Philippians 1:21-26
Living with One Foot in Eternity
Over the next four weeks, we’ll look at the tiny New Testament book of Philippians. It’s actually a letter the Apostle Paul wrote around 61 AD to the church in Philippi. Paul wrote from prison in Rome, probably during his first imprisonment, which was more like a house arrest. He was detained simply for sharing his faith. He was writing to a church that he started on an earlier trip to Philippi. The story is found in Acts chapter 16. There weren’t enough Jewish men in this city to form a synagogue, so Paul met with a group gathered in prayer on the banks of the river. One of the members of the group was Lydia, a smart business woman, who volunteered to host a church in her home. This church became the first Christian church on European soil!
We can identify with the city of Philippi because, like San Antonio, it was “Military City USA.” (Well, not the USA part!) It was an outlying province of Rome, and a place where many Roman soldiers went to live out their retirement.
Paul’s primary reason for writing the Philippian church was to say thanks for their gift to him during his two-year arrest in Rome. Despite writing from prison, Paul emphasizes the theme of JOY, regardless of your circumstances. During these four weeks, I urge you to read the book in its entirety. Use your Bible’s Table of Contents, look it up, and read it. You can do it easily in one sitting. Or you can read a chapter a week if you prefer. If you have never actually read the Bible on your own, this is a good place to start, as we trek through Philippians together.
Today we’ll focus on the tension between yearning for heaven and living this life to the full. Paul puts it well in his famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy in verse 21: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” In the original Greek, it becomes even briefer: “For me...to live Christ, to die gain.” What is Paul saying here? What kind of priority system does he have? And how does this help him live with one foot on earth and one foot in heaven? Consider these three points:
1. Christ is our life.
We’ve talked about this concept before, but Paul absolutely demonstrates it in his opening words: “For me, to live is Christ” (verse 21). Notice what he DOESN’T say. He doesn’t say, “To live is to follow Christ,” or “To live is to act like Christ,” or “To live is to ask yourself, ‘What would Jesus do?’” Those things are good, but this is even more. Paul’s life is not just oriented TOWARDS Christ; it is wrapped up IN Christ. His Lord is his all-in-all, the center of his world, his meaning and purpose, his most precious possession, and the absolute definition of his being. All of Paul is found in all of Christ, so his life centers on serving and glorifying the Son of God, in all he is and in all he does.
Like many of you, Paul has always been a Type A personality. Before he was Paul, he was Saul, a radical persecutor of Christians. He hunted down and imprisoned Christians with zeal; sometimes he even supervised their execution. That is, until Jesus blinded him on the Damascus Road and asked, “Why are you persecuting me, Saul?” For the first time, Saul knew that Jesus was real. Jesus wasn’t just a myth that was causing Jews to go down the wrong path. Jesus was truly risen from the dead. Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. As Christ restored Saul’s sight and gave him a new name, Paul became a radical follower of the Lord. He studied the scriptures with Christians for years and then became the most fervent missionary of the Bible, setting up churches all over the Middle East and then Europe. He first went to the Jews, but when he found mostly rejection there, he went to the non-Jews, the Gentiles. In many towns, certain Jews set out to discredit him, to get him into trouble with the Roman authorities of the time. Paul suffered beatings and imprisonments on trumped-up charges. He was shipwrecked once on a prison ship. He was bitten by a poison snake. He was run out of town for his faith. He was discredited and cast out by his fellow Jews. And yet he could still say, “To live is Christ!” Nothing would deter him from his faith.
What about you? Most of us could say, “To live is Christ...PLUS a few other things.” Maybe the plus is work, leisure, accumulating wealth, relationships, etc. And sometimes the plus part becomes the primary part. “For me, to live is work.” Or, “To live is golf.” Or, “To live is food.” And sometimes we are fair-weather Christians. Our lives will be centered on Christ as long as everything is going smoothly. But then we recall the words of Job after he lost it all, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job 2:10). And his summary, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
Only when we find our life in Christ will we be fulfilled and unruffled by the various ups and downs of life in this fallen world. When we love Jesus most, everything else falls into place: relationships, purpose, even death, which is our next consideration. If Christ is our life, then #2,
2. Death has no fear.
Sometimes when you ask people how they’re doing, they reply, “Well, I’m vertical instead of horizontal. That’s saying something!” Or, “At least I’m not six feet under!” I heard someone say once, “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die!” But Paul had a different take. Because he could say, “For me, to live is Christ,” he could also say, “To die is gain.” Paul knew that death would actually be profitable for him. In verse 23 he says, “I desire to depart and be with Christ.” That word “depart” is a beautiful image in the Greek: it evokes pulling up your tent stakes, or the anchor of your ship. Paul saw death as simply setting off on a new adventure.
So did Paul have a death wish? Was this a suicidal statement? Not at all. Paul knew that we love Christ on faith here. We see him “as through a glass dimly,” but following death, the believer will see him “face-to-face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). One thing you won’t need in heaven is “faith,” because you won’t have to believe without seeing. You will be with your Lord forever. Paul wrote elsewhere, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). The moment we die, our next conscious awareness will be seeing our Lord and Savior!
Paul in his letter said he was “torn” between living and dying. It’s not as if he was deciding whether to commit suicide or not. He was just saying, “If I had the choice, would I keep living or would I prefer to die?” Some of you know this conversation. I remember when our dear _______ said to me, “Pastor, I just want to go home.” At the time, she was in the rehab part of the Mission. I said, “_______ , do you mean back to your condo?” She said, “No, I mean to my heavenly home.” Many of us know what it means to yearn for heaven.
Paul said for him, death would be far better, because then he would be with the Lord face-to-face forever. When you consider all the trials he had been through, we can hardly fault him for wanting some peace for a change, in the presence of his Lord. Yet, on the other hand, Paul knew there was still work to be done. He knew people still needed to come into a relationship with Christ. And churches like the one in Philippi still could benefit from his guidance. Paul had a sense that God was not done with him yet on this earth.
And in this tension, Paul found peace. If death is just as appealing as life, then death is nothing to fear. Christians of all people should not fear death! In fact, when we lose someone close to us, the Bible says we grieve as those with hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13ff), because we know our separation is only temporary for those who belong to the Lord. Thus, death has lost its sting (1 Corinthians 15:55).
Sometimes I ask myself: What is the worst thing that could happen to me? OK, I could die. And then I’m with Jesus. Not a bad deal, huh? To live is Christ, to die is...gain! With this attitude, we are able to live with one foot on earth and one in eternity. You might think it would make us so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. But actually, the opposite is true. Consider our final point:
3. Living with one foot in eternity helps us to live far better lives here.
Look at Paul’s example: His only “choice” in his mind was between two good things: he could either go to Jesus soon, or tarry longer here on earth and help more people follow Christ. Once he put it into words, it became evident to him that God would leave him here for a while longer. Perhaps he sensed that the charges against him would dissolve. Because he had no fear of death, he was able to serve the Lord without fear of the consequences. And he saw how the Lord intended to use him to assist with the progress of the Philippians, as they continued to grow in their faith. With eternity in mind, Paul was able to focus on what was truly important. Commentator Gordon Fee notes, “Such singular focus does not make Paul otherworldly; rather, it gives heart and meaning to everything he is and does as a citizen of two worlds, his heavenly citizenship determining his earthly.” [Gordon D. Fee: “Philippians,” in “IVP New Testament Commentary”]
Paul highlights the tension that we experience: we naturally yearn for our heavenly home, yet we also want to live in the present so as to not miss any opportunities God has for us here. Once you’ve settled where you’re heading, you don’t have to worry so much about when you’re getting there. You are free to devote all of yourself to God’s work now, knowing that he’ll bring you home in the right time. Let’s pray:
Lord, help us to wake up each day, not worrying a bit about when or how we’ll die, but instead yielding our lives to you, watching for ways to be used by you to grow your kingdom as we share our faith with others. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
