The Teachings of Paul in Philippians

Philippians 1.20-26

So, we left off with reading verses 19-20 where Paul wrote to Philippians:

19 For I know that this (the things that were happening around him) shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, 20 According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by deathSeparation from God—now overcome. Physical death remains, but it no longer separates us from life with God..

Paul said at the end of verse 20 that in “nothing would he be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also in Christ (he) shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death.” What does Paul mean that “Christ shall be magnified in my body whether it be by life? He seems to mean that if he was allowed to live, he would continue to magnify Christ – his ways, his life, his love in his mortal presence on earth. And he adds, “or by death.” In other words, if his trials would result in his mortal death he believed he would be able to show in his death honour to Christ and his cause. He was not afraid to die, and he was persuaded that he would be enabled to bear the pains of death in such a manner as to show the sustaining power of the faith and the value of looking to Christ for all support. So, in whatever way Paul was to continue in his life – living or dying – he seems convinced that Christ will be honored or magnified.

Paul's Dilemma and Dedication

21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24 Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. 25 And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; 26 That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

Alright, back to verse 21 where Paul says something really, really important to those who are Sons and Daughters of God by Christ through the Spirit. And while what he says applies to him and him alone, it is an expression that the apostle makes that invites us to desire the same thing in our own lives, that is 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Living for Christ

When Paul says, “For me to live is Christ,” he seems to be saying that his sole aim in living was to glorify Christ, to life for Him, for Him to live through Him, to serve Him and His desires for Paul as an apostle of the King. This expression is akin to saying that He was the supreme End-all of his life. Paul’s aim was not to gain honors to himself, not to amass gold, live in pleasures – his life proved that. His sole aim was to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course this aim was focused on serving Christ is because He came and showed us how to live, how to do the will of His Father, and by honoring the wishes and commands of Christ Paul was able to honor and glorify the Father.

Attributes of Living for Christ

That is the setup. As human beings we are incapable of pleasing God by exercises and devotions we create on our own. Christ set the standard and made the demands to follow Him. He established and illustrated the ways and means which can be summarized as absolute agape loveSelfless love marked by patience, mercy, and humility—central to living in spiritual liberty., which is defined overall by the expressions of Joy and rejoicing, Peace, Longsuffering, Gentleness, All Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Temperance, Righteousness and truth.

As stated, Paul did not live for other things – he did other things in order to survive including making tents, eating food and caring for himself personally – but living for him…

Christ Living in Us

As he put it, is Christ.

How does this work or happen when we are all living in our own bodies with our own minds, and desires and objectives? Paul said it best when he wrote:

I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live – but CHRIST lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by FAITH in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul presents some undeniable facts about being a Son and Daughter of God in these expressions. He, Paul – the Jew of Jews – was first crucified with Christ. In another place he says that he “takes up his cross and dies daily,” showing that our crucifixion with Christ is a constant daily, often minute to minute event. Where we, like Christ whom we are living for and who lives through us, offer ourselves up – our lives, our time, our will, our wants and desires – to whom or to what? To God. On behalf of WHOM (ready for this?) A sinful world.

Who did Christ offer himself up for? A sinful undeserving world. And as His disciples, as Sons and Daughters of God who follow Him in faith, we do the same every time we take up our cross and die to our will and ways in the face of others who don’t necessarily deserve our sacrifice! Get it? Someone crosses us – we forgive them. Someone wrongly pushes our patience. We are patient with them. Someone takes advantage of us – we give them our cloak also.

Living as Sons and Daughters of God

In and through this approach to living God is able to overcome the evil with the good – and He is the victor! We do NOT accomplish the things of God through our anger, impatience, wrath, clamor or elements of our flesh. We accomplish the things of God as Christians – to live (as Sons and Daughters of God) is Christ! That is what Paul says. It is no longer I (the person born of a woman born of the flesh) who lives, but . . . THAT IS RIGHT – CHRIST LIVES IN ME.

We call him Lord and King, we call Him Savior because He reigns over us, having reigned over the mortal life perfectly out of perfect love for His Father and the world. So, what Paul says here is not hyperbole. It is actual – for him to live is CHRIST – because Christ lives in him – as he stated in Galatians.

And herein lies the conflict, the rub, the war if you will every Christian faces on a day to day minute to minute basis – will we be crucified, will we take up our cross, will we die daily with him for God and a world that does not deserve our sacrifice . . . or will living mean something different to us than Christ?

Knowing Him

I can’t stand here, in good conscience, and suggest anything less than what Paul expresses here about himself when it comes to describing what a Son or Daughter looks like in this world. Jesus was God’s only begotten Son. By following Him in faith, we too are given the power to become sons and daughters of God. And we summarize what this looks like through the giant word “agapeo” but in the literal expression through day to day life, it is seen in our 1, being crucified with Him and 2, then rising up from these daily deaths as new men and women, and allowing Christ the King to reign in and over us – truly showing that we are Sons and Daughters of God.

This is accomplished in and through a number of ways. First, we learn to know Him. This comes by the witnesses of Him which are the Holy Spirit and the written word which we study today. They go together, they work together and consulting the one through the other brings us into greater knowledge of God the Father and His Son – which is life eternal. We will read Paul say the following in chapter 3 of this epistle, speaking of Christ and saying:

3:9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: 10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable

The Best Resurrection and Knowing Christ

unto his death; And then of course he adds a line most people do not pay much attention to saying

11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Since we know that all will be resurrected we know that Paul is not just hoping to be resurrected here, but he is hoping to attain unto the best resurrection that God would grant him, one where his heavenly body would possess whatever is necessary to abide in the realms of light lesser ones may not.

Paul also writes in Ephesians 3:16-19 something more about knowing Christ, saying

Ephesians 3:16 That he (God) would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

Imitating and Conforming to Christ

Once we know Him and of Him, we then are better equipped to imitate him and model or conform our flesh to His Spirit abiding within. That as He was God’s only begotten Son, we will over time become more like that Son through the power of His Spirit, first imitating, then perhaps becoming what He was and is. It only make sense that if God’s only son maintained characteristics the reflected His father that we too would do the same. And again, it only comes through HIM and not of ourselves.

We then have the operating instructions for the Christian life in place – we know Him, we are then equipped to be like Him, and so then we are set to live HIM, or as Paul says, to live is Christ. At this point our lives have shifted and begin to thrive for things that are less and less of our will and ways and more of His – with faith and love and all of its characteristics making way into all other facets of our lives. We see these things in and through the life of Paul. First he came to an immediate knowledge of Christ, then he went to the desert and learned of Him more intimately, then he, having abandoned all the things of his former life that did not fit his call, be entered into His life as an apostle, where His life was Christ.

So that is how Paul established living (for Him) Living is Christ, but then he adds:

“And to die is gain.”

The Value of Living for Christ

In this we automatically see a relationship between the two lines: If living is Christ THEN dying is gain. In other words, “Christ = GAIN”

And most of the world does not believe or receive this message. To them to live is money, fame, power, good, position, family, hobbies, sports, and all the rest – with Christ being either non-existent or a mild presence created by an admixture of Him and the world.

But Paul makes it plain, death to him is nothing but a gain – but this is only because Living is Christ in his world. How I wish I could sell this package to the world. And it is a sale because it has to be presented and offered but it is a really tough sale because what you are offering is a costly investment (in terms of personal sacrifice) now for an unseen and unproven promise later. It’s similar, in the physical sense, of getting people to believe that there is a heavenly financial institution waiting those who deposit sacrificial life-choices into its accounts.

That takes faith – and in some case, real stupidity as some religions promise their investors 70 virgins or the idea of becoming Gods. But Paul make a case, at least for himself personally, that since living for Him is Christ, then death or dying IS gain.

Do you believe it? I am personally convinced of it. I came to my conviction of it through a number of factors which I’ll share quickly: First, I have looked around, even tested, the value of living for the here and now and found it wanting. Second, when I examine the nature of human life, in the face of their being a God, and the frailty and shortness of it when compared to the length of time all of us are absent from it, I concur that eternity is a long long time, and if our presence here is so

Eternal Comforts Over Earthly Pleasures

Vapidly based, but our presence there is so eternal, then to me it seems best to seek eternal comforts rather than earthly. Third, before I even came to know Christ, I discovered the value of principles and spiritually based treasure over the material. No amount of gold could ever comfort my heart in the death of a loved one, and no amount of power could ever make me calm in the diagnosis of cancer. And so again, even before knowing Him personally, I personally concluded that to possess internal strength and character far outweighs the external.

Finally, coming to Christ, I have all of these things affirmed in and through the Spirit and through the central message of the Word; and the promises of God made plain therein far outweigh the promise of anything this world can offer.

I have one more but I’ll explain it in a minute. Conversely to Paul’s statement that living is Christ and dying is gain comes the opposite reality, living without Christ makes dying nothing but loss.

The Ultimate Gain and Loss

Jesus summarized this idea in the line in

Mark 8:36 saying, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Verifying for us all, right then and there, that loss occurs (to what extent remains to be seen) to the mind, will and emotions of every individual who dies without Christ. We might ask what Paul means specifically by there being gain through his death.

I think we can take a gander at a few insights that are fairly obvious. First,

We will be free from sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace. and the battle that wages between the flesh and the spirit. That relief must be unimaginable when this body that is housing our souls is released in death, and we exist without the restrictions, and the trials, and frankly the carnality that resides herein.

Similarly, we will presumably – I could be wrong – be freed from temptation or at least the kind that comes with being mortal. And then also all the shame and embarrassment and humiliation that can often be associated with being mortal in this life will apparently also fade – gone.

I think this is why so many people who claim to experience near death describe this overwhelming peace, rest, light and presence of love. That a huge burden is lifted off them.

Interestingly, in this life, these are also expressions that people use when they come to faith! So, we don’t need to wait till death to at least partially experience our burdens being lifted.

Walking by Faith

Additionally, at that moment, especially for believers who have walked by faith, we exit a tenuous existence of doubts and wonder and difficulty understanding things and hopefully entering into a state of knowing.

Paul says:

2nd Corinthians 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9 Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of Him (that line puts us in a precarious place of wonder and lack of certainty – we wonder if we are accepted of him. (And then Paul adds)
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

Death frees us all from doubts and worried about our condition. Here the best are liable to doubts about their personal piety, and often experience many an anxious hour in reference to this point; in heaven, doubt will be known no more.

And here is the last way where I personally came to see the supreme value of trying to live Christ over not –

That on the death-bed, we all seem to enter into a personal review of how we have lived our lives. That is a really amazing moment if we are provided the opportunity. And when I put myself in that situation I realize that concerns will not be so much as to what I have done here to live for myself, but more what I have done in allowing Him to live in and through me.

Even as a parent my worries will be what did I do to help my surviving issue trust and put their faith in Him, to my neighbor, what did I do to exhibit and share Him (when appropriate) with them, with my enemies – did I die daily?

The Promise of an Eternal Realm

To them when they least deserved it – and that imaginary exercise tells me how to live and how not to. It also appears that at death we are freed from our enemies – who we have been trying to love in spite of themselves. That within the protective custody of the King we will be shielded from accusations, malignity, gossip, shame, mean-spiritedness, and the burdens of this life – weight issues, bills, obligations, stressors, responsibilities, and all the rest. Of course, we will, in spiritual bodies abiding in the kingdom with God and Christ, be freed from physical, emotional, psychological, and all other pain. We enter into this realm here through Christ but there it is complete. Can you imagine the rest and comfort.

And in all of this, we are all delivered from the overriding fear philosophers say we all bear – the fear of death. We will have experienced it, it will be gone, and we will enter into a place that we have only imagined, and probably imagined wrongly. Because of the victory Christ has had over all things, I am convinced that this realm will be filled with all of our family and friends, and all of the people we may have misunderstood over the course of our lives. I am convinced that by Christ God has reconciled the world to himself, and in whatever state we find each other, there will be incomprehensible joy, love, peace, and light with all things of this former life dissolving with our passing from here… to there. And in this state, in this promised place, in this eternal realm, those who are His will also, and only, enter into His presence.

Paul's Choice Between Life and Death

That is the ultimate gain – to enter into and to abide in the presence of our Father, with His Son, our Lord and King, as part of that family. How I wish I could sell this to the world without cost or price. But it only comes by and through the Spirit, faith, and the desire of the heart to know the true and living God and His Son.

At this point, after mentioning that to die is gain, Paul adds:

22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not.

Remember, Paul is in prison in Rome, so his fate is not certain. And so he says, “but if I live in the flesh,” – if I continue to live and am not condemned and sentenced to death at my approaching trial, “this is the fruit of my labor.” And the meaning here is obscure and has been debated by scholars for centuries.

A more literal version of the Greek might help us understand his point as it says, “If I live in the flesh, this (would be) the fruit of labor." Luther translates this to say, “But since to live in the flesh serves to produce more fruit” and Coverdale renders it, “Inasmuch as to live in the flesh is fruitful to me for the work.” Another translates it: "But if my life in the flesh be of use to the gospel, (be it so, I say no more).” They are all related and according to them, the meaning seems to be that “if his continued life were of value to the gospel, he was willing to live as a means to produce more fruit from his labors.”

The Dilemma of Desire

Then going back to the verse we read:

22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not.

This is really a bad word choice because the Greek is kai and means “and” in this case, so it better read of this verse, in my estimation is: “If Paul’s continued life were of value to the gospel, he was willing to live as a means to produce more fruit from his labors and I don’t know which I would prefer.” And he continues and says at verse 23-24:

23 For I am in a strait betwixt (between) two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
24 Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.

There are two results and I desire them both, so I am in a strait – a narrow fix between them. He desired to die (depart) – leave this world and be with Christ (for all the reasons we articulated a minute ago – plus more I’m…

Expressing Agape Love

“to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.” And this brings me to an important principle that I think we ought to mention – and I don’t see it fleshed out very often in the faith. Let me begin by saying something obvious – Christianity is NOT selfish or self-centered. It is loving and that love is only expressed in the verb of self-sacrifice.

Secondly, we cannot love God or Christ through immaterial obeisance. That is not love because that is not a verb. That is a feeling, an idea, a concept. So the way, the way, let me repeat this, THE WAY that Christians show selfless, sacrificial agape love FOR God and His Christ is by and through our selfless and sacrificial love for others. There is no getting around this – and this to me explains one of the main purposes of life – to show our love for God (the first great commandment) by showing our love to others as He commands. There is no real love for God absent the active love we choose to show toward others.

Love for God and Others

John said this simply first in 1st John 2:4: “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” His commandments are to love him AND others – so we cannot say we know Him if our love for both is absent. Secondly, John the beloved adds:

1st John 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

So we strive to abandon this attitude and behavior that says, “I love God so much that I do not have to love man. Our love FOR God is illustrated BY and THROUGH our love not only for MAN but for undeserving man at that.

Paul admits here that he is between a rock and a hard place in his desires to either die and be with Jesus or to remain behind and serve the believers at Philippi. We all understand this. But agape love, the verb which is EXPRESSED for God and His Christ here through us, answers that dilemma we all face in the pain and struggles of our existence: To remain here in the service of our fellow-human beings, hard as it may be IS the highest form of love a Christian could have.

Attitude of Service

And because our attitudes and actions are often the result of our thoughts and words, to me it is important to change the language in the culture and to begin to say to ourselves: “While I worship, love and adore Jesus, my desire is to be here on earth as long as humanly possible as a means to prove it.” That is the selfless sacrificial kind of love that a Christian seeks to develop within themselves.

I used to be a self-centered nihilist that longed for death. I wanted to abandon this world and everything in it selfishly – and struggled with the ideation. But when Christ came in and I came to realize what genuine Christian love looks like, I began to not only long to stay and suffer while serving others rather than to escape it all and serve myself.

Today it makes no sense to me when a mature Christian, unless they are in pain that they can't escape, says: “I just wanna go and be with Jesus,” because to me that is the height of selfishness. So while we may want to escape this world, the Christian act is to do all that we can to remain in the realm where we can best serve him and others – which is IN the flesh. This attitude moved me from not caring about what I ate or drank (which is my natural proclivity) to caring for this body, and telling God that I wanted to live for Him and His purposes and not my own.

Paul admits to the value of abiding in the flesh instead of dying by saying: “Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you,” and then he adds:

25 And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; "And being persuaded as to this fact (that I will live).

Faith and Rejoicing

I know that I will abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith. And we conclude today with Paul adding

26 That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

Abundance in Christ

Another way to read this is:

“So that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”

Conclusion

And we will stop here.

Questions/Comments Prayer