Verse of the Day Devotion: 2 Corinthians 5:7
“For we walk by faith, not by sight.” – 2 Corinthians 5:7
Growing up, I used to walk in our back woods and enjoy the trees and bushes that lined the trail taking me from the front to the back of the nine acres my dad owned. There was not much back there but trees and lots of places where wild black and raspberries grew, which I enjoyed eating while out there. Sometimes I would take a side path just to see where it went, however, most times it just took me to nowhere. But I always looked where I was going because it seemed there was always a fallen tree or some hole dug by small foxes or an occasionally a coyote.
In this verse, Paul uses the term walking as another way of traveling through life. It denotes to live and act and conduct our lives in a particular way that is normal for us. It describes life as a pilgrimage where our journey from one type of life to another is like traveling from one country to another.
Paul is essentially saying that as we go through life, we are actually on a journey to some final destination. We can walk it in one of two ways. We can either walk by faith or walk by sight. Let us look at both of these in reference to our life’s journey here. We can walk by sight which in essence says our map is what we can see. We look up at the stars and see the magnificence of the observable universe, but because we do not see anything that could have created it, we assume they came into existence on their own, with only the assistance of the laws we observe in the known universe. There can be no God because we cannot see it, and therefore it is inconceivable to us that there could be one. And so, since there is none, than all actions and behaviors are judged by the values man places on them. And this brings into our lives a relative value system that can change based on how people change.
If we walk by faith, our map is in essence the Word of God. We cannot see God, but we know He exists because our faith shows us that He must. We are not guided on our journey by what we see, but what we cannot see with our eyes, but what we see by our faith. And as the writer of Hebrews stated, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. We are guided by what God says and we live our lives accordingly. We do not see what our eternal life will be like, however, we believe this unseen person and live our lives in expectation of what He tells us will be. The big difference that I can see of these two journeys are the ultimate destinations. Those who walk by faith follow the path laid out by our loving God, who is real though we cannot see Him. He guides us along the only path that leads to somewhere good, where those who walk by sight have no idea where that path is but follows many paths that lead to nowhere good. It is our job to guide people to the only one who can take them to a place of real life, not to a delusional path that eventually leads to death. And that path is seen by faith.
William Funkhouser MDiv, ThD, Founder and President of True Devotion Ministries.