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?
Words from a prison cell
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.
Christ our life, and Christ our living
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?
A heart that is not divided
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.
What "gain" actually says
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."
Death as testimony
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.
Not reserved for apostles
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.
Summary
- 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."