Think Wink.

I was amazed by Paul’s words in Philippians 1:20-23 this last week as I have been preparing to teach my Sunday school class on 2 Corinthians 4:4-6. Paul writes in Philippians 1:18-23 ESV,

Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 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. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

I just want to note the parallels in Philippians 1:21 and 1:22-23. “For me to live is Christ,” parallels 1:22, “If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.” “And to die is gain,” parallels “My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better” (1:23). I want to take a few moments and expound the significance of these parallels.

Now before I do that, let us get before us Paul’s great desire in this text, “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (1:20). Paul is working, laboring, suffering so that Christ might be honored. However this translation (”honored”) does not due the full justice of Paul’s term, μεγαλυνθήσεται. In Luke 1:46 ESV Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord” (μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν κύριον). μεγαλύνω means something more like to make great or powerful, not honored. Paul and Mary want Christ/Yahweh to be great, Paul in his body and Mary in her soul. In Paul’s body, in his sufferings here in this age in this life on this earth, he wants Christ to be made to look great and powerful and strong. “Honored” seems too weak of a translation. The NET says, “Christ will be exalted in my body, whether I live or die.” Philippians 1:20 HCSB speaks of Christ being “highly exalted” in Paul’s body. The TNIV and NIV both agree with the NET. The KJV and NKJV both have “magnified.” This is Paul’s desire for himself and for the Philippian church, to make Christ look great (Philippians 1:26 ESV talks about the Philippians’ glorying in Christ–literally “your boasting abound in Christ”–at his coming to them).

The “fruitful labor” (καρπὸς ἔργου) is what it means by “For me to live is Christ.” So Paul is speaking of how he can make Christ appear to look great by him living. The way he does this is fruitful labor. What does Paul mean by fruitful labor? I think Philippians 1:25 gives the answer, “I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for the sake of your progress and joy in the faith.” Paul’s labors are to help the Philippians progress in the faith, the Christian faith (cf. Jude 1:3 where “faith” refers to the doctrines of Christianity and the system of belief that goes with following Christ). But he also labors for the sake of the Philippians “joy” in the faith. Christ is magnified, made to look great, when we grow in our relationship to the King and we delight in him and his love. And to Paul, this is fruitful labor. It is labor that bears the fruit of the progress and joy in the faith by the Philippian community.

The second parallel has really caught my soul up in sweet delight. “To die is gain”//”My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better.” The question of Philippians 1:21 that I had was what does it mean, “To die is gain”? The answer is the parallel in Philippians 1:23, “My desire is to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better.” If Paul were to have died in the situation he was in, which was not his belief (Philippians 1:25-26), he would gain far more than he could possibly have had on earth. He would gain Christ who is far better. I am stunned by the preciousness and the value that Christ has intrinsically. Paul makes no mention here of what Christ does for him. He only states that Christ himself is far better. Thus being delivered by his tribulation by death magnifies Christ because Paul goes to be with Christ, who is more valuable than what this earth and world and age has to offer. Christ, Jesus, the Second Person in the Trinity, the Word who is fully deity, is of infinite worth to Paul.

What I intend to communicate to the kids this Sunday, Lord willing, is that the battle of the Christian life, the lacham in Hebrew, is a fight over our desires. We must fight to have our desires in the right place or else we will succumb to temptation every time. No matter how hard we resist, we will fall eventually. But when our desires are for Christ and him alone (not what Christ can do but for Christ Jesus himself), we will be equipped to joyfully and willingly say “yes” to him when he asks us to obey him and resist our temptations. We won’t be fighting by our own power, but by the “help of the Spirit of Christ” for he enraptures our hearts with the superior worth of Jesus in the gospel. (I must give aknowledgement to John Piper for this view of fighting sin from a sermon preached on Romans 6:11-14, “Do Not Let Sin Reign in Your Mortal Body, Part 2“)

What hits me is not just the sheer awesomeness of what Paul is in fact saying, that we need to love and delight in Jesus for who he is and not for what he does (though we certainly do in fact need to do that for what he does are the expressions of who Jesus is), but also the fact that I fail at this every day. Every day I fail so often to “magnify Christ in my body” and to view him as gain because he is far better than what this world has. I struggle every day to try to maintain that view. I feel like the Psalmist who said, “I have asked the Lord for one thing – this is what I desire! I want to live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, so I can gaze at the splendor of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). I struggle to say with the Psalmist who said, “Yes, in the sanctuary I have seen you, and witnessed your power and splendor” (Psalm 63:2) I desperately struggle to be like Paul whose desire was that Christ be made to be seen as great and powerful in my own body. Every day at work I fail. I happen to be a failure of one of my deepest core convictions of Christian Hedonism (especially as articulated by John Piper). Please pray that I can be like the Psalmist of Psalm 63 who has seen God’s splendor. (I was deeply convicted by this post by a fellow author at Theology for the Masses and felt the need to do some confessing and let some of the ugly side come out.)

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