Go! And See Beyond The Visible – Fix Your Eyes On The Eternal - 2 Corinthians 4:18 Series

Go! And See Beyond the Visible – Fix Your Eyes on the Eternal - 2 Corinthians 4:18

2 Corinthians 4:18 (NLT): “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Introduction: Seeing Beyond the Visible

Have you ever stood at the edge of the sea on a cloudy day? The horizon seems to vanish. You see only the fog, the waves, and the wind—but you know the horizon is still there. You can’t see it, but it hasn’t disappeared.

That’s what Paul is teaching us here. In this world, the clouds of trouble, suffering, and distraction often obscure eternity. But the believer is called to see with the eyes of faith—to look beyond what is visible to what is eternal.

The Apostle Paul reminds us: “we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen.” He doesn’t say “glance” or “occasionally look,” but fix—to focus, to anchor, to steady our vision. This is not passive observation; it is active faith.

Today as we open the Word, may the Holy Spirit lift our eyes beyond the temporary to the eternal.

1. The Context: Paul’s Perspective Amid Suffering

Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth—a church familiar with hardship, persecution, and spiritual distraction. He had just described being “pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair” (2 Corinthians 4:8 NLT).

Paul had learned something that every believer must learn: the visible world is temporary; the invisible kingdom of God is eternal.

The Greek word translated “look” in verse 18 is “skopeo” (s??p??)—the root of our English words “scope” and “microscope.” It means to look intently, to scrutinise, to examine carefully.

Paul is urging us not to let our gaze rest upon the visible—on pain, problems, or possessions—but to look through them, to the unseen reality of God’s eternal glory.

Romans 8:18 (NLT): “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”

Paul isn’t denying suffering; he’s redefining it. Our present pain is real, but it is temporary—and it is outweighed by eternal glory.

John Piper once said, “Every moment of suffering you endure in faith is producing a glory beyond all comparison.”

And that’s the point: God wastes nothing. Every tear shed in faith becomes a jewel of glory in eternity.

2. The Eternal Versus the Temporary

In 2 Corinthians 4:18, Paul draws a sharp contrast between two worlds: the visible and the invisible, the temporary and the eternal.

The Greek word for “temporary” is “proskairos” (p??s?a????)—literally meaning “for a season” or “for a short while.” This same word appears in Matthew 13:21, where Jesus describes the seed that springs up quickly but withers away because it has no root.

Paul says: what you can see—the trials, the temptations, the triumphs—are temporary. But what you cannot see—God’s promises, heaven’s glory, the spiritual realities of Christ—is eternal.

Hebrews 11:1 (NLT): “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”

Faith is not blind—it’s visionary. It sees what physical eyes cannot perceive. Faith is the spiritual telescope through which we behold eternity.

Max Lucado beautifully put it: “Faith is seeing the invisible, believing the incredible, and receiving the impossible.”

And so, the believer’s call is not to live by sight, but by faith—to look beyond what the natural eye perceives and trust in what God has promised.

3. The Invisible Reality: Jesus Christ, Our Eternal Hope

To understand what Paul means by fixing our gaze on the unseen, we must ask: what—or rather, who—is unseen?

The answer is Jesus.

Colossians 1:15–17 (NLT): “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see…”

Jesus reveals the unseen God. When we fix our gaze on Jesus, we see beyond the visible into the eternal heart of God.

The Greek for “image” here is “eikon” (e????)—from which we get “icon.” Christ is not merely like God; He is God made visible.

To fix our gaze on the unseen is to fix our eyes on Christ—the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).

Charles Stanley once said, “Our faith is strengthened when we fix our eyes on Jesus and trust that He is working even when we cannot see it.”

That’s the truth of 2 Corinthians 4:18—Christ Himself is the unseen reality sustaining us through what we see.

The Weaver’s Tapestry

There’s an old story about a weaver working on a loom. A visitor watched as the weaver passed threads of every colour—bright and dark—back and forth. From underneath, it looked chaotic, tangled, meaningless. But when the weaver turned the fabric around, a magnificent pattern appeared.