You’ve probably heard this verse at some point in your life. I’m sure at some point we have all thought of this verse as Paul challenging us to ‘live by faith, not by sight’ or further, ‘live by faith, not the ways of the world.’ We’ve heard it in sermons, seen it online, etc. And generally, we all understand this to mean that Paul’s words are a command for us to ‘live by faith’ rather than by sight.
So, according to this viewpoint, we are being challenged to rise above and to not live by the ways of the world, but rather we should carry ourselves and make our decisions based upon our faith and trust in God and his Word. This is a great idea, and it’s theologically sound to insist that Christians should always be seeking to live by faith, putting our trust in God (rather than to base our decision-making on what we see and feel at the present moment). However, the problem is that this is not what Paul is saying here, nor is this what he means. And what he means here is so much more encouraging and powerful than the new definition we decided to assign to it.
With that being said, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t dive into the context and application of this verse in Scripture to look at what we’re truly being told by Paul. In the context of this verse, Paul is not commanding the Corinthians to “live by faith”; instead he is making a statement. He’s telling the Corinthians that they ARE living by faith. So why is this distinction important? Because Paul is directly and undeniably saying that we (all believers) do, in fact, live by faith.
Because we so often see this verse stripped of its context and new meanings assigned to it, let’s look at verses 6-8 for context:
“So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
This is where we’re going to dive into this a little deeper, so stay with me just a little longer. I want us to look now at two phrases from verses 6 and 8:
“…while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”
These two phrases could easily be misinterpreted, which is why verse 7 is present. The first word of verse 7, “for”, is what we refer to as a “marker of clarification.” One could have easily thought that Paul was saying that since we are presently “away from the Lord” that we enjoy no fellowship with Him. That is false. This is where verse 7 comes into play. “Paul is saying that we presently live in the realm of faith (or ‘by faith’), and not in the realm of sight” (Combs, 2017).
Here’s what the verse really means. Paul is commenting that we are currently believing in the Lord without physically seeing him (“away from the Lord”) rather than actually seeing him (“at home with the Lord”). But that we can truly look forward to the day that we are able to “walk by sight.” And this is not the only place in Scripture that we see this comparison being made – we also see this in John 20:29 and again in 1 Peter 1:8.
I want to leave you with this: how to reapply this verse, and understand it’s an incredible encouragement to all Christians (far more so than the new meaning that we assigned to it):
Although we are currently “away from the Lord,” we aren’t cut off from fellowship with the Lord. While we are...
