THE DIFFERENCE

THE DIFFERENCE
“For we walk by faith and not by sight.” The eyes of faith are different than the eyes of sight. What is that difference and which way is better? We have no choice about it today. Our only option as a believer is to walk by faith or to fail in our walk.
The Disciples were instructed to “follow,” and that meant that they would be people who walked by sight, but were learning to walk by faith. It seems like it should be much easier to walk by sight. Think about the privilege of observing everything that the Lord did. Each person who was healed, every lame man who walked, every mouth that was fed all should make a person feel closer to the One who was doing all those things and so much more.
That closeness we should expect did not seem to develop. Judas was a disaster, but we should remember that the other eleven did not really do that well. When the Crucifixion was over and the Resurrection had happened, the Disciples were huddled in fear and seven of them went back to the business of fishing for fish. Thomas had to see the wounds in the hands and side of Jesus, but the trembling other disciples were not much better in their readiness for service. The three closest disciples had failed the Lord in Gethsemane. Peter had made an outright denial of the Lord at the time of Jesus’ trial.
It would be difficult to make a case for walking by sight by considering the experience of the Twelve Disciples. Is it possible that what the Lord was asking the Disciples to do was to walk by faith rather than by sight? Was that what the Lord meant when He said so many times, “Follow me.” Following seems to be a step of going by sight rather than by faith. Still, every time the Lord challenged Peter who was following by sight, He said to His Disciple, “Follow me.” It is a command to do more than just follow by sight.
We can’t face the same choice that the Disciples had before them. We can’t walk by sight, so our choice has to be either to follow or not to follow. We are asked to walk by faith, and we can opt to not walk by faith. The Disciples really had to make the same choice. They either followed or they didn’t follow. Walking by sight was not following and they had to learn to walk by faith even when they were walking by sight.
Habakkuk says in chapter two and verse four, “the just shall live by his faith.” That phrase is quoted three times in the New Testament. When God says something one time, it is important, but when He says it four times, we better pay attention to what He is saying. The walk of faith is a critical concept to understand and apply. There are people who say they see visions and hear voices from heaven, but there is nothing to confirm that this is really the case. It is demonstrable that those who claim that they see visions are very much in the minority of those who walk with God. Learning the walk of faith is very much the way of the Word of God and should be true for those who say they see visions and those who don’t.
Why is it that it was so hard for the Disciples to understand this? For one thing, they were living in a transition period of time. There had been silence for four hundred years. The Hebrew people had the Law and they had their sacrifices and priests who entered the Temple and the common Old Testament language talked about the “presence of God.” The Bible says that when the Old Testament people were not walking with God they had lost His presence in their lives. Those who were walking with God had the presence of God in their lives.
It is a great picture and helps us to understand what is taking place in the New Testament. The Disciples were in the process of learning that they walked in the presence of Jesus Christ, but they would have to walk without Him physically present, and learn the lesson of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives which then meant that they would have to walk by faith rather than by sight.
The Holy Spirit is not a warm fuzzy feeling inside of us. Neither is it someone who comes to give us outward signs that He is there. He does produce the fruit of the Spirit within the believer which then means that the fruit will be evident. The fruit says that the believer is walking in the Spirit and the world around us will see that fruit and know that it is evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The beautiful part of this is that we don’t have to have a new step of faith to have the Holy Spirit. God has promised His Spirit to all who believe and therefore we have the wonderful chance to walk in the Spirit. All we have to is allow Him to have full control over our lives.
Paul makes this statement of contrast between walking by faith and by sight in the fifth chapter of II Corinthians. It is in this chapter that Paul opens up his heart and mind to his friends in Corinth. He talks about that day when he is going to go to heaven and he reveals that one day we will receive a new body to replace this old one. He describes it as a “house not made with hands,” and that it is “eternal in the heavens.”
He says that he desperately wants to have this new body, but it is easy to see that he is not really excited about being naked in heaven. This is how he describes being without a physical body when he goes to heaven. The Jewish theology of Paul’s day reveals that this is not a great expectation for the Jewish believers.
He explains that a little further in verse four where he says “For we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened; inasmuch as we do not wish to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that the mortal might be swallowed up by the life.” His hope is that he will receive that new body and that he would not have to be without a body. He says in verse five that God has given us the Spirit as a down payment on this new body.
His thought process develops into verse 6 where he says that as long as he is in this body he will not be in the presence of the Lord. It is at that point that he says, “for we walk by faith, not by sight;” Part of the price of being in this body is that we have to have this walk of faith. We don’t have the privilege of seeing the Lord in the flesh, but we have Him in our hearts.
He concludes his thoughts on this subject by saying that he is willing to die and go to the Lord even though it means being without a body. In fact he says that he is pleased to leave this body and be with the Lord. It is a great joy to know that we will enter into the presence of the Lord. In verse nine he says that we will labor wherever we are to please Him. It doesn’t matter if that labor is done in the body or as a spirit in His presence.
The walk of faith is a walk that involves doing everything to please Him. That is all that matters and we should never forget that. We can develop all kinds of concerns, but the only concern should be to please Him.
Since that is the case, we need to see what the walk of faith is all about. Paul says that walking by faith is true for the believer so it is not an optional thing. It is a necessity, but we still can choose to reject it and stumble in the walk with Christ.