“For to me to live (is) Christ, and to die (is) gain.”
“For to me to live (is) Christ, and to have died (is) gain.”
Philippians 1:21
In our last meditation we pondered the words: “Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life, whether by death.” We recalled the emblem of the Moravian Mission ... an ox, standing between a plow and an altar: ready to honor its Master whether by service, whether by sacrifice: “whether by life, whether by death.”
We will now, with the Lord’s help, ponder the reason that the Apostle was satisfied with either life or death. It was no question of which was “the lesser evil,” as many today feel as they ponder life and death. Life, for the Apostle, was good: “For me to live is Christ” (vs. 21). What better could he have than that? Ah, but there is better, “much more better” (Luke 12:24) than that: for ... “to die (is) gain.” “To die” is to depart and be with Christ, “which is much more better.” And so he was in a strait, not knowing which to choose.
But let us look at those sweet words: “For me to live Christ” (vs. 21) (as the Greek puts it). In Gal. 2 and Col. 3 the Apostle tells us that Christ is his life: “Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20); “Christ, who is our life” (Col. 3:4). These Scriptures tell us of the inner source and power of the life the Apostle lived down here day by day. But in Philippians the Spirit is not speaking of “Christ our life” (Col. 3:4), but rather of the day by day life that the Apostle lives; the outer life that others see. Not only had Paul Christ for his life, but for him to live was Christ. CHRIST was his only object: CHRIST filled his vision: CHRIST was all in all to him. We see people of the world, and of one we say: “For him to live is wealth”; or of another: “For her to live is pleasure”; or again, “For suchan-one to live is study, or power, or some other pursuit.” We know this means that these things are the absorbing interests in the lives of these people, to the comparative exclusion of all else. One thing they do. So, the Apostle also could say: “One thing I do.” For Paul: to live, CHRIST.
We are apt to gaze in awe and wonder at the great Apostle, feeling that such a statement, though true of him, is utterly beyond us, and not meant to apply to us at all. But you recall he tells us, not once or twice, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1; 4:16; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:7, 9). The truth is that this is just the normal, proper life of a Christian: the life that every one of us should be living. You and I can truly say: “Christ is our life” (Col. 3:4). If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. (Rom. 8:9). There is the power for me to live CHRIST.
The words, “to live,” are in the present infinitive, which means the continuous, day-after-day life that the Apostle lived down here. When we go on to the other half of the verse, “and to die is gain” (vs. 21) the Spirit of God changes from the present infinitive to the aorist infinitive, which denotes one single act: “the-having died is gain.” It is not “the dying” that is gain, but “the having died,” (2 Cor. 5:14) for, as the Apostle points out, that is “to depart and be with Christ, which is much more better.” We have walked “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psa. 23:4) (not into the valley), and as we reach Him Whom having not seen we love: as we gaze upon Him, and for the first time “see Him as He is” (Luke 18:11): see those very wounds which redeemed us, “with joyful wonder we’ll exclaim ‘The half has not been told!’”
A dear friend of mine was being led by bandits outside the city in China that he had so faithfully served for many years, being led out to suffer the same violent death that was before the Apostle in our verse: a girl who knew him watched him pass, and marveled at the peace and joy stamped upon his face: at the steady, fearless walk: she exclaimed: “Are you not afraid?” (Deut. 20:3). He replied with a smile, “Afraid of what?” Yes, it is still true, “To have died is gain.”
There is a superstition where I write that every three years the ocean will claim a boy and a girl: and next year they are due to be taken. Next door to us live a boy and a girl in their early ‘teens’, and already they are living in terror that they may be the ones chosen to die: but these children have never known Him Who “abolished death,” (2 Tim. 1:10) Him Who took part of flesh and blood that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Heb. 2:14-15. How unspeakably different, whether for young or old, is death to the believer, and to the unbeliever! Bishop Moule tells of a young kinsman of his, a contemporary at Cambridge University, who had everything life could offer. In his twenty-second year he was suddenly cut down, and when his mother came to tell him he was about to die, “in a moment, without a change of color, without a tremor, without a pause, smiling a radiant smile, he looked up and answered, ‘Well, to depart and to be with Christ is far better!’”
We might note that this Scripture completely destroys such teaching as “the sleep of the soul after death,” or the thought that man ceases to exist. For the believer we are “absent from the body: present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). The unbeliever in hell lifted up his eyes, being in torments. Never is there a suggestion in the Word of God that man, whether believer or unbeliever, ever ceases to exist; or that his soul loses consciousness at death. The Word teaches quite the contrary.
We have spoken much of death as we have meditated on this verse: Philippians 1:21: and we know it was imminently before the Apostle. He faces it squarely, but without a trace of fear: on the contrary, with joy. But let us not suppose that this blotted out the fairer and better hope of his Lord’s return. It is in this Letter that we read: “Our citizenship is in Heaven; from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” (Phil. 3:20-21). No: Paul did not “look for” death: on the contrary, he says, “we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ”; and elsewhere he exclaims: “the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope” (1 Tim. 1:1). The word translated “look for” (apekdechometha) means: “We are eagerly expecting”: but it is intensified by the first two letters: “ap”: which imply also abstraction from other objects; and absorption in the object before us. (See Lightfoot). It is present tense, a continuous, moment-by-moment, eager expectation: Paul says:
“WE ARE EAGERLY EXPECTING
THE SAVIOUR,
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!!!”
Are you???
Am I???
EAGERLY EXPECTING
(Waiting to meet loved ones from home)
Afar in the darkness of China
We’ve labored and waited alone:
We’ve longed, how we’ve longed for our brethren;
Our brethren to come from our home.
And now they are coming, they’re coming:
Their ship will be here by the dawn!
Through the darkness and coldness e’er daybreak;
Oh, how I wait for the morn!
I sleep, but my heart awaketh;
For my well-beloved brother is near;
I sleep, but my heart awaketh;
For soon, Oh, joy, he’ll be here.
I sleep, but my heart awaketh;
Hark! ‘midst the dark do I hear
The siren announcing their coming,
And the anchor-chains rattling so near?
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Afar in the darkness of this world
We’ve labored and waited alone:
We’ve longed, how we’ve longed for our Savior,
To come from our long-looked for Home!
And now He is coming, is coming!
He says He’ll be here by the Dawn,
Through the darkness and coldness e’er daybreak,
Oh, how I watch for the morn!
I sleep, but my heart awaketh,
For my well-beloved Savior is near!
I sleep, but my heart awaketh,
For soon, Oh, joy, He’ll be here!
I sleep, but my heart awaketh,
Hark! midst the dark do I hear
The trump that announces Thy coming,
To meet Thee, my Lord, in the air?
His coming
is as sure as
the Dawn.
Hosea 6:3 (Sgriac)
The night is far spent,
the day is at hand.
Rom. 13:12