2 Corinthians 5:7 Meaning: Walk by Faith, Not by Sight
To walk by faith, not by sight, is to live by what God has promised, not by how things look. What Paul meant, the Greek word, and a common misreading.
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What Paul means in one line
To walk by faith, not by sight, means to steer your daily life by what God has promised rather than by how things look right now. Paul wrote it about something he could not yet see: the Lord himself, and the home that waits for believers after death.
“Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8, KJV)
The verse sits in brackets in the KJV because it is an aside. Paul pauses mid-sentence to explain how he can be confident while still “absent from the Lord”: he has not yet seen Christ, but he lives as one who will.
2 Corinthians 4:18 — the things not seen
“Sight” here means appearance
The Greek word translated “sight” is eidos, which usually means outward form, the way a thing appears, not the act of seeing. Paul is not telling believers to shut their eyes. He is saying the look of things is not the measure of what is true. To “walk” (Greek peripateo) is his usual word for how a person lives day by day.
The thought begins at the end of chapter 4, where Paul describes his body wearing down under hardship and gives the rule he lives by.
“While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18, KJV)
Chapter 5 then opens with a tentmaker’s picture. This body is a tent, “our earthly house of this tabernacle,” and God has a building waiting that will never be taken down (2 Corinthians 5:1).
Hebrews 11:8 — Abraham went out
What the verse does not say
It is not a call to ignore facts, skip the doctor or make reckless choices and call it trust. Biblical faith rests on what God has shown: Paul built his hope on the resurrection, which he said was seen by more than five hundred people at once (1 Corinthians 15:6). Faith goes beyond sight; it does not go against it.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV)
Faith walking in real life
Abraham is the picture. He had a promise and no map.
“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” (Hebrews 11:8, KJV)
Jesus told Thomas a blessing waits for those who believe without seeing (John 20:29), and Peter wrote to Christians who loved Christ “whom having not seen” (1 Peter 1:8). That describes every believer today.
Take one step this week
Name one decision where you are waiting to see the whole road before you obey. Write down the promise of God that speaks to it, and take the next step it asks of you, even if that step is the only one you can see.
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© 2026 JesusTruePath. Scripture quotations are from the King James Version.