What does 2 Corinthians 5:7 really mean?

"Walk by faith, not by sight" means ignore evidence and just believe harder. This verse is regularly pulled out of its context to mean something like: don't think, don't look at the facts, just have more faith — as if faith and sight were simply feeling versus reason. But Paul's contrast is between two stages of knowing, not between trust and intelligence. 'Sight' in context is the celestial, face-to-face vision of the coming age (v. 8: 'present with the Lord') — it is not ordinary sensory experience or evidence-gathering. Paul himself argues at length elsewhere and appeals to eyewitness testimony (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). The 'walking' here is about daily orientation and perseverance when the full reality of what God has promised is not yet visible — not a call to suppress doubt with willpower. Adam Clarke's reading is precise: faith supplies the place of direct vision in the present age, confirmed by the Spirit's earnest (v. 5), until the age when believers will be present with what they now believe. It is confidence grounded in God's word and the Spirit's witness, not a rejection of the mind.