What is the meaning of living for Jesus?

We have seen the expectation and hope of the Apostle, that in nothing he should be ashamed, but in all boldness as always, now also Christ should be magnified in his body, whether by life or by death. His eye was thus on Christ, not for the beginning and the end only, but all the way. In the next verse, 21, he proceeds to vindicate the confidence of his heart. For, says he, "to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." To be spiritually minded, the Apostle tells us elsewhere, is life and peace. Here, speaking of his own daily practice, he shows he had but one aim, motive, object, and business — Christ. And this was said, not at the start of his career, in the overwhelming sense of the Saviour's grace to His proud and self-righteous persecutor, but after long years of unequalled toil, peril, affliction without and sorrows within the Church. "To me to live is Christ." No doubt, the principle was true from the beginning of his eventful life as a Christian. Still, as little do I doubt that it was emphatically and more than ever verified at the very time he was writing, a prisoner in the imperial city.

But let us look at those sweet words: "For me to live Christ" (as the Greek puts it.) In Galatians 2 and Colossians 3 the Apostle tells us that Christ is his life: "Christ liveth in me." (Gal. 2:20); "Christ, who is our life." (Col. 3:4). These Scriptures tell us of the inner Source and Power of the life the Apostle lived down here day by day. But in Philippians the Spirit is not speaking of "Christ our life", but rather of the day by day life that the Apostle lives; the outer life that others see. Not only had Paul Christ for his life, but for him to live was Christ. CHRIST was his only Object: CHRIST filled his vision: CHRIST was all in all to him. We see people of the world, and of one we say: "For him to live is wealth"; or of another: "For her to live is pleasure"; or again, "For such-an-one to live is study, or power, or some other pursuit." We know this means that these things are the absorbing interests in the lives of these people, to the comparative exclusion of all else. One thing they do. So, the Apostle also could say: "One thing I do." For Paul: to live, CHRIST.

We are apt to gaze in awe and wonder at the great apostle, feeling that such a statement, though true of him, is utterly beyond us, and not meant to apply to us at all. But you recall he tells us, not once or twice, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ." (1 Cor. 11:1; 4:16; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:7, 9). The truth is that this is just the normal, proper life of a Christian: the life that every one of us should be living. You and I can truly say: "Christ is our life." If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. (Rom. 8:9). There is the power for me to live CHRIST.

(V. 21). This leads the Apostle to state that Christ was the one Object before him, the spring and motive of all that he did, so that he can say, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." In this verse the whole of our passage through this world is summed up by the contrasted words "to live" and "to die." With Paul it is so blessed to see that both living and dying were connected with Christ. If he lived, it was for Christ: if he died, it would mean that he would be with Christ. Having Christ as the one Object of his life sustained him through all the changing circumstances of time, and not only robbed death of all its terrors, but made death far better than living in a world from which Christ is absent.

This, indeed, is true Christian experience, possible for all believers; but, alas! we have to confess how little known in the measure in which the Apostle lived this life. How could those, in the Apostle's day, who were preaching Christ of contention (Phil. 1:15), seeking their own things (Phil. 2:21), or minding earthly things (Phil. 3:19), know anything of this true Christian experience? Let us challenge our own hearts as to how far we have been content with merely an occasional taste of such blessedness as living only for Christ. With Paul it was the constant experience of his soul. It was not only that Christ was his life, but he says, "For me to live is Christ." 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?

The apostle could say, "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." What was Paul about when he wrote that word? He felt that he was for Christ, and for Christ only, whether in life or in death. He could say, "I have only one object — Christ; and I have only one desire — that Christ should be magnified in my body." 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 go forward to it in the thought that death was gain, because there was a Jesus who had been crucified between two thieves, who was the joy of a man's heart, a Roman could not have understood. Let me ask you — since you have known Christ, Christ's heart, Christ Himself your treasure, your life, Christ everything that God could give you — has your thought been, "To me to live is Christ, and to die gain"? It is our privilege while passing through this scene. And how it glorifies the meanest life if Christ is magnified in it! And how does it change death, if to die is gain, Christ being magnified in it! That is what a life of communion with God gives to a man. Ennobled by God most truly. The life of Christ flowing out through me, I am like the hands of a clock through which the life of the works within shows itself. Is that bondage? Is it legality for Christ to say, "Your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, and I expect you to show it"? If this is bondage, would to God there were ten thousand times more of it. G. V. W.

So Paul in Philippians 1. He had Christ as the Motive for his living — his "raison d'etre." "… Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." This was at once the language of faith and affection. Only faith could see gain in death and only affection would lead to such devotion as to make Christ the supreme Object of his life. There was worked out practically in Paul the principle enunciated by his blessed Lord, for had He not said, "As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by (on account of) the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by (on account of) Me" (John 6:57). Just as David was the reason for Ittai's living; just as the Father was the reason for the Son's living, so Christ, feasted on with delight, is the reason for the believer's living.

"To me to live is Christ." 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 brethren. The joys of God are entered into by the one that will make Christ, and Christ alone, his object.

It is exceedingly important in these days to have Christ the centre of everything to us, so as to be able to say, "to me to live is Christ;" to be walking in the light of His glory shining down upon our path, in everything that glory kept uppermost; not to be allowing two lives in us, the life of the flesh and the life of the Spirit, but to be sinking the life of the flesh, and having only the life of Christ living in us.

How beautiful — when perhaps there may be no outward manifestation-a heart turning round to Christ in every thing! In the morning saying, "I have to rise, but I shall do it with Thee: whether I eat or drink I have to do it unto Thee." It is an unseen life, but have you as the very clue to everything you do, as it was to Paul, "To me to live is Christ?" Do you like Christ to know what your secret, private walk is?

The apostle gives us a full statement of this blessed truth, as in his own case. "I am crucified with Christ," he says, "nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me." Here he speaks of himself, in one point of view, as dead; and in another, as alive. How can this be understood? By faith only. He speaks of two "I's "; the old "I," or self, as slain — or crucified. The new "I," as his new life — Christ in him. The first, he treats as dead, and for ever done with; the second, as his only life now. "Christ lives in me." The practical effect of this truth, when believed, is immense. Self, wretched self, which is the end and object of the natural man, in all he does, is gone — gone, I mean, to faith. Christ enters and takes the place of self. "For me to live is Christ" — is to have Christ, not self, for my end and object. Christ, not self, is the spring now. We know, of course, that Paul had his natural life here below — the life he ever had as a man, but the life in which he lived, was a wholly new one — Christ in him. "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

(V. 20.) For the one that believes in Jesus, this sentence of death has been carried out in the death of Christ our Substitute. His death was the death of our old man — the man under judgment. So the believer can say, "I am crucified with Christ." Thus having passed through death, in the death of our Substitute we are free from the law. The law can condemn a man to death because of the life that he has led; but directly the man is dead, he no longer lives in the life to which the law applied. The law can have nothing to say to a dead man. Moreover, if as believers we have died to the old life to which the law applies, we have a new life in Christ. So the Apostle can say, "Nevertheless I live: yet not I but Christ lives in me." If I would see this new life in all its perfection, I must look at Christ. As one has said, "When I … turn my eyes to Jesus, when I contemplate all His obedience, His purity, His grace, His tenderness, His patience, His devotedness, His holiness, His love, His entire freedom from all self-seeking, I can say, That is my life … It may be obscured in me; but it is none the less true, that that is my life" (J.N.D.). Thus it is our privilege to hold ourselves dead to the law that we may live this new life to God.

A further great truth is that this new life, like all life in the creature, has, and must have, an object to sustain the life. If the Lord Jesus is our life, He is also personally the object of the life. So the Apostle adds "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." Faith sees Christ, looks to Him, confides in Him, feeds upon Him, abides in His love, in the blessed consciousness that He is for us in all the depths of love that led Him to give Himself for us.