FAITH – THE EYE THAT SEES
AUTHORED BY: SIMON NDOO
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” Hebews 11: 13
We shall hereby attempt and labor to express the necessity of spiritual sight. Believers are called to persevere to the end – the end being not necessarily death, but the ultimate attainment of the goal, to win Christ, to enter into the eternal presence of God in heaven, attaining the glories thereof.
The spiritual affairs of eternity are invisible to the carnal eye; they elude even the faculties of the mind. They are realities and truths that we have not beheld or experienced the way we experience the world in which we live.
Being pilgrims in this world, believers move on by faith. Faith is the eye which sees the ultimate end, and that sight propels them to move on towards the goal.
We may stop and wonder, “what is it the men and women in the hall of faith saw that made them to face many a great trials, conflicts, sufferings and death in their quest to attain the goal?” The answer lies in what they saw.
They “saw the promises”. Which promises? These were promises of God pertaining to Messiah who is called the Christ.
Proper sight produces certainty of what is seen. And that is what faith is all about: “The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Faith entails seeing things not seen, thereby producing the effect as of one who has seen. We have not physically seen Jesus Christ in His life, death and resurrection, yet we believe Him as if we have seen Him. We have not seen heaven, but we have faith that heaven exists as if we have seen it. It is such faith, such sight, such hope, such conviction that gives us the motive or motivation to pilgrimage with trust and surety, otherwise our walk is sure to slack and die off.
The principle of sight applies in ordinary affairs of men. We are most motivated to act or move when we are sure of what we involved with. This “being sure” is produced by mental perception, of seeing the end result of what we desire; hence we get inspired to do what needs to be done to apprehend such ends.
Men and women of faith knew their God, as such they did exploits; they knew where they are going, as such they were steadfast in their way.
It is important, therefore, that we get to see alright, and see what is right. We know that we have seen alright when we defy and resist whatever comes our way in pursuit of what we have seen; the men and women of faith did not lose sight of the promises despite the overwhelming pressure of trials and persecution. A pretender will sooner bend like willows than die for what he is not convinced of or stand for.
Faith sees best when it sees Christ. Of all the men and women of faith desired to see, it was Christ. All the promises and prophecies pointed to Christ, and they understood Christ to mean salvation and redemption, and the giver of a life better and eternal than the one they lost through the cruel deaths they had to face.
That is a life-changing moment when a person sees Christ; the men and women of faith saw Christ. Having sinned, they saw Christ as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world; being aliens and sojourners in this world, they saw Christ as the one who prepares a better country for them.
They knew too well that if Christ does not die for their sins, they are lost forever. They did not just see the kingdom of God being established as the majority of saw, as it were by political takeover; but that Christ shall come to deal with sin, and set forth the everlasting kingdom of peace and righteousness.
Those who have seen Christ testify that He is real and true. “Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” 1 Pet. 1:8. The phrase, “yet believing” (which is spiritual sight) is here inserted to counter “who having not seen” (which is physical sight) to differentiate between the two. Though having been denied the opportunity to see Him in flesh, yet through faith we see Him in spirit.
It is possible to hold onto what is physically seen too much at the expense of what is not physically seen. This was not the case with men and women of faith. For “…truly, if they had been mindful of that country from which they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared for them a city.” Heb. 11:15-16.
They regarded they world which they had never seen by physical eyes (yet seen by faith) better than the world in which they were born. They denied the pleasures and amusements of this life for a better life of pleasing God.
Self, perhaps, is the country from which we are being called out of. When the men and women of faith were called to pursue God’s will, they denied their selves. As such Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross {Greek. Stauros, stake} and follow me.” Matt. 6:24.
They did not get stuck to their possessions, careers, families, or even to their lives. They were willing to lose it all in order to gain the promise of God.
We are called upon to build our most holy faith (Jude 1:20) which “was once delivered unto the saints.” Jude 1:3. “O ye of little faith”, wake up and build, nurture the mustard seed like faith, and make it grow. He who opened the eyes of the bind can open the spiritual eyes and give you light beyond the stellar sky, and bid you to see the invisible. Christ, the desire of the ages is that promise which the saints of old looked on to see, and though they died without seeing Him, yet by faith they saw Him, and their souls departed in peace, for they were able to see the salvation of the LORD (Lk 2:29).
Jesus says, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” Is. 45:22. May for the grace we look unto Him and be healed, saved, and have our sight of Him strengthened, for His name’s sake. Amen.
