For now believers “live in the realm of faith,” trusting in the Lord whom they have not seen, but one day they will “live in the realm of sight.” This is same sort of contrast we see in John 20:29 and 1 Peter 1:8.What was it that had caused me to misread the words? It wasn’t just the visual similarity between “Totus Tuus” and “Totally Tutus.” It wasn’t just my certifiably poor eyesight. But, of course, that is absolutely false, for, you see, Paul says (verse 7), “we presently live in the realm of faith, not in the realm of sight.” Paul is contrasting actually seeing the Lord (“at home with the Lord”) with our present experience of believing in the Lord without seeing him (“away from the Lord”). 6 to mean that since believers are presently “away from the Lord,” they enjoy no fellowship with him at all. The “for” that begins verse 7 is what the standard Greek dictionary (BDAG) calls a “marker of clarification.” One could easily take Paul’s statement in v. That’s why he interrupts verse 6 with 7 before he completes his thought in verse 8. All believers here on earth are presently “away from the Lord” in the sense Paul means in verse 6.īut Paul’s reasoning in verses 6 and 8 could leave the wrong impression.
And since we know that “as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” (verse 6), we “would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (v. Paul begins in verse 1 by explaining what happens to a believer who dies, “if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed.” Fortunately, Paul says, we can look forward to a resurrection body, “a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” But until then “we groan” (verse 2), knowing that our present bodies are subject to ailments, injury, and disability. Let us go back for a moment to the beginning of chapter 5 in order to get the broader context. (8) We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. (6) Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. Verse 7 is rightly understood to be a parenthesis in the thought of verses 6–8. Paul is not saying that we “ should live by faith” or that we “ ought to live by faith.” No, he directly and unequivocally says that we, all believers, do, in fact, live by faith.
#Walk by faith not by sight tv#
Another popular TV preacher in that movement, Frederick Price, closes every sermon by citing 2 Cor 5:7.īut in all these instances, this text has been stripped of its context and a new meaning assigned to it. Our text is also popular in the Word of Faith movement, which I won’t take time to describe at this point. Paul is not commanding the Corinthians to “live by faith” he is making a statement: the Corinthians are living by faith.
The problem is that this is not what the text says, nor what it means.
It is theologically accurate to say and to insist that the Christian must always seek to live by faith and trust in God and his promises, and not be motivated by only what he or she can see and hear in their present circumstances. There is nothing wrong with this idea in and of itself. According to this view, we are challenged to rise above our normal Christian experience, and rather than operating from a worldly perspective (“living by sight”), we should conduct our lives and make our decisions based upon our faith and trust in the God and his Word.
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