How do we walk by faith and not by sight? - 2 Corinthians 5:7

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:7 “… we are walking by faith, not by sight.

At Romans 14:23 he says “Everything that is not out of faith is sin.”

What is Faith?

Faith is to believe that what God says is true and real. Not what we see around us, not what we experience in our lives; but to believe to be true what God says is true. Faith is held against the face of “evidence” to the contrary. Faith is held against the face of human reason and logic; against so called “realities” that are experienced in life; against the face of what we see “to be real.”

Satan has created a world where we see suffering and injustice everywhere. Circumstances, conditions, “reality” and “experience,” reason and logic would lead to only one unavoidable conclusion. Either God doesn’t exist or if he does, he does not care. But faith would see otherwise.

Jesus said to Jehovah in prayer, “Your word is truth.” (John 17:17) So faith walks and lives by what God has said to be true, not what is seen to be “true” in our lives, or what is “experienced” as truth in our lives.

Notice how the Amplified Bible translates Hebrews 11:1, “Now Faith is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things we hope for, being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact, what is not revealed to the senses].

Abraham, the Father of all those having faith

Take Abraham, the father of all those exercising faith. Jehovah God told him he would have a son through Sarah. The son was not born right away. After Jehovah gave this promise to Abraham, Abraham continued to grow older. Sarah continued to grow older.

Now if you applied human reasoning and logic, what Jehovah had said simply could not be true. According to circumstances and conditions that Abraham saw around him in life, what God said to Abraham could not happen. And most of all, in the very experience of his body and of Sarah’s body God’s promise was a “blatant” lie.

But Abraham did not go by what he saw or experienced. He believed God’s word to be true and factual. When God said there would be a son, as far as God was concerned there was a son, immediately. The son existed right away in God's eyes.

Faith lived by those words of God and not by so called “reality” and “experience.”

Talking about Abraham, Paul says in Romans 4:17, “This was in the sight of the One in whom he had faith, even of God, who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.”

Things that are not seen as already in existence. Things that were not experienced as already experiencing. Why? Because a thing has a reality the moment it is called into existence by God. It does not need to have a material existence for us to live by. Reality is created by God’s word. If he says it, we live as if it exists. And here is the main point. When we live as if it exists, because God has said so, then it will get a material existence based on our faith. Let us repeat that again, When we live by what God says is true in spirit, then it will become true in our case in flesh.

No matter how much reason or experience may contradict it, we do not waver in a lack of faith. And when we continue to persist in our faith, then what God has said will become “real” in our lives. By our continued persistence we will make what God has said to be real in our lives.

Hebrews 6: 12 “But be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

This is exactly what Abraham did. Through faith and patience he inherited the promise.

Romans 4:18 “Although beyond hope, yet based on hope he had faith.”

Faith is not stoic resignation. It is confident expectation.

Romans 4:19-21 “And, although he did not grow weak in faith, he considered his own body, now already deadened, [experience] as he was about one hundred years old, also the deadness of the womb of Sarah. [“so called reality”] ²⁰But because of the promise of God he did not waver in a lack of faith, but became powerful by his faith, giving God glory ²¹and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to do.”

Because he went against the face of so called reality and his own experience and persisted in believing God’s word as fact, a tremendous switch took place in his and Sarah’s body. His reproductive powers were resurrected. Sarah’s deadened womb was renewed. His faith made God’s word a reality in flesh. Isaac, God's word and promise became flesh and blood. By faith in God's word Abraham inherited the promise.

Believing is not changing God’s word into reality. It is believing that what God has said is real. That is why Jesus said, “You will know the truth (reality) and the truth (reality) will set you free.” (John 8:32) If we KNOW the truth or reality, (what God has said to be true and not what we experience or see) then that truth will become a reality in our lives. But if we think what we experience or see is what reality is, then we will stumble and forever remain in the control of flesh. That is how we walk by faith and not by sight. That is why Jesus said “All the things you pray and ask for have faith that you have practically received, and you will have them. (Mark 11:24)

How do we walk by faith today?

Now let us apply this to Romans 6:6. In Jehovah's eyes our Adamic nature is impaled with Christ. That is a fact in his eyes. I Corinthians 5:14 says “One man died so all have died.” When Christ died all mankind was put to death with him. That is a fact. It is reality in God's eyes. Now if we believe that we died with Christ then God's spirit will make that real in our lives. If we reckon ourselves as dead, since Christ died and we died with him, then our “self” would be made dead and inactive and sin would lose its power over us. We would no longer be slaves to sin. Why? Because that is a fact. God says so at Romans 6:6: “Because we know that our old personality was impaled with [him], that our sinful body might be made inactive, that we should no longer go on being slaves to sin.” Do you know this truth. If you know this truth, the truth will set you free.

Now just like Abraham we have to hold this faith in spite of what we experience. Sin is a powerful force in our body and soul. In spite of experiencing sin in our bodies, we need to exercise faith in the fact that we are dead and therefore delivered from the power of sin.

And as we walk by faith we will experience a victorious life. Just like with Abraham and Sarah, a tremendous thing will happen in our bodies. God’s spirit will slowly crush our “self,” our sinful nature, (because we believe that we are impaled with Christ, the spirit will make that real in our lives) and sin will lose its power over us. God's spirit will make God's word (in this case Romans 6:6) a reality in our lives. Faith in what God has said, against the face of the “reality” of sin in our lives, is what will make sin lose its power over us completely. Our faith makes God’s word a reality in flesh. Through faith and patience we too can inherit the promise.

In us we can experience the fulfilment of the promise of Genesis 3:15, the crushing of our sinful, corrupt self, the serpent nature that we inherited from Adam, by Christ’s spirit (the seed of the woman) within. When we believe that we died when Christ was put to death on the torture stake then God's spirit will make that death a reality in our body.

As we said above we need to reckon that we are dead with Christ, impaled with him. What does that mean? Just as a man impaled on a torture stake has no control over his life, cannot even scratch his bum, we need to completely relinquish control over our lives. We can no longer live. We do not plan or order our life. We leave it in Christ's hand. Then Christ’s spirit takes over, takes complete control of our body and soul. He will begin to rule and order our lives. Once our “self” is dethroned and “put to death,” Christ will sit on the throne of our lives. We need to always keep obeying the Good News, so that our self will remain impaled. We keep submitting to Christ. Our prayer always is the prayer of Christ at Gethsemane. “Let, not my will, but yours take place.” (Luke 22:42) And as God's sovereign will takes control of our lives through Christ we will live a victorious life. As we relinquish control completely, Christ will take complete control. And as Romans 10:11 says “None that rests his faith on him will be disappointed.”