2 Corinthians 5:7
What does 2 Corinthians 5:7 mean?
for we walk by faith, not by sight.
The short answer
"For we walk by faith, not by sight" is one of Paul's most quoted lines, and it is often lifted out as a motivational slogan. In its original setting, though, it is less a pep talk and more a statement about where Christians actually stand in God's story.
Paul has just said that as long as we are "at home in the body," we are away from the Lord (5:6). New Testament scholar Paul Barnett points out that both cannot be true at once: to be at home in this present bodily existence is, by definition, not yet to be at home with the risen Christ. That is why faith, not sight, is how believers travel. Faith is not a second-best substitute for seeing—it is the fitting way to live in this in-between age. As Paul put it a few verses earlier, we fix our attention not on what is seen but on what is unseen (4:18). Sight belongs to the age to come; faith belongs to now.
Theologian Michael Battle draws out what that faith feels like in practice. To live by faith is to trust what is not self-evident—for instance, that God will finally glorify us, even while we are suffering. And faith does not travel alone. Hope pushes back against the pull toward cynicism, suspicion, fear, and despair, while love chooses to see people at their best. Battle adds that these virtues cannot be manufactured by willpower; they are given, the fruit of God's own Spirit at work in us.
Read this way, 2 Corinthians 5:7 is not asking anyone to close their eyes to reality. It is inviting us to orient our whole lives around a reality that is true but not yet visible—Christ, and the future he holds.
What scholars say
Barnett answers the question of why Paul sets faith against sight here—locating believers in the tension between being at home in the body now and at home with the Lord later—while Battle describes what that faith looks like in lived experience, trusting what is not self-evident with hope and love as its companions.
“If we are at home in the body in this mode of being—as we undeniably are—then we cannot yet be at home with the risen Lord. Both cannot be true. To clinch the point of v. 6b he adds, "For we walk by faith ; [we do not walk] by sight." 20 The life of faith means looking not to the things that are seen (i.e., in the present existence), but to the things that are unseen (i.e., in the coming age); see 4:18 . Let the Corinthians understand that in the tension of the now/not yet dispensation in which we live, believers are now in this age "at home in the body," "walking by faith"; they are not yet in the coming age, "at home with the Lord," "walking by sight."”
“To live by faith, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:7, is to trust in what is not self-evident, for example, our final glorification in the midst of suffering. To live in hope is to defeat the satanic forces that would render us cynical, suspicious, or filled with despair, fear, or anger. To act out of love, the greatest of the supernatural or theological virtues, is to take everyone at their best, their most sincere, their most vulnerable, and to refuse to be moved from the faith and hope that all can be knit together in harmony and peace. These virtues cannot be forced; they must be given. If we believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is given in baptism, then perhaps we can also believe that these virtues are the fruit of this great gift of God's own holiness.”
What it means for you
On an ordinary hard day, this verse names your actual situation: you are living in the gap between what God has promised and what you can currently see. Walking by faith does not mean pretending things are fine. It means trusting what is not self-evident—that suffering is not the last word, and that God's future is more solid than the present moment feels.
Practically, that looks like letting hope answer the voice of cynicism or despair, and letting love assume the best of the people around you. You do not have to generate these on your own; Paul's whole point is that faith fits this season of life, and God supplies what it requires.
2 Corinthians 5 in context
Second Corinthians 5 opens with Paul comparing our present bodies to a tent—temporary, fragile, marked by groaning—while promising a permanent "building from God" to come. God has given the Spirit as a down payment on that future. Verses 6–8 sit at the hinge: to be at home in the body is to be away from the Lord, so believers walk by faith, not by sight, while longing to be at home with him. From there Paul turns to living to please Christ, the coming judgment seat, and the ministry of reconciliation that flows from being made new in him.