Thus we quit sense for faith: so we overcome "the lust of the eyes." To gratify this is contrary to the walk of faith. Then is it any marvel that we lose the peace, comfort, and joy of faith? But this is not what is here meant by sight, as opposed to faith. Here is an infallible truth: Though a christian, by the eye of sense, can neither see, God, nor Christ, nor the things of the heavenly world, yet he walks in the firm belief of what the word of God tells him of them; and hence they have the supreme affection of his soul from day to day. Faith supplies the sight of them. They are as real to the mind as though seen by the bodily eye. Thus, a lively hope of enjoying them is kept up in the heart: "We are always confident," we are as sure of the existence of spiritual, heavenly, and invisible objects, as we are of our own being. O ye sons of carnal sight and sense! ye deride us–we pity you. Ye look only at shadows, we at eternal substance: "The things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Cor. 4:18.
See the preciousness of faith. Though we do not now see, nor ever have seen Christ, yet we love him; believing in him, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I Pet. 1:8. We see in ourselves nothing but sin and misery; but by faith we know we are righteous in Christ, accepted in him, justified, presented without spot of sin. We see our bodies under the sentence of death, daily dying, hasting to the grave: natural sight can look no farther: the body turns to dust; but by faith we look through death and the grave, and "we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens." 2 Cor. 5:1.
Though we cannot explain the manner of the Spirit's work upon our souls, any more than we can tell whence the wind cometh, or whither it goeth; yet by sweet experience we can say, "He that hath wrought us for this self-same thing, is God." 2 Cor. 5:5. For we find ourselves formed to live by the faith of the Son of God, "who loved us, and gave himself for us." Gal. 2:20. Hence we are dead to the sinful pleasures of sense and the joys of carnal mirth; for, we see Jesus at the right hand of God, where are "fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore." Psalm 16:11.