Having a Philippians 1:21 heart doesn’t mean you despise the God-given joys and giggles of life on earth—it means you realize that another life’s coming, another world, one that’s better than this one, even at its best. And not better by a little, but better by far. 

A few weeks ago, my seven-year-old informed me that he wanted to be eight—but not any older than that. “Buddy, why don’t you want to be any older than that?” I asked. “Well, because when you get old, you die.” Fair enough. Eight seemed safe and exciting enough, I guess (he has some eight-year-olds in his class), but nine—now nine was a different story. Who knows what might happen then? Better stick with eight.

It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it, to watch your children begin to wrestle with a reality like death (and then to force you, as a dad or mom, to try and explain something like death). I think our verses this morning are a great help to dads and moms (and teenagers and twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings) in answering the biggest questions we ever ask. What’s going to happen when we die? What does it mean to really live?

A couple of years ago, on June 28, 2021, my (then) 64-year-old dad had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the moments I spent beside his hospital bed that week, as he waited for quadruple-bypass surgery. I felt my own mortality, watching the strongest man I’d ever known now fighting for his life. I know some of you have experienced this. When you’re growing up, Dad is the embodiment of strength, almost immortal. I mean what can’t Dad do? A toy breaks? Oh, Dad will fix it. Want to know what makes an airplane fly? Dad will know that. My three-year-old’s been worried that skunks are going to get into her room at night (longer story there), but I’ve said to her, “Honey, I promise, Daddy won’t let any skunks in your room.” And she believes me! Because I’m Daddy.

And then dads grow older, and their arteries fail—or they get really sick, or their minds begin to go. Slowly, they’re a little less superhero, and a little more human. And in the process, we realize just how human we are.

By God’s grace, my dad’s doing really well, but I thought of him leading up to this message because our conversations over these last couple of years (one in particular) remind me of these verses. He told me that he’s more aware than ever that every day he has is a day he’s been given for Christ, that however many days he has left—whether hundreds or thousands or just one—he wants them to honor Jesus. My dad came close enough to death to be able to remind his son how to live.

And that’s what we have in Philippians 1:19–26: we have a man, a spiritual father, who has come close enough to death that he’s able to tell us (whether we’re 8 or 38 or 68) how to live and die well.

The Happy, Driving Passion

As we’ve learned over the last several weeks, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. The situation’s serious enough that his friends in Philippi are worried if they’ll ever see him again. And on top of the dangers and hardships of his imprisonment, he had enemies (even in the church) trying to make things even worse for him.

I don’t want it to be lost on us over these next few months in Philippians that the most joy-filled letter in the New Testament was written in horrible circumstances. That tells us something, doesn’t it, about how much joy we can expect to experience even on our hardest days. Look how joyful he is even now, even in prison! And they tell us about how much we can still help others enjoy Jesus—even on our hardest days.

As Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, Paul responds to all of this—imprisonment, mistreatment, betrayal—in an otherworldly way, because he had a different passion than the world. And what was that passion? The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel. That passion is why he can rejoice while his enemies preach Christ (verses 15–18). That’s why he can rejoice even while he sits in prison (verses 12–14). That’s why he prays like he does (verses 9–11). That passion is why his love for these people runs deeper and richer than many of our relationships (verses 3–8). And now, in our verses this morning, he’s going to tell us about that passion. He leans in, after all of that, as if to say, Do you want the secret? “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

What Kind of Deliverance?

Our passage begins in verses 18–19:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.

Now, right away, what kind of deliverance do you think he’s talking about? What’s he going to be delivered from? Is he talking about deliverance from prison (which is what we probably assume)—or is he talking about some other kind of deliverance?

Let’s keep reading: “I know that…this will turn out for my deliverance, 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” (verses 19–20). Why do I expect that all of this will turn out for my deliverance? He doesn’t go on to talk about judges changing their minds, or about him developing some goodwill with the jailers, or about a large group of Christians putting together a petition.

“No,” he says, “I’m confident this will turn out for my deliverance because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will be honored in me.” That phrase—“whether by life or by death”—is the biggest reason I don’t think he’s talking mainly about being delivered from prison. He can’t die in prison and be delivered from prison. “I might die here in prison,” he’s saying, “but I’ll still be delivered. Even if I’m never released from these chains, I’ll still be set free.” How could that be? How could he be delivered without being delivered?

I think that question is massively relevant for us, because some of you are praying for deliverance right now. Not from prison (because you’re here)—but what you’re suffering might feel worse than prison some days. Intense, prolonged conflict with someone you love. Hostility where you work. Cancer. A child who’s walked away from the faith—and maybe from you. By the end of this sermon, I’m praying that you’ll be able to say, to anyone who cares about you, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this pain, this conflict, this cancer will turn out for my deliverance”—not mainly because the pain might finally let up in this life, or because the relationship will necessarily get better, or because the cancer will go into remission, but because I believe my life, and my suffering, and even my death will say something true and beautiful and loud about how much Jesus means to me. About how much he’s done for me. About how much I’m dying to go and spend the rest of my life with him.

What kind of deliverance is Paul expecting? Not mainly deliverance from prison (although, as we’ll see, he clearly expects that too). No, deliverance from spiritual ruin, from the intense temptations that come with suffering, from walking away from Christ. “I’m confident I will be delivered,” he says, “because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will look great—and that’s all I really want.”

“I count everything as loss,” he’ll say in chapter 3, “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (3:8–9). That’s what deliverance looks like, the most important kind of deliverance, the kind we all need, especially when suffering comes.

These next verses, then, are a mural of the delivered life—the life freed from self and sin and death, and filled with Jesus. Again, they teach us how to live and die well: “I know that…Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Verse 21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We know that verse, and we think we get it—but do we really get it? Could you explain it to a seven-year-old? These next verses help us see both sides of this precious, life-altering (and death-altering) verse.

To Die Is Gain

Let’s start with death, though, with the second half of the verse: “I know that…Christ will be honored in my body…by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” How is Christ honored in a dying person’s body? Our death honors Christ, he says, when we begin to see our death not as loss—not as the end, not as defeat, not ultimately as a tragedy—but as gain.

So how could Paul look at death, even a death alone in horrible circumstances, and see victory, see reward? The next verses take us deeper. Beginning now in verse 22: “If I am to live in the flesh”—to live is Christ—“that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

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