TEXT: 2 CORINTHIANS 4: 16-5: 10 New Revised standard version
THE ETERNAL
What should Christians believe about the supernatural? When I hear the word, my mind jumps to the worst versions: TV shows like Ghost Hunters, Alien Encounters, The Twilight Zone, and all of the New Age Oprah claptrap. The word has been cheapened and dumbed down by our fascination with the unknown. And it is this fascination that has fed an endless market for trashy speculations and silly superstitions. Because we’re all just human, it seems the wildest speculations are still met with great success.
If I say, “I believe in an unseen world,” I could be subject to attacks of magical thinking or extreme gullibility. But just because I believe in an unseen world does not mean I believe in ghosts, goblins, fairies, ufos, and spirit guides.
But neither do I believe in materialism—that the entire world exists only of what can be seen, heard, tasted, touched, felt, smelled, or measured. Materialism is the old scientific view that still thrives as Humanism. Humanism, in its modern incarnation, fiercely rejects supernaturalism, even as it rejects God.
There have been Christian theologians who claimed to reject supernaturalism, but as they did so, they also came to reject the resurrection of Christ, which makes them about as Christian as Humanists—which is not Christian at all.
It is inescapable: to be a Christian is to accept some degree of supernaturalism. Paul, in today’s text, couldn’t be clearer about it. Consider such statements as:
v. 4:18 “…we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”
Paul says that the real, permanent world is invisible. This does not indicate Plato’s world of perfect, unseen forms, but the kingdom of God.
5:4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.
The material world is the mortal world. People of faith hunger and thirst for the new life God is preparing for us, which is eternal, immortal. All unseen. And as if to crystallize the Christian mind and attitude, he says:
5.7 “…for we walk by faith, not by sight.”
We don’t count on our own senses to navigate reality, because our senses are as mortal as our bodies—as mortal as the cosmos itself. To walk by faith means we depend on something other than our sciences to apprehend the full meaning and purpose of life. Reality is essentially spiritual, which is a way of saying that we can’t trust our eyes.
The eternal cannot be seen, yet it looms central in our faith, and in the flesh alone we are all simply blind.
SERVING THE UNSEEN
What does it mean to walk by faith rather than by sight? I’ll suggest three ways: by trusting, serving, and sharing.
First, we trust in the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Jesus in and of himself is the self-revelation of God. What can be known about God is not a matter of careful reasoning and argument, but only what we are shown through the life, words, and witness of Jesus.
Jesus reveals God, who is otherwise mostly unknowable.
Scripture’s chief value is its witness of Christ and to Christ. The Bible is not a magical book produced by magic; it is the authoritative witness to who Jesus is and what he says. In reading Scripture and hearing the gospel, we are healed of our innate blindness and empowered to see a light that the material world cannot see. That ability to see the unseen is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. We can neither reason nor investigate our way into seeing. Faith is a gift from God.
Second, it means that we serve the unseen rather than the seen.
This means we prioritize and value the spiritual realities that are not visible to our earthly eyes. The tenets of our faith, as worded in the Apostles Creed—and the other creeds and confessions—are the heaviest weights in the balance for our lives. What we say we believe, we must genuinely rely upon for our decisions and choices.
To say we serve the unseen means we place our bets—all of them—on the resurrection of Jesus and the promises we have through Him.
Now a disclaimer: Except for this year, Thanksgiving is the time families converge. It is only normal to expect to have at the table lots of strong convictions—many of them over all the wrong things. As we started out saying, not all service to the invisible is right—only service to God—but because we believe that there are things unseen that are nonetheless real, we are likely to have some sympathy towards Uncle Louie, who is convinced that all the world governments are secretly, invisibly conspiring to bring about Armageddon. Or your daughter’s boyfriend, who angrily insists he knows more about this world than anyone twice his age. Or your sister who has become a fruitarian because she swears she can hear the plants scream when they’re cut or pulled from the ground. And then there’s your cousin Amethyst (given name Amy), who gives involuntary readings of people’s auras and chakras.
To be fair, gathering Christians can be just as troublesome. Two brothers argue over the plenary inspiration of Scripture. Aunt Ellie announces that she has the spiritual gift of discernment, after which she advances her little evaluations of everyone else’s spirituality. We all know the drill—and I bring it up here to say that not all conviction is right conviction. We all know people who don’t know much more than we do who condemn all who don’t share their opinions. Politics? That’s it.
In my experience, the smartest people I know seem quick to acknowledge the real complexity of most issues and can acknowledge strengths and weaknesses on both sides of the fence.
To say we serve the unseen, in this case, means that we know that most of what is true is beyond our sight. We are humbled in knowing that the actual world is a heckuva lot bigger than we can talk about.
God sees all; we do not. We walk by faith, which means we leave some things—perhaps most things—under God’s care. We don’t always know what to trust, but we know Who to trust.
God knows all, and God will reveal what is needed when it is required. That’s enough for us—we don’t have to know everything or have all the answers. Better that we don’t. What we do have is faith in the one who knows all things better than we do or can.
Thirdly, we serve the unseen by sharing the good news.
Evangelism is not a matter of talking someone into following Christianity. It is more like introducing a friend to your parents. There is no proving Christianity. There is no evidence to prove our faith; there is only faith itself.
Yes, the gift of reason helps us sort out good ideas from bad, right implications from wrong ones, and healthy practices from weak ones—but at the center, our evangelism is telling people about Jesus.
And more than our words and stories, our hearts, attitudes, and character communicate our faith. Or it doesn’t. We can build an attractive, charming, and inviting church, but that only gets people into our pews; that may be Christianity, but that isn’t faith.
Faith depends upon an act of the Holy Spirit. We can tell the story, lay out the details, and proclaim the good news of Jesus and his love, but unless God throws the switch, that person, however compliant, will not see Jesus as Lord.
Our evangelism depends upon the work of God, and in every case of one coming to faith, a miracle of the Holy Spirit. This knowledge shapes our sharing. Otherwise, we would do something as disastrous as converting people only to Presbyterianism or to happy congregationalism—love of family, tribe, and community—rather than to Christ Himself.
So that’s how we serve the unseen as we seek to walk by faith. But what are the benefits of faith? Does walking by faith do something to us that makes us special? Yes.
UNSEEN BENEFITS
As we serve the unseen, we benefit from the unseen as well. As we live and walk by faith, we have a peace that the materialists can’t possibly have, for we know that death is no more. We have peace of mind—peace of soul—knowing that when this life ends, our real life in God’s eternal realm is only starting.
For the materialist—the scientist, the humanist—death is the ultimate and final reality. So they live without any real hope. They can say there’s hope for humankind to get better, but it hardly matters because you will be dead, cold, and forgotten by the time it happens. Enjoy!
Humanists can dream of going elsewhere and, in time, seeding the cosmos with life and intelligence such that the galaxies light up with life—but that is unscientific. Talk about believing in the unseen? That’s a wildly speculative superstition if there ever were one. And remember, the cosmos is mortal—dying, losing heat—so a physical eternity is beyond the question.
But we have hope. Because Jesus has risen, we know life continues in an unseen realm, and the promises of God assure us that we share in His eternal plan.
So we have peace, and we have hope when we walk by faith.
We may take them for granted—some of us have been following Christ for many years—but just how important are these?
To be frank, there is nothing more vital to one’s soul than to have hope and a sense of peace. People talk about happiness, but really—if you look at it closely—what they mean is peace.
We have been given, by Christ, that peace. It is peace that surpasses all human knowledge and understanding. That peace and hope will be in the fullest measure in our Christian hearts as we lay dying on our deathbeds. I’ve seen it—many, many times!
The materialist, the atheist, the humanist—can feel only terror, loss, and regret at death, for with their end comes the cessation of the universe, as far as they know. When they cease to exist, the universe ceases to exist, and everything is as though nothing ever was. And they’ll be too dead to feel sorry for themselves and the significant loss of the cosmos. It’s really quite pathetic.
The Christian stands at the eternity threshold with bright eyes and high hopes like a young graduate at graduation.
See here? Our best evangelism comes as we share the peace of Christ that He has given us and the hope He has put into our hearts—all of which make walking by faith a march of constant gratitude.
GRATITUDE
Final thought: our gratitude should run deep and wide. Among all the people in the world, we Christians should come off as the most thankful. Brothers and sisters, there is no aspect of our lives that should not be heavily flavored by gratitude.
One description of our worship could be gratitude training because not only do we give thanks to God for what we see, but we prepare for an eternity of thanks as we shall one day enter the unseen world we proclaim. Think how overwhelming our gratitude will feel then!
As we wait for America to change, we give thanks.
As we suffer the indignities of Covid lockdown, we give thanks.
As we struggle against medical afflictions or diseases, we give thanks to God.
As we gather with families—albeit in limited quantities—we give thanks.
As we may lay dying, we will give thanks.
When hardship, failure, and troubles beset us, we will give thanks.
Why? Because despite whatever this life dishes up, we know that our real life abides with Christ in the unseen kingdom which He prepares for us.
Everything is going to be okay.
Everything is going to turn out alright.
God is in His Heaven, working out His purposes for creation.
We can trust in Him, and as we do, we have peace, and hope—and these things, together with the mounting gratitude in our hearts—enables us to act in love, which is the most excellent outreach of all.
We are grateful that God loves us—so grateful that this small, temporary, visible world disappears by comparison.
So let us walk by faith, not by sight. Love by faith, not by sight, and the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, will preserve our hearts, bolster our hopes, and enable us to love others a little more as God loves us.