“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (1:21).  When’s the last time you said that?  What does he mean?  In his letter to the faithful in Philippi, near the Aegean Sea in the northern reaches of Greece, Paul prepares us for his mysterious words.  He is immensely glad for the congregation in Philippi, a remarkably healthy and devoted bunch, though, of course, there are tensions, too.  Most churches do a fairly good job of keeping tensions out of sight, but the tremors can be felt, now and again, especially in times of difficulty, hardship, crisis.  Trouble has a way of bringing out the worst in us and, by grace through faith, the best in us.

Paul prays that the gift, the blessing of love, will abound more and more among the faithful in the Philippi church (1:9), that the fruits of this love may increase: knowledge and insight.  Love of God leads us to deeper knowledge of God.  That’s a lengthy process, for me, anyway.  Through the blessing of faith, the more we come to know God, the more we love God—such joy awaits us on this journey!  Joy is most full when it is shared.

This abundant love that produces increasing knowledge is for joy and our faithful walk.  God gives these gifts of growing love and growing knowledge “to discern what is best,” so as to “be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ” (1:10-11).  We’re preparing for something much bigger than any of us can imagine.  Paul encourages us, urges us, to strive to live mindful of the day of Christ: the Day of Judgment, the Day of Fulfillment, fulfillment of the promise of salvation.  To live is Christ: our life is in and through Christ.  Apart from Christ, we can do nothing; without Christ, we are truly only the walking dead.  For those in Christ, to die is gain.  There is so much to enjoy in this life, and there is much that causes us confusion, frustration, pain, and sorrow, and grief.

Last week, we affirmed together that our dying is but a dying to sin: “The souls of believers at their death are made perfect in holiness, and immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, rest in their graves until the resurrection.  At the resurrection, believers, being raised up in glory, shall be openly approved and acquitted in the Day of Judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoyment of God for eternity.”  When the condemned thief asks Jesus to remember him, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:42-43).  To live is Christ, and to die is gain.

In this life, we bear our sorrow.  God-willing, happiness and pleasure help counterbalance the sorrow and pain.  They don’t always.  There are hard seasons of life.  Are you in one?  The Philippians have heard that Paul is going through incredible hardship, a trial by fire.  It would be enough to break anyone.  Paul does not say he has not been broken.  God broke him long ago, on the road to Damascus; then, God put Paul back together.  In this knowledge, and the love and the faith animating this knowledge, Paul assures the worried Philippians that he does not despair.  His hope remains strong.  He puts this assurance in very strong language, which sounds mysterious to us, maybe even a little scary, and powerful, clear, fearless, faithful: “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

What have you had to work for, in this life, work for so hard?  Your education?  Your position?  Your retirement?  Your relationship?  Your dreams, still not quite fulfilled?  What storms have you weathered?  A serious illness?  Strong opposition?  A disastrous period at work?  A broken relationship with a loved one?  A crisis of faith?  You survived.  You’re here.  Difficult, demanding, hard won, and you’re here.  What gave you the assurance that you would have victory?  Or did you fail?  Failure happens!  How do we handle our failures?  How do we keep our failures from convincing us we are failures as people?  Maybe you know you just can’t live, that way.  Hope helps us, and faith.  God put broken Paul back together through faith.  Faith that is not hopeful is anemic, to say the least.  In Jesus Christ, we are not failures!  In Jesus Christ, we have eternal, glorious victory!  Something much bigger than any of us can imagine awaits us at the end of this journey.  Along the way, hard things happen, and good things.

What comes with great difficulty, what comes only through sacrifice, is always more worthwhile and precious than what is effortless and easy.  We don’t much care about what is effortless and easy, unless we love flattering lies, permissive lies.  We don’t value what costs us nothing.  What comes at no cost is of little worth; what comes at greatest cost is of greatest worth.  Paul is ready and eager to be with Christ.  Are we?  It’s kind of a scary thought, yet it’s a glorious thought.  I’m not looking to depart for glory today, yet I hope I’m ready when God receives back the breath He gave.  To live with your death in view may seem morose, gloomy—a real downer!—until you consider that God gives you only so much time in which to do your work.  Improve the time.

Am I ready?  I think I might be, and there is still so much to do, so much that could be done.  Paul tells the Philippians that he’s torn: “If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me” (1:22).  “To depart and be with Christ [. . .] is better by far” yet Paul perceives that “it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body” (1:23-24) to continue laboring, praying, and preaching for the church’s growth in abundant love that grows abundant knowledge, that grows abundant fruit for the Day of Christ: awesome day, glorious day.

To be with Christ is better, always better, immeasurably better, and, for us, for now, to remain and work, to do the hard work of discipleship in the midst of our ordeals—our personal, private ordeals, and the shared ordeal of this season of COVID and collapse—to remain and work is more necessary.  There is a gentleness of godly compassion, of holy patience, and of heavenly joy in what Paul says: “I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith” (1:25).

This life is for making progress, making strides, for getting somewhere because we are going somewhere, despite obstacles, setbacks, disappointments, despite the pain, suffering, and hurt.  Our faith is for joy, our solid rock amid the sinking sands of our times.  Gloomy faith, dreary faith, hardly seems worthy the name faith.  Joyful progress—this is what God promises in Jesus Christ through the ability of His Holy Spirit.  Not immediate progress, not great, sudden leaps of progress (though these may happen), but steady, determined progress.  Probably slow, but progress, joyful progress, nonetheless.  The joy is in Christ, in the love of God—what the world cannot take away, is powerless to take from us.  I am eager to hear each of your stories of the progress of your faith!  You striving saints inspire me!

What the world cannot take away it will try by any means to undermine, to make you relinquish what it cannot remove.  I am ready, also, to hear and share sympathy and empathy with you if you choose to share with me the stories of your setbacks in the faith.  There are those stories, too.  If I were here only to speak, I would be of little help!  I am also here to listen.  My official title is Teaching Elder; some of you call me preacher: that’s what I’m here to do, and I’m here also as minister, pastor—to serve and nurture, to shepherd and guide.

The nurturing, shepherding, listening, and empathy have in view this growing love, growing knowledge, growing fruitfulness that Paul calls a life lived “worthy of the gospel of Christ” (1:27).  Let what we disciples do live up to what we say; let what we say be matched in what we do.  In all seasons, let us, together, praise God, enjoy God, seek God, cry out to God, and trust.  Scripture reveals to us a God who listens, who loves, who saves.  Paul urges the congregation in Philippi to live in faith, “firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel without being frightened by those who oppose you” (1:27-28).  Paul prays for the fearlessness of the faithful.  How we need that prayer!

You and I might not be meeting with personal opposition.  We might not be able to name just who is against us; we just feel as if things are against us: life, these times, the Left, the Right, the government, or the rioting protesters, or protesting rioters.  Our hearts are not dead to justice; our hearts are very much alive to the pains and sorrows of lawlessness.  And we know, or ought to know, that every disciple is opposed by our spiritual enemy, the Tempter, the Accuser.

It’s the faithful witness of the believers that convinces Paul he will remain and continue his labors: he hasn’t worked in vain!  There has been progress, and trouble remains.  Neither the faith nor the witness of the believers is flawless, yet progress is being made: the Spirit is at work.  We are not who we were when God first brought us to Christ.  We are growing.  We are going.  We are here for one another, with one another, in the church as the church, learning to walk in this Way together.  We have a destination.  To live is Christ and to die is gain.

Paul tells the faithful something else that is also difficult, wise, and true: “it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him” (1:29).  We believe.  Have you considered how amazing that is, amazingly odd?  Do you take belief for granted?  There are those who do not believe.  You know that; you know some of them.  You love some of them, dearly.  Why hasn’t it been granted to them?  Just thinking about it can make you feel sad, but also, hopefully, hopeful: God is at work in ways we don’t see, even in us.

We hurt for those who do not believe.  Sometimes, those who do not believe hurt us.  The world will never make it easy to be a faithful, observant, active Christian.  The world is not in love with Christ.  As a friend recently put it, can 500 million Buddhists be wrong?  Paul tells us that to suffer for Christ, for the sake of the faith, is to be blessed.  We wonder.  Suffering doesn’t feel like blessing!  Growth, strength, wisdom—progress by resistance, opposition, difficulty.  Is the victory without effort so joyful as the hard-won victory?  Hey, I can bench press five pounds!  I’m celebrating Me!  It’s when we’re matched or even overmatched that we learn—if we have a heart for learning.  We break and we grow.  Faith never exercised grows weak, flabby—it tires easily, becomes slow and heavy; it becomes unhealthy.  Scripture makes it no secret that God tests faith.  God already knows the quality of our faith.  He wants us to know it, too: to have some satisfaction and to continue dissatisfied.  He wants us to yearn for progress, to see the progress, and to return thanks and praise to Him, who gives progress.

God gives our faith exercise to separate us more and more from this world, its ways and values, to draw us always closer to God.  To live is Christ and to die is gain.  Without the challenge of suffering, we’ll never know what Paul means by that: those words will remain strange, unconvincing, and scary.  If you can say those words with Paul, affirm them with heart, mind, and soul, you have made progress in the faith.  And if you cannot yet do that, it is no shame: there’s still so much life to live; only, live it for Christ.  Live it for Christ together, supporting, nurturing, counseling, loving and knowing one another more and more in Christ.

Will we cling, tenaciously, to this life that abuses us, misuses us when we decline to toe the line, refuse to go along?  If our only reward is to be here, is to get whatever we can grab for ourselves while we can, like some looter amid the fires, how sad!  Will we renounce our observant, active faith, or will we, rather, cling even more to God, who makes stunning, sacred promises to us in Jesus Christ?

Paul is suggesting that real progress, durable joy, and true faith all come through suffering.  Suffering itself doesn’t produce the blessing.  Sorrow, pain, hurt—none of these are good, yet God brings good out of what is not good: just consider what He has done in you, and through you.  Consider what He may yet do.  What will result from the chaos and collapse that we seem to be living through, maybe even feel inside?  I don’t know, yet I have faith that He shall bring good, in His time, according to His purposes.  There shall be fruit: the fruit that comes from knowledge and love, the fruit that comes of faith, unshakable, resilient, durable, life-giving faith.  I hope to lift my offering of that fruit; I want to help you to lift yours, too.

What comes at no cost is of little worth.  What comes at greatest cost is of greatest worth.  By the blood of Christ, we have been set free from the ways of sin and death—ways at work all over this nation and this world.  Through the death and resurrection of Christ, we have been given the assurance of an eternity of joy, the prospect of which puts all disappointment, all reversal, all sorrow, grief, and pain, in a new light.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.