To Live is Christ

This is the picture: Paul is in Rome, imprisoned under house arrest at his own expense, chained to an imperial guard but apparently free to receive visitors and write. He wrote to the church at Philippi, a church he had been part of planting after preaching the gospel there about ten years before.
Paul wrote to encourage the believers in Philippi, to remind them that God was in control and that his imprisonment in Rome was by God’s purpose and plan. Paul wrote to let them now that his confidence was in Christ not his circumstances so they would be encouraged. Paul knew how easy it would have been for these folks to be discouraged.
We need this same encouragement because it is easy for us to become discouraged in our circumstances. We need to be reminded who our God is and what He has done for us in Christ and that He is working in our circumstances to accomplish His purpose and plan.
Paul writes:
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. Philippians 1:18b-26
In the beginning verses of Philippians Paul’s is commenting on his imprisonment and his expectation of deliverance either in this life or the life to come. In this we hear his response to being imprisoned. He is not discouraged, he is confident. His confidence is in knowing that God is sovereign and is in control. Paul is confident in knowing that God is working in these hard circumstances, and that he confident because he knows that God has ordained and orchestrated these hard circumstances. God ordained and orchestrated his imprisonment. Paul was confident in his circumstances because the Lord had told him that he was going to Rome. Acts 23:11 says; “The following night the Lord stood by him and said, ‘Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.’”
Paul is less concerned about how he got to Rome than he is with the work he has come to Rome to do.
Paul has lost his civil liberty. He cannot choose to leave Rome or even the house where he is being held. He is chained to a guard twenty-four hours a day. In this Paul rejoices because he is confident in God and what He is doing. He is confident that by the prayers of the believers in Philippi and the help of the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, he will be delivered. Paul was destined, by the will and work of God, to be imprisoned in Rome, but this was not his final destiny. He will be delivered. His final destiny was to be delivered by the will and work of God.
In our passage Paul makes the most amazing statement; for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. When we read or hear this we connect with our hearts. Emotionally we get what Paul is saying. As believers in Christ there is something in this statement that tugs at our hearts.
One reason we connect with for me to live is Christ with our hearts because Paul is telling us about the love of his life. We connect with this with our hearts because this is a love story. Paul’s life in Christ is the story of His love for Jesus. Paul says that to live is Christ because he loves Jesus in a real and personal way, and his love for Jesus is shown in his life. True love moves the lover to action for the beloved.
Paul’s life testifies that he loves Jesus because he is living for Jesus. His life since his conversion has been about nothing else. He has given himself to the gospel, and he has given himself for the gospel. He has given himself to Jesus’ people, and he has given himself for Jesus’ people. Paul did all of this because he loved Jesus. Paul did all of this because Jesus loved him and gave His life for him and called him.
This is what grabs our hearts. This is a love story. Jesus loved Paul and Paul loved Jesus.
In travelling and preaching and writing and being thrown into jail and being beaten and stoned and finally being chained to a Roman guard, all Paul ever wants to do is tell everyone he meets about his beloved Jesus and the reality of Jesus being the One who died for sin and rose from the dead. He wants everyone he meets to know that by grace through faith in the finished work of his beloved Jesus they can be reconciled to God. Paul loves Jesus and he wants to tell everyone he meets how much he loves Jesus and he wants everyone he meets to love Jesus too.
Chris Klicka was Senior Counsel and Director of State and International Relations for Homeschool Legal Defense Association. He served homeschoolers on the HSLDA staff for 24 years. He became ill with multiple sclerosis and found out that to die is gain on October 22, 2009.
My wife and I were blessed to hear him speak twice, about ten years apart. The second time the disease had ravaged his body and a lesser man would have been in a wheel chair.
Chris Klicka loved families and he loved homeschoolers, but his primary passion at the end of his life was Jesus and the gospel. I don’t think this was a new passion, I think this was the passion that drove all of the work that he did, but disease and imminent death sharpened his focus. His life was an amazing testimony of God’s grace and everywhere he went he told everyone he met about the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The second time we heard him speak he hung on to the pulpit to keep his balance and told us that he was blessed to travel and that he believed that everywhere he went everyone he met the Lord had put there to hear the gospel. I can’t tell you what it meant to me to see and hear this man, his body wasting away but his heart on fire with love for Jesus that fed a passion for Jesus’ people and the lost.
I have an idea that hearing Chris Klicka that day compares to hearing from Paul in the Roman imprisonment as we do in Philippians. The chains were different, but the hearts were the same.
Imagine being chained to Paul, a man who said for me to live is Christ. It wasn’t rhetoric, it was reality.
In saying for me to live is Christ Paul is talking about his love for Jesus and his identity in Jesus, not his activity. It’s important that we get that.
The other reason we connect with this with our hearts is because Paul is telling us who he is in Christ. Our hearts connect because if we are in Christ it is our identity too.
Paul was a gospel man. Paul preached the gospel of the crucified and resurrected Christ and life transformed by grace through faith. Paul preached life in Christ, in this world and the next, by faith apart from the works of the law. This doesn’t take away from anything that Paul did, but he did what he did because he was in Christ. He did what he did because Christ was working in him.
Paul wrote to the church in Galatia:
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20
For Paul, to live was Christ because Jesus lived in him. The life he lived in this world he lived by faith in Jesus. Jesus loved Paul and gave himself for Paul so Paul loved Jesus and gave himself for Jesus. This wasn’t a trade – Jesus did this so Paul did that – what Paul did was Christ in him. Life for Paul was Christ because Christ lived in him. If you are in Christ this is your life too.
It’s important that we get that. Otherwise we will try and live for Christ in our own power and will either be self-righteous or driven to despair.
Paul wrote to the church at Rome (some who were at the time Paul wrote Philippians preaching from envy and rivalry):
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:1-14
Paul understood who Christ was and what He had done. Paul spent his life teaching this truth with his voice and with his pen. I need this truth to explode in my heart and mind and destroy my weak thinking about who Christ is and what He has done. Paul understood that his redemption was more than forgiveness of sin. Paul understood that by grace through faith we are made new in Christ. Paul understood that grace abounded in him as he walked in newness of life.
We have been redeemed and made new. We are not under law but under grace. The law gives us rules for living, grace gives us power for living. Sinclair Ferguson says that when the Scripture speaks of the grace of Jesus Christ it speaks of Jesus Christ himself and His graciousness. Think about that, the grace we receive is Christ, the grace we appropriate is Christ. Paul isn’t talking about who we might be, he is talking about who we are.
Paul wrote: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”
For me to live is Christ.
One more passage from Paul:
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
This isn’t rhetoric, this is reality. By the grace of God and the power of God in the Gospel we have been made new in Christ. We can find this hard to believe because to a greater or lesser degree the behavior patterns of the old man – the person we were before we were born again – continue in us. But we have been made new in Christ.
Herman Ridderbos writes in his work on Pauline theology:
The new life means a radical transformation, a passing over from a condition of death and slavery into one of life and liberty, which on this account is not to be explained from human effort and moral strength, but only from the creative command of God, no less mighty than the word with which he once called forth light out of darkness. It is in these categories of creation, therefore that the new man is spoken of again and again. The meaning of this is not only that the church has in Christ come to belong to the new aeon, the new order of things, and in that sense to the new creation, but that likewise this almighty and re-creating work of the Spirit enters into the existence of believers in a personal and individual way.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Think of a house with a rotting foundation and termites infesting the walls. We could install some new vinyl siding, and it might look nice, but the house would still be falling apart on the inside. God isn’t about putting new siding on houses that are falling down. God has made us new and is making us new from the bottom up and the inside out. We struggle to get this when we look at our lives and our struggle with sin. We make what we are doing the gauge of what God is doing is us. This is backwards. Instead of looking at what we are doing we should look at what Christ has done. What Christ is doing in us will be incomplete until we are given new bodies and live in the new world, but what Christ did for us in His living and dying and resurrection are completely and forever finished. We should always consider what Christ is dong in us in the context of what He has done for us.
Paul could say for me to live is Christ because he understood who he was in Christ. I think a fundamental weakness we have as believers is we don’t really get who we are in Christ. We don’t get who we are in Christ and what that means for our walking in victory over sin and the flesh. We get the proposition, we get the doctrine, but we don’t get the reality. We see that this was true of believers when Paul was around because he continued to exhort the churches to know who they were in Christ and to be who they were in Christ. I suspect that, like us, even Paul had days when he needed to be reminded of who he was in Christ.
How are we reminded of who we are in Christ? By being reminded of what Christ did for us, by being reminded of the gospel. God the Son lived in human flesh for us. He was tempted in every way like us and lived a completely sinless life, keeping all of the law for us. He died for us, taking all of the punishment for our sin. He rose from the dead; death had no hold on Him because He was without sin.
Here is reality for all who are in Christ: our redemption is complete. Our redemption was accomplished in the finished work or Christ. Our redemption is applied in the new birth, when we are born again and given faith to believe. Our redemption having been accomplished at the Cross and applied in regeneration we live in the faith given us by the Spirit in us. This is who we are in Christ. This is how we say with Paul for me to live is Christ.
In saying for me Paul is speaking personally, he is showing us his heart; he is showing us what kind of man he is. He is speaking from his heart and from his life. This is a personal letter from Paul to the people who are the local church in Philippi, people who Paul knew and loved.
Paul is confident in his deliverance, not knowing whether his release from imprisonment would be in this life or the next. His confidence is in being in Christ. Imprisoned, Paul lives in a way that Christ will be honored. He lives in a way that Christ will be honored however this works out. He lives in a way that he can say for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.
In the present we have received everything that Jesus lived and died for. Our redemption was accomplished in the living and dying and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our redemption was applied in the new birth. We have been made new in Christ. We live in Christ by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, daily being conformed to the image of Christ. We live in Christ looking forward to being in the presence of Christ.
Paul certainly wants to be relieved of his suffering in this world, but Paul’s motivation is not to be free from his suffering. His ultimate motivation is to be in the presence of Christ. His present motivation is to declare the gospel for the glory of God in Christ so that folks might be saved for the glory of God in Christ. As we will see when we get to Philippians chapter four, Paul was content regardless of circumstances. His confidence was in Christ, not where he was or what was going on. Paul was content to serve Christ in this world, but his heart ached to be with Him. His heart ached to be with the one he loved.
Dying was better than living because dying in this world meant living in the presence of Christ.
Jesus gave His life for Paul’s sin, He gave Paul life and a life to live, and Paul spent his life faithfully serving Jesus, telling people about this Jesus who gave His life for sin and who gives life to all who believe. Now he looks forward to seeing Jesus.
I think something happens when we read about the life of Paul. We think that’s Paul and I’m just me. I think if Paul was here he would not commend us for that kind of thinking.
Paul was an exceptional man with exceptional gifts, but he was not a spiritual super hero. He did not have power that we do not have. Paul’s power was in the resurrected Christ by the indwelling Holy Spirit, just like you and me. Paul despised Jesus and persecuted the church, and in His sin he was saved by grace though faith just like you and me. He was called to serve the one who saved him, and so are we.
Paul was an exceptional man with exceptional gifts, and what he was called to do was unique, but all who are saved are called to serve our Savior. Paul was obedient and served where he was at. Paul served at the pleasure of his King. He was obedient to go where it was hard and painful and to go to people who were hard and would cause him pain. He was obedient to travel for the gospel, be persecuted for the gospel, be imprisoned for the gospel and be executed for the gospel.
Paul’s joy in these crushing circumstances – imprisonment, separation, and opposition – is in Christ and the gospel. Paul’s desire to go be with Christ is not in any way escapism. Paul doesn’t want to die because life is hard.
What’s my attitude? Am I hanging out waiting for Jesus to come and take me from this world of sin and suffering or am I confident that while I’m here He is working in me for His glory? Am I building a home – or a church – that is a fortress against a culture and worldview that isn’t my own or am I confident in Christ to engage the culture with a biblical worldview? We’re not here to build forts but embassies.
We do not want to slide into liberalism, but the answer isn’t fundamentalism. Liberalism meets the culture without the gospel. Fundamentalism has the gospel but doesn’t meet the culture. We want to be evangelical, meeting the culture with the gospel.
Thank God that Jesus wasn’t afraid to engage a culture that wasn’t his own. Jesus came with grace and truth to rebels, folks like me who hated Him and persecuted His people. Thank God that He has called and empowered us to bring the grace and truth of the gospel to other rebels that he is calling to himself.
Of course I’m not suggesting that we be unwise about the effects of an unrighteous culture. There are places that we do not go, things that we do not do, and conversations that we do not have, but I submit that where we go and what we do and the conversations we have will offer us opportunity to present the grace and truth of the gospel.
Paul was a man of single focus. Some might say he was obsessive and that it was unhealthy. I disagree. Paul was a man who understood his task and stayed on task but was not driven by the task. He was driven by his love for Jesus and for the people for whom Jesus died. Even imprisoned and facing death Paul stayed on task because of his love for Jesus.
I read a story once – I don’t remember where – about an itinerant preacher who was in a town to preach some meetings for a local church. The travelling preacher found himself in the local pastor’s home with some of his elders and deacons. As they were talking, the local pastor mentioned several times how he was ready to go home and be with Jesus. The visiting preacher wasn’t saying much, so one of the elders at the table asked him what he thought. He replied; “I think it a poor servant indeed who is ready to go home before he has finished the work his Master has given him to do.”
Paul was ready to go home and be with Jesus, but not one second before he finished the work he was given to do. I want to go and be with Jesus, but by the grace of God I want to hang around long enough to finish the work He has given me to do.
That is Paul’s thinking.