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For Me To Live Is Christ - Philippians 1
For Me To Live Is Christ - Philippians 1
Paul was able to write: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). As you well know, it is appointed for you to die (unless the Lord should return first). What happens then depends on what you are living for now. For Paul, the prospect was that death would be GAIN and very far better than living here.
Many years ago, a preacher presented this way of thinking through this, just fill in the blanks!
For me to live is _____________, and to die is ______________.
- For me to live is FUN, and to die is MISERY, ANGUISH, and SORROW.
- For me to live is MONEY, and to die is to leave it all and have NOTHING.
- For me to live is POWER, and to die is to kneel before Christ and confess that HE is Lord.
- For me to live is FAME, and to die without Christ is to inherit infamy.
The harder part of this is to actually LIVE for Christ. A few things that Paul mentions in this letter:
- Your aim is that in all that you do, Christ will be glorified (1:20).
- It is to NOT seek ‘your own’, but the things which are Christ’s (2:21). This is not just denying yourself ‘things’ or ‘pleasures’, but denying SELF.
- Living for Christ is the willingness to suffer the loss of all things and count them but rubbish (3:8)
- Paul would add his aim was “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:10)
- To live FOR Christ is to be submissive and obedient to HIS teaching (2:8; 4:9).
- To live for Christ is to be single-minded: this ONE THING I do… forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead” (3:13).
As you can see, to live for Christ does NOT happen by accident, but requires thought, desire, self-control, self-denial. The blessing in this life is a life that can be filled with JOY and REJOICING that is in line with your eternal existence (note that ‘joy’ and ‘rejoicing’ occur some 16 times in this letter!). Yet the greater blessing is to not only live FOR Christ now but to live WITH CHRIST FOREVER. Will you hear Him say ‘Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joys of your Lord”?
Hugh DeLong
