January 30, 2025 -- Philippians 1:21 -- When You Really Begin to Live?
/People loved by the Father, in the Spirit's power: Sh'ma ~ hear and obey Jesus!
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:21 ESV
Early on in my ministry I served as a volunteer chaplain. In that role I was called out to the hospital. A man, newly retired, had a widow-maker heart attack and died. His bewildered family (and friends who mere days before were co-workers) gathering at the hospital were shocked, angry and vocal. His widow cried out something to the effect of, but he’s just retired. He was finally, really going to live. We had plans.
While Paul is in prison, he is writing, “for to me to live is Christ”. He did not expect that his useful life would begin after his incarceration ended. He wasn’t making plans to do this and that after he got out of jail. While he lived, he knew his life meant fruitful labor (verse 21). No matter where God placed him, he was prepared to serve God. Paul was fully confident that God had His purposes for placing him in whatever circumstances he’d found himself.
Paul’s joy and confidence had as their strong foundation Jesus Christ and His salvific work. Life such as it is, filled with hardships and joys, freedom and bondage to various sins, riches and poverty, consequences to our sin and Spirit-guided repentance, all is meaningful and necessary because Jesus is at the centre of our lives. As our King He directs the Holy Spirit to use whatever means are necessary so that believers will be sanctified, made holy as dearly loved sons and daughters of God.
To die is gain. When the believer dies, he will see Jesus Christ. His faith becomes sight. Paul is instructing his readers, then and us now, that the greatest tragedy is not to lose one’s life, but to lose one’s life without knowing Jesus Christ. Death is, in fact, gain.
Believers finish their battle against internal sins, the pressures of worldliness and the assaults of the Devil and gain the blessed, victorious rest of God that stretches through all eternity.
Believers lose their sin-limited existence and for eternity gain the life for which God created people: to glorify Him and delight in Him forever.
Believers lose their earthly life and gain life that never-ends. Filled with purpose, wonder, joy, and love. God is infinite. It is sure and true that eternity will be exciting because God is limitlessly perfect, good, loving.
Honestly, I hesitated a full day and a bit before even attempting to share a reflection on this text. It is so well-known and so deep. It is so comprehensive. I am so small. Narrow-minded in my thinking. I was afraid there is no way to do this text justice. The passage challenges me. Too often I think of my life as gain and death as loss. While God our gracious Father, by the words of His servant Paul, is turning all my expectations upside-down and showing me that Jesus is all my life, now and forever. There is nothing more of pleasure that this life can hold out to me other than Jesus and knowing Him. There can’t be anything more, because the Name of Jesus is above all Names. It is the Spirit of God Who can slow me down, and you as well, enough so that we don’t live as if true life, the good life, the retired life is just around the corner and that will be what makes this existence sweet. No, now, the Spirit shows us to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Faithful Father, the vast storehouse of riches You have for me in Christ is so hard to understand. By Your Spirit’s powerful presence in my life, help me to meditate on, to probe the depths of, and to mine the meaning of living for Jesus now with the expectation that my death really will be inestimable gain. Amen.
https://youtu.be/N-Y4BmnpEQo?si=BFqjpnQrn-fOCQ6O His Robes for Mine
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