" For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5:7.)
To a certain extent it is doubtless true that every 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 our 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 care or 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," etc.
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 as 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 worketh 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 secondhand 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 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."
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, 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 minds 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 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.
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 opening verses of this chapter (2 Cor. 5). 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 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 outlook of the soul, and the mere 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."
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." Amen.
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