according to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but in all boldness, as always, now also Christ shall be magnified in my body whether by life or by death.
Paul writes from prison in Rome. His trial is still ahead, and the verdict could be release or death. Yet his one stated hope says nothing about that outcome. It is about whether people see Christ in him either way.
"Eager expectation" is one word in the original. It carries a picture.
"Earnest-expectation" is only one word in Greek. It means literally "watching (for some expected object) as with outstretched head." … But you must picture the aged apostle in his Roman prison, his head stretched out with longing expectation. Our English cannot say it. You must picture him in your mind. And what is his "longing-expectation" for? "That in nothing I shall be ashamed." Nothing would shame him into cowardice or compromise. Nothing would shame him by failure or disappointment either.
Being "ashamed" here is not about whether Paul is safe with God. Commentators press that the concern is what today's conduct looks like.
But "that in nothing I shall be ashamed." What a word, and how fitted to make us ashamed! It is not a question of acceptance in Christ. No; it is practical. It is his state and experience every day, and his hope about it was that in nothing he should be ashamed.
Notice how Paul words it. He never puts himself in the active role. These writers quote an older translation: where the ESV has "honored," it reads "magnified."
What a word this is: "Christ shall be magnified!" The apostle does not say, "that I may magnify Christ." It is in the passive voice. The instrument is forgotten. Notice also that he does not say, "that Christ shall be magnified in my life, or in my soul." … the apostle's longing is that Christ shall be magnified in his body. … It is, I think, like the lens in a telescope, through which some distant star in the heavens "is magnified." It does not make the star any greater. But it shows in some small degree the greatness of that star. The telescope and the lens are forgotten: and the star fills the vision.
But Christ cannot be made to look bigger than He is. So what did Paul want?
To magnify anything is to make it appear larger than it is; that could not be so with Christ. But Paul wanted everything to shine out in him, so that Christ should be magnified through him.
Paul names the body, not the mind. One writer looks back at what Satan once did with the body.
The one desire he had, the ruling desire of his soul, was that Christ should be magnified in his body, "whether by life or by death." That is to say, man's body was once the platform where Satan displayed his power. There he showed all his hatred and all his malice against God and Christ. Now God says, "I am going to take that same vessel and make it the platform on which I will display the power of Christ." … "I have full communion with what God is doing." That is the meaning of the words, "My earnest expectation and my hope."
This reaches even a body that can do nothing.
Take an illustration. You may see a poor, weak, feeble creature tossing from side to side on a bed of pain, saying, "What use am I? A trial to myself, a burden to others, no good to anybody." Yet that sufferer has a body full of pain, and everything about him would naturally make him the opposite of this. By the power of Christ he may be so in communion with Him that his body shows no grumbling and no discontent. Instead it shows a soul filled with joy and peace, controlled by His presence and satisfied with Himself. And as you look at this you do not say, "What a wonderful creature." You say, "What a Christ that must be, to be shown out in such a poor, weak house of clay as this!"
The hope is deliberately left open at both ends, and that is the point.
This hope was not for his release from prison, but rather that, whatever his circumstances, "in nothing" he "should be ashamed," but that with all boldness, as always, Christ should be magnified in his body, "whether by life or by death." Whether life or death, he would be completely content with one or the other, if only he might boldly and unashamedly magnify Christ in his body.
The setting sharpens it. Paul was about to stand where his Master had stood.
He was about to appear before the Roman emperor. His Lord had once stood before that same power, and there He had witnessed a good confession. … He calls it his salvation to be delivered from everything of self, whether his natural cowardice or his courage, so that he would show nothing but Christ. Christ had stood before this court and was condemned to the cross. Now these rulers and judges were to find this same Christ in the body of Paul.
- Expectation — the word pictures a prisoner craning his neck toward one outcome. Not freedom, but that in nothing he would be ashamed.
- Shame — the fear is not about acceptance with God. It is about daily life: being shamed into compromise, or shamed by failure.
- Magnified — the verb is passive. A lens adds nothing to a star. It only shows the star's greatness, and then the lens is forgotten.
- Body — God takes the very platform where Satan displayed his malice and makes it the stage for showing Christ. Watch a believer suffering in bed and you say, "What a Christ that must be."
- Either Way — with self set aside, life and death become equal options. The judges who once condemned Christ were to meet Him again in the body of His prisoner.
For for me to live [is] Christ, and to die gain;
Paul sums up his whole life in two short clauses — one about living, one about dying. Is this the report of one exceptional man, or a description of what every Christian life is meant to be?
The setting matters. This was not the first flush of a new convert's enthusiasm but the settled verdict of a long and costly life.
His eye was on Christ, not for the beginning and the end only, but all the way... Here, speaking of his own daily practice, he shows he had but one aim, motive, object, and business — Christ. And he said this, not at the start of his career, in the overwhelming sense of the Saviour's grace to His proud and self-righteous persecutor. He said it after long years of unmatched toil, danger, trouble outside and sorrow inside the Church.
Other letters say Christ is our life. This one says something different.
In Galatians 2 and Colossians 3 the Apostle tells us that Christ is his life... These Scriptures tell us of the inner Source and Power of the life the Apostle lived day by day. But in Philippians the Spirit is not speaking of "Christ our life". He is speaking of the day by day life that the Apostle lives — the outer life that others see... We see people of the world. Of one we say: "For him to live is wealth"; of another: "For her to live is pleasure"; or again, "For such a one to live is study, or power, or some other pursuit." We know this means that these things are the absorbing interests in their lives, to the near exclusion of everything else.
There is a gap between having that life and living it.
It is one thing to have Christ as our life — every believer can say this — but it is another thing to live the life that we have. Is Christ the one Object before us, that occupies us from day to day — the motive for all that we think and say and do?
If Christ is the one object, rival objects have to go.
Let Christ be then the controlling object of our life in the power of the Spirit of God. There is no rest while the heart is divided between Christ and self, or the world, or our friends, or our brothers and sisters. Whoever makes Christ, and Christ alone, his object enters into the joys of God.
The two halves of the verse are built differently in the original, and the grammar carries the sense.
The words "to live" are in the present infinitive. That means the continuous, day-after-day life that the Apostle lived down here. In the other half of the verse, "and to die is gain", the Spirit of God changes to the aorist infinitive, which points to one single act: "the having died is gain." It is not "the dying" that is gain, but "the having died". As the Apostle points out, that is "to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better."
Some have tried to read the gain as a gain to Christ's cause rather than to Paul himself. That reading has been challenged on the wording:
The emoi gar ("for to me") standing at the start of the sentence is necessarily related to both clauses of it: "to me to live is Christ, and (to me) to die is gain." Nor does he say, "to me to live is gain to the cause of Christ" at all, but to me to live is Christ, Christ is the object of my life. And when he comes to speak of death being gain, he never says, "to the cause of Christ" at all, but "(to me) to die is gain."
Paul faced death in a way Rome could not explain.
He felt that he was for Christ, and for Christ only, whether in life or in death... If, therefore, they had beheaded Paul, would he have lost anything? No! Christ would have been magnified in his body still. What sort of testimony was that in Caesar's court? A Roman knew how to face death as a display of courage. But to walk toward death thinking it was gain, because there was a Jesus who had been crucified between two thieves, and He was the joy of a man's heart — a Roman could not have understood that.
It is tempting to admire this from a safe distance, as if it belonged only to Paul.
We are apt to gaze in awe and wonder at the great apostle. We feel that such a statement, though true of him, is well beyond us, and not meant to apply to us at all. But you recall he tells us, not once or twice, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ."... The truth is that this is just the normal, proper life of a Christian: the life that every one of us should be living.
- Object — Christ was Paul's one aim, motive, and business. He said this not at the start of his career but after long years of toil, danger and sorrow.
- Living — Galatians and Colossians say Christ is our life. Here the subject is the daily life others can see, just as "for him to live is wealth" describes a person's absorbing interest.
- Gap — every believer can say Christ is their life; the harder thing is to live the life we have.
- Gain — "to live" is continuous, but "to die" is one act. It is not the dying but the having died that is gain, because it means departing to be with Christ.
- Normal — this is not an apostle's privilege. It is the proper Christian life, which is why Paul could say, "Be imitators of me."