To Live Is Christ

Paul is writing while the outcome of his case is really uncertain, and he does something here that most of us only do under real pressure. He names his bottom line out loud.

He begins with confidence, saying that through their prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit, what has happened to him will turn out for his deliverance. Then he defines deliverance in a way we’d never have chosen. His hope isn’t primarily that he walks out of prison alive, but that he will have sufficient courage so that Christ will be exalted in his body, whether by life or by death.

Read that last phrase again, because it’s the hinge of the passage. Whether by life or by death. Paul has taken the two outcomes that frighten us most and set them side by side as equally acceptable, because both of them accomplish the only thing he genuinely cares about.

Then comes verse 21, which may be the most concentrated sentence in the entire letter.

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

Philippians 1:21

Notice this is essentially a math problem. Paul is telling us the value of both halves of his existence, and Christ is on both sides of the equation. If he lives, the content of his life is Christ. If he dies, he gets to go be with Christ. There’s no losing scenario anywhere in the sentence. That’s why there’s no fear in it either.

Most of us have a very different equation running quietly in the background. To live is my family, or my career, or my health, or my comfort, and to die is loss. That equation isn’t evil and it isn’t even unusual, but it’s fragile, because everything on the left side of it can be taken from you.

Here’s the honest test, and it takes about ten seconds. Finish Paul’s sentence with your own life in it. Whatever fills that blank is what you’ll fight hardest to protect, grieve hardest to lose, and organize your calendar around without ever consciously deciding to.

Paul’s answer wasn’t a slogan he hung on a wall. It was the settled conclusion of a man who had already counted the cost and found Christ worth more than the verdict of his own trial.