this respect " the first may be last and the last first."
There is nothing more wonderful than the calm and confident way in which each point is explained and disposed of in the questions that are discussed in the verses on which we now enter, chapter v. 1-9. If we think of what death is, what conquests it has made, what is involved in the dissolution of the ties that bind us to the present scene of existence, what utter powerlessness there is in nature to meet the approach of death, what darkness and uncertainty mark 'all the reasonings of philosophy concerning what is hidden from us in the future by the veil of mortality, we cannot but see and wonder at the love that opens out such a vista of glory and triumph through the regions of death and discomfiture of all human power and hope. The body which we now possess, and which is subject to decay and dissolution, is but an earthly tent that death takes down, to be replaced by a " building of God," an eternal habitation, in those heavens where Jesus finds His home and where God's glory eternally reigns. There may be groaning now because of the weakness of nature, and because of our association with a creation that, through sin, is itself made to groan; but this only compels the more earnest out-look of the soul, and the more longing desire to be " clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." But where this is not the object of desire, and where the soul has not a title to this provision of God, what is there for it but the most terrible unpreparedness for a scene on which it is compelled to enter? For what pregnant sorrow is there in the expression, " If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." This heavenly house must be ours, the soul must be clothed upon with this, or else we must " be found naked." But this is an interjected thought; and the apostle returns again to the " groaning" which characterizes our dwelling in this tabernacle, showing that the very burden we now feel through corrupted mortality, awakens, not simply a desire for the deliverance that death might bring, but for that which goes far beyond-" that mortality might be swallowed up of life." It is life, and not death, that Scripture always presents to the believer as the proper object of his hope. It is for life and glory that Christ has redeemed us, and not for death and corruption. And God has wrought us for the self-same thing; and the earnest of the Spirit, is the witness and earnest of the inheritance and of glory.
But, come life or death, there is always a ground for confidence. Death may come. Be it so. If we are at home in the body, there is so far a necessitated absence from the Lord. If we are absent from the body, it lands us with Him who is the object of our desire. " We are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." And the issue of all, where it can be truly said " We walk by faith not by sight," is summed up in the words " Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him." (Ver. 9.) Amen.