Walking By Faith
On Wednesday evening, Rev Kenneth I MacLeod preached on 2 Corinthians 5:7, a sermon he called, ‘Walking By Faith’.
This whole passage, which really begins at 4:16, reminds us that everything in this world is finite, except for the love of God for His people in Christ. Although we tend to say that all God will take from this world at the end are the souls of His people, that is not quite true. We should remember that our bodies also will rise from their resting places and be reunited with our souls.
Paul helpfully likens the relationship between our earthly bodies as they are now, and the incorrupttible resurrected bodies we will be given, as being similiar to that between seed and flower. The seed which is planted in the ground bears no real physical resemblance to the flower which eventually grows forth, and yet its essence is in that plant, giving it a unique shape, colourand fragrance.
The passage here provides Christians with a wonderful encouragement, however. Although we are well aware that ageing and ill-health is inevitable, simultaneous to that outward loss of faculty, God is renewing our inner nature.
This is the great difference between the believer and the unbeliever: when you only have this world and the things that you can see and touch, there is no inward renewal. At the end of life, when the Christian looks forward to eternity, the non-Christian sees only the finish of all that he was and holds dear.
Paul compares the human body to a tent, conveying the impermanence of our sojourn here on earth because even our human body is a temporary residence. That our stay here is only of short duration is very hard for us to grasp for the simple reason that it is all we have known. Yet, although we have not seen the other side that awaits us after death, we know it by faith.
The apostle says that we groan while in our earthly dwelling and that is true on two fronts. First, we groan because of all the pains and worries that this life brings. Second, we groan in our desire to be released from this bondage, and to go home to glory. There is that peculiar tension in the life of every believer: the desire to persevere in life, but also the desire to be with God. No one looks forward to death itself, never knowing, of course, the manner in which it will come, and whether there will be suffering beforehand. Yet, faith leads us to see past that to the beauty which awaits in eternity.
Faith is an accepting belief. On one level it is utterly uncomplicated, choosing to trust entirely in God, although it can be difficult at another level to persevere in that faith against all the many challenges to it.
One of the things which sustains the Christian is imagining what heaven will be like. We search Scripture for any allusions to it and pore over the brief descriptions of it, searching for a foretaste of what it will be like.
However naturally patriotic we may be – and most people are to some degree – we still know that the description of heaven as ‘a better country’ is accurate and that the one we occupy now is only transient, however beloved.
Heaven is also a house of many rooms. Again, no matter how large and beautiful our house may be in this world, it will not last forever. Besides, the biggest and most luxurious mansion is not our Father’s house, which is the real attraction of heaven for the believer.
Our father’s house can also be understood as the palace of the King. Although it is hard for us to accept, Scripture tells us that we are royalty and belong to the family of the King. Sometimes, we get a glimpse of that royal palace but everything is at present seen as though through a glass darkly.
Nonetheless, walking by faith we know that these things await us. We would rather be at home with the Lord, but the certainty of what He has in store for us enables us to be of good courage until He brings us home. Then, we and our environment will be perfect and sinless. There will be no sorrow, no shame, no tears, no death – all of those will be banished utterly. In fact, it will be so completely different to this temporary environment that we cannot begin to comprehend it until we ourselves are changed.
The Bible mentions walking many times because this is our primary means of getting to this better country. That is why we often feel the journey is slow although the important thing is that we are moving, regardless of pace.
This constant movement – albeit at a walking pace – can be tiring, and the Christian life does sometimes feel that way. Each day that the Christian sees, he will be marked by the enemy. The kingdom of darkness is organised in a way that is designed t cause chaos and instability in the life of God’s people.
Constantly battling against this can be exhausting and can cause the Christian to fear that they will give up. God, however, reminds us that we did not begin this journey ourselves and neither are we expected to finish it on our own.
We are required to keep moving on with His help and, spiritually-speaking, a moving target is much harder to hit. That is, progress – however slow or small – in the Christian life protects against attack. God has provided an armour for us, and instructions on how to use that.
Unbelievers often think that Christians must be a little bit crazy to say that they love a place that they have never seen. We can say, however, that though we have never been to that better country, the King of that place Himself has been here. He has returned to His royal palace, where He is preparing a place for us among His many rooms.
It can be frustrating that though our faith is real and true, we are unable to adequately describe our hope to those who do not believe. This world is such a visual one, taken up with what can be seen and touched. However, as we walk on, we must be encouraged by passages like this one, to continue to walk by faith, not by sight because what we see with our eyes is only transient, whereas what we know in our heart is eternal.
We are blessed indeed to have this encouragement, and it is important to renew our faith by meeting like this in the middle of a busy week. Thus we can remind ourselves who we are, where we are going, and who is leading us home. May that, then, enable us to continue walking day and night by faith.
