Philippians 1:21-30 Commentary

Earlier this summer I was summoned to the hospital room of a Christian whom doctors had recently told was dying. Penny and Andy (not their real names) were trying to wrap their heads around the news that doctors could do little more for her than try to keep her relatively comfortable.

This news provoked in Penny lots of questions about what happens to Jesus’ friends when we die. She wanted to know if she would recognize her Christian family members who’d already died. Penny also wished to know if she’d know what was happening to her loved ones on earth after she died.

I admitted to Penny and Andy that I didn’t know the answers to all of her questions. It wasn’t the time to go into a theological exploration of what we call “the intermediate state.” I basically tried to reassure Penny that by God’s amazing grace, she’d continue to be okay even after she died in a faithful relationship with the Lord.

The assurance that I offered Penny and Andy was at least partly based on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s beginning. In fact, Penny and Philippians 1’s Paul’s circumstances were somewhat similar. Both were essentially under death sentences.

Paul knew his house arrest was a result of the Roman authorities’ unhappiness with him. He realized that unhappiness might lead the Romans to execute him. What seems like the apostle’s advancing age may have even made him wonder if it would beat the Romans to the punch of killing him.

In Philippians 1 Paul insists he has no death wish. “To me,” he writes in verse 21, “to live is Christ [zen Christos*].” What exactly he means by that is somewhat unclear. The New Living Translation (NLT) paraphrases it as meaning for Paul, “living means living for Christ.” The Message paraphrases the apostle as professing, “Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger.”

But the apostle for whom to live “is Christ” may have something even bigger in mind. For him that living means not only living for and proclaiming Christ. It also means completely trusting Christ to deeply care for and about him.

That reality strengthens Paul’s desire to continue to love God by serving his Philippian brothers and sisters in Christ. “If I am to go on living in the body,” he writes in verse 22, “this will mean fruitful labor for me.” Those who live in a faithful relationship with Jesus Christ know that God longs for and equips us to live in ways that bear good fruit. God’s adopted children karpos (“labor”) so that God may be glorified and our neighbors may be blessed.

Paul is convinced that God is not yet finished producing that good fruit in him. So in verses 24-25 he writes, “It is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith.”

Paul’s longing to go on living in, with, and for Christ is not a case of unfounded optimism. It’s, instead, tied to his longing to continue to glorify God by ministering to and with Philippi’s Christians. The apostle believes the Holy Spirit wants to keep using him to help deepen their sanctification.

The Message paraphrases verses 24-25 as Paul telling Philippi’s Christians, ”Most days, because of what you are going through, I am sure that it’s better for me to stick it out here. So I plan to be around awhile, companion to you as your growth and joy in this life of trusting God continues.”

Yet while Paul recognizes that God can use him to bless God’s Philippian people, he also realizes that the alternative is, for him, even better. In verses 22ff. he says, “What shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn [synechomai] between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ [syn Christi], which is far better [pollo gar mallon kreison].”

Preachers might follow the Spirit’s promptings to let our hearers sit with and linger over this remarkable assertion for a while. I have, after all, known few emotionally and physically healthy Christians who were as ready as Paul to die.

Preachers who, like me, live in the shadow of a chronic illness that will likely ultimately take my life may even choose to share our experiences with living in death’s valley’s shadow. We may choose to honestly express our longing to live, not just for the sake of those with and to whom we minister, but also our loved ones and friends.

Yet while Philippians 1’s Paul shares those longings, he’s comfortable with the alternative. He feels synechomai (“torn”) between the possibilities of going on living and dying. The apostle is literally “preoccupied” about whether to desire life or accept death.

Paul understands, after all, that Jesus’ followers who analysai (“depart”) from this life don’t simply cease to exist. We go, by God’s amazing grace that we’ve received with our faith, to be syn Christo (“with” the “Christ”) who lived, died and rose again in order to rescue us from all the messes we’ve sinfully made.

Preachers may feel the Spirit prompting us to explore just what such a destination includes. Yet we may also quickly admit much mystery surrounds our understanding. Since the Bible speaks poetically about the fate of those who die in Christ before he returns, Christians’ knowledge of what we call the “intermediate state” remains incomplete. 

However, we do know that Christians’ bodies don’t go to heaven when we die. We dispose of Jesus’ friends’ remains in the sure and certain hope of our resurrection at Jesus’ return. So, for example, Aunt Martha, who was a classical pianist in this life isn’t yet tickling the ivories in heaven.

But we also profess some part of God’s adopted children who die survives our death to go right to be with Jesus. Whether we call it our “soul” or “spirit,” some vital part of us goes instantaneously to be in the heavenly realm with the Lord when we die. 

Paul, in fact, makes the radical claim that that’s a [kreison] “better” fate than life on this side of the new creation’s curtain. Some Christians’ lives are so difficult that they recognize that a departure to be with Christ is preferrable. But for some Christians, it’s hard to imagine how life with Christ is better than life with our loved ones here and now.

So it’s helpful to remember those who have died in and are now syn Christ (“with Christ”) await with God’s dearly departed people Christ’s return to raise our bodies to life and make God’s glorious home in the new creation. In the new earth and heaven our resurrected selves will, by God’s amazing grace, be forever syn Christo (“with Christ”) in ways we can now only imagine.

In that sure and certain hope, Jesus’ followers can, in Paul’s words in verse 27, “conduct” ourselves “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” The Spirit equips Christians who know that whether we live or die we belong to the Lord to live in ways that reflect and anticipate God’s promises about the new creation.

That life that’s consistent with the gospel includes what Paul calls standing “firm in the one Spirit [and] striving together as one for the faith of the gospel” (27). Those who know that when we die, we go to be with the Lord don’t have to feel threatened by people and circumstances. Jesus’ followers can, instead, stay both firm and united in our work of serving God by loving our neighbors.

Of course, this stance may provoke harsh opposition to God’s adopted children. “It has been granted [echaristhe] to you on behalf of Christ,” Paul warns in verse 29, “not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.”

Among the striking things about this profession is Paul’s literal reference to both believing in and suffering for Christ as a “grace.” The root of echaristhe (“granted”) is, after all, charis that we often translate as God’s grace or gift. With God’s gift of faith, in other words, often comes God’s gift of suffering for Jesus’ sake.

That was the apostle’s experience. The Paul who knew when he died, he would go to be with Christ endured “struggle” (30). As he writes to the Philippians he, in fact, continues to struggle with opposition to him because of his commitment to following Jesus Christ.

That admission in some ways brings this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson “full circle.” While Paul begins it by asserting that to live in a relationship with Christ is true life, he closes it by also insisting that dying and going to be with the Lord is, in a sense, even truer Life. After all, whether Jesus’ friends live or die, we are not our own, but the Lord’s. At the resurrection we will finally fully know what it means that “in life and in death,” as one Reformed confession asserts, “we belong to the Lord.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Max Hasting’s The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 explores World War II’s combatants’ different perspectives on life and death that in some ways parallels 21st century contrasting attitudes about life and death. Hastings writes about how “The Germans and Russians had one attitude toward casualties, and the rest of the allies, besides Russia, another. 

“Stalin’s commanders looked forward to the last phase of their struggle for Europe with their customary indifference to death and suffering, save insofar as these influenced the Red Army’s ability to fight its next battle. 

“The leaders of Germany had conducted a romance with death for more than a decade. They still cherished hopes of final victory, though it was already plain that Hitler would settle almost equally willingly for a climactic bloodbath worthy of the Third Reich’s place in history.” 

“But the Western allies looked at matters quite differently. After Normandy … many soldiers wanted to take as few chances as necessary. Generals, too. So Ike moved his armies slowly East, protecting his flanks and softening up targets – a town, a bridge, a ridge, a field, a forest – with a great deal of air bombardment and mortar fire.”