PHILIPPIANS 1:21

21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Verse 21: “To live is Christ” isn’t the same thing that Paul is saying in (for example) Galatians 2:20, or Colossians 3:3 – that Christians have died to the world, and the source of their power in living is now Christ, not themselves. It includes this idea. But it says more: that to Paul, Christ sums up everything he is living for. He has no other agenda, no other dreams, no other purpose, than to serve Christ and experience his love with every moment of his lifetime. This is what gets him out of bed in the morning. Other interests have been excluded by the overarching desire to give Jesus everything and know him to the full.

This doesn’t mean that Paul was a narrow fanatic. It’s obvious from his writings that he appreciated poetry and could quote it effectively. He must have been a sports fan, judging by the references to games and racing. He had close, appreciative friends of both sexes, and a variety of age groups; he wouldn’t have had the impact he did in city after city had he not been an interesting, warm, engaging personality.

But you can be a rich, rounded human being and still hopelessly devoted to one thing: the knowledge of Jesus Christ. If it’s true, as Paul believed, that “in him all things hold together”, then you meet Jesus at every turn when you’re looking for him – whether in the sports headlines or in classical poetry.

At any rate, that was Francis Thompson’s experience:

The angels keep their ancient places -
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry - and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry - clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

“To die is gain”: Paul was a Pharisee, and so had always believed notionally in a resurrection of the dead; but what exactly his fate would be in the next life, he thought, had depended on his efforts. And he had done a pretty good job (Phil 3:5-6).

But then Jesus Christ had brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Tim 1:11). And that changed everything, because now Paul’s future destiny was secure. Christ became “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27) – a revealed “mystery” Paul could never have suspected previously.

And so death becomes “gain” – not that Paul was eager to die, in the manner of some of the more unbalanced, neurotic martyrs who were to follow in the next couple of centuries (look for example at Origen’s attitude, as a young man).

He recognizes in the next few verses that staying alive is more strategic than dying, and so he’s content to do so. Paul was no glory-hunting death-embracing suicide bomber.

But he knew that death would bring “gain”, not just a snuffing out of the candle. This commercial word always reminds me of the way Ecclesiastes constantly repeats the word yitron (“gain”, “profit”) and asks: where is the “gain” in living at all? His answer: if life “under the sun” is all there is – no profit. But if life goes on beyond the “box” we live in, if Jesus Christ has greater plans for us than any we have encountered yet (1 Corinthians 2:9), then not just life but death itself becomes “gain”.