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. ²⁴ But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. ²⁵ Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶ so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.

In the western world, we have very little idea of the Middle Eastern notion of shame. For us shame is basically a strong form of embarrassment. Let’s say your children really misbehaved at church on Sunday morning (Not so hard to imagine, eh?). Imagine that two of your young children were standing in line to get a cookie after service. Your first child pushes the other aside so he can get to the cookies first. In full retaliation, the second child wacks his brother on the back as hard as he can. Several people saw the incident and now the whole church is listening to the one brother screaming at the top of his lungs and the other brother is having  temper tantrum because he can’t have a cookie because his mom is dragging him out of the church.

Mom is frazzled beyond belief and begins to lecture her sons on the drive home. “I’m so embarrassed,” she says. Then she yells at the brothers, “You ought (can you guess what comes next?) to be ashamed of yourselves!” Do the two brothers feel shame right then? Probably not, they are just wondering what kind of punishment awaits them when they get home. They’re probably not ashamed, but mom is ashamed. Her shame is a strong form of embarassment.

Now compare this type of shame to that of Asian and Middle Eastern countries. This past July, a Pakistani immigrant living near Atlanta, strangled his daughter to death because she wanted to end the arranged marriage. In Middle Eastern culture this is called an honor killing. If it is determined that a person in the family has brought shame on everyone, in their way of thinking, the only way to eliminate the alleged shame is to kill the person. All of this is supposed to be the will of God. The father was reported to have said, “God will protect me. God is watching me. I strangled my daughter.”[1]

Obviously, this is abhorrent to us, but it illustrates the meaning of shame in Middle Eastern cultures. To be shamed is far worse than death itself. If you remove all of the sinful parts, this notion of shame is much closer to the Biblical idea of shame. When he wrote the letter to Philippi, Paul was in a prison in Rome awaiting his pending trial when he wrote, it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed. He wasn’t worried about being stuck in prison. He wasn’t concerned about the upcoming trail. He wasn’t even afraid of the very real possibility of execution. Paul’s chief concern was not with living or dying, but of shame.

In a very twisted way, the man who strangled his daughter felt similarly about shame. To him, shame was a fate far worse than death—if not his own death, then at least the death of others. To him, the fear of shame was a far-reaching, all-encompassing state of horror that was to be feared more than death. This is where the similarity ends between this evil man and the apostle Paul, because even though Paul’s chief concern was not to be ashamed, in the end, he was not worried about the mark of shame being attached to himself, he was worried that he would bring shame upon the name of Jesus Christ.

Let’s finish verse twenty we began a moment ago. 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. Paul could have cared less what other people thought about him, but his whole life revolved around what others thought about Christ, and specifically, how he wanted his life to honor Christ in all things. I don’t want to leave the impression that the type of shame felt in Middle Eastern countries will inevitably result in honor killings. Most people who feel shame do not kill other people. Many people who feel shame do kill themselves, but the vast majority of people who feel this terrific weight of shame just carry it around with them. I cannot illustrate enough that this type of shame is so much greater than the type of shame that we feel, like in the scenario of a double child meltdown at church. But the glue that holds all same together is fear.

The mom or dad whose children misbehave in public are embarrassed because they have a fear of man—they fear what other people will think and say about them and their parenting skills. This embarrassment, which is a mild form of shame, is motivated by a fear of man. The kind of heavy shame that would cause a person to take their own life or the life of another is also a fear of man, what others think of them, and because Middle Eastern cultures are intensely relational, what others will think of their entire family. Any shame they might feel flows out of an intense fear of man. Paul also dealt with intense fears, but the thing that makes his fear so very different is that Paul’s shame was based on a fear of God. Paul’s fear was a reverent fear of God, it was a holy fear of God, it was a trembling fear of God grounded in worship and praise of the glorious Christ Jesus. The ESV uses the word honored. The NIV uses exalted and the KJV uses magnified. Honored, exalted, magnified—these are all terms of worship and they are all directed at Christ. The opposite of this ultimate worship would be shame—shame upon the name of Christ. And it was this shame that Paul feared the most. In Paul’s mind, worse than prison, worse than suffering, worse than death itself was the possibility of bringing shame upon Christ.

For Paul, the opposite of shame was not that he would be honored, but that Christ would be honored. I like how John Piper explains it. “What you love determines what you will feel shame about. If you love for men to think highly of you, you will feel horrible shame when they don’t. If you love for men to think highly of Christ, you feel shame when they belittle him on your account.”[2] Paul was concerned about magnifying Christ above all things. He was concerned, but was he worried? We can argue that he was not worried in the sense of being afraid that he would fail the test. We see this confidence in verse twenty. 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. He feared God, but he did not fear the real possibility of bringing shame on Christ. He had full confidence and full courage that Christ would be magnified whether through his life or through his death. His trial was upcoming and he was ready to bear witness to Christ before the court. If the court decided to release him, he was confident that Christ would be honored through this, and if the court decided to execute him, he was confident that Christ would be honored.

Paul had walked with Christ and preached about Christ and suffered because of Christ, and every step of the way he found that Christ was true, he discovered that Christ was his savior, redeemer, friend, his strength, his everlasting Lord and the all-satisfying object of his life and affection. Even in the circumstances of his present imprisonment Paul saw again and again that Christ was good and he rejoiced that Christ was being preached. Here is a reminded from last week.

-Christ was preached by Paul in his imprisonment

-Christ was preached by Paul’s friends because of the example of his imprisonment

-Christ was preached by Paul’s enemies in order to afflict him in his imprisonment.

Everything about his imprisonment was resulting in Christ being preached—preached by him, by his friends and by his enemies. As a result, Paul wrote, And because of this, I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice… Paul had tasted and seen that the Lord was good. Paul had fruitful ministry while he was free to travel and preach the gospel and Paul had fruitful ministry while he was chained inside a dirty prison. Paul was confident that Christ would be honored in his life or honored in his death. The next thing Paul wrote has become some of his most famous Scripture.

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Before we plumb the depths of this verse, let me show you how this verse has stood the test f time. You are aware that there have been a multitude of English translations of the Bible. Some of these translations are better than others, but all of them vary to one degree or another. But notice how the wording of this verse has remained over the years.

Understand that I am not trying to prove that one translation is better than another, but that this verse is so representative of Paul’s heart, so central to the gospel, so rich with meaning in its beauty and simplicity, that for four hundred years, every time a translator has come to this verse, they have decided to just leave it alone. Every time they have considered altering the English translation, all of these translators decided that the verse says it all and says it well, so they just left it as it was: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Which part of this verse is the most difficult to understand? I think it is the second half. We all have an idea of what it means to live for Christ, but deep inside I think we all struggle with the part about dying being gain. So, the first question we need to answer is this: in what sense is dying gain?

The famous philosopher Socrates said this about the gain of death. “If there is no consciousness, but it is like a sleep when the sleeper does not even see a dream, death would be a wonderful gain.” Obviously, the type of gain of which Socrates spoke is not the gain of future reward but the gain of an end to present pain. He did not describe any kind of afterlife but just a ceaseless existence, which is really no existence at all. Obviously, this bears no resemblance to Christianity. However, it seems that many Christians have a similar view of death in terms of escaping pain. I call this a type of baptized suicide where the Christian longs for death, not so much to gain heaven or gain Christ but to escape the present pain. In one sense there is nothing wrong with wanting to escape present pain and suffering and many people who express the longing for Heaven really are more interested in the gain of heaven than they are the loss of pain, but many are not.

What is the gain of death? Is it freedom from pain? Is it escaping Hell? Is it eternal life? Is it the glory of Heaven? Certainly all of these things are true and should be counted as part of the gain of death, but these are the side dishes in the real feast of death. The main course, as it were, is not the side benefits of eternal life, but the gaining of Christ in all his undiluted glory and majesty. To live is Christ and to die is to gain more Christ. This is illustrated in the following verses.

·        Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

This verse does not mean that if you delight yourself in the Lord that God will grant you all of your selfish desires. If I love Jesus then he’ll give me a new car and a good looking wife. Some understand this verse to mean that if we delight in the Lord our desires will become his desires, therefore he will grant them. I think this is true, but there is even more. If we delight ourselves in the Lord, then the desires of our heart is God himself. If we are delighting in the Lord we already have what we truly want. We won’t want anything other than the Lord. He would be both our full delight and our full desire.

·        The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1)

If the Lord is my shepherd, then I have no wants, because I already have what I truly want—Jesus. You see, the gain of death is not salvation per se or eternal life, but the person and presence of Christ.

Therefore, the “gain” of death is that I gain more of Christ. I see Christ in his full glory. I see Christ without the constraints of sin. I see Christ without the ever present temptation of wanting something other than Christ. If this is the gain of death, then this is also what it means to live is Christ. But if living is not for Christ then dying will not be gain. In other words, if you don’t want Jesus above all things right now, why do you think you will suddenly want him for all eternity? If Christ alone does not satisfy you for the passing vapors of this life, how can he possibly satisfy you for an infinite amount of time? If you do not want Jesus this day, you certainly do not want him forever.

But this is what Paul contemplated as he considered honoring Christ—whether by his life or through his death. But this can be hard for most of us to relate to. We can’t imagine ever dying for our faith. We can’t imagine having a death warrant on our head. If we were facing possible death we just don’t know how we would respond. We can’t imagine such things, but I think we should begin to imagine them. Instead of having death as the final taboo and subject of ultimate tragedy, we should begin to contemplate our own death. We should imagine being on trial for bearing witness to Christ. We should contemplate our own death to see if we really do think it is gain or not.

The famous puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, wrote down seventy resolutions for his life between the ages of nineteen and twenty one. Here is one he wrote in 1722 at the age of nineteen. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death. Edwards died from a smallpox vaccination. I am guessing it was not the way he guessed that he would die, but the manner of death did not matter—it was the preparation that mattered. Edwards contemplated his death so that Christ would be gain to him. He contemplated his own death because he was convinced it was better by far.

Sitting in his prison cell, Paul imagined being condemned to death by the Roman court. Paul was imagined the sword of Roman justice severing his head from his body. Paul imagined his death and he knew it was gain. It wasn’t gain as in escaping the pain of prison but gain in the celebration of gaining more Christ.

This man’s name is Mosab Hassan Yousef. His father is West Bank leader of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization. A few years ago he converted to Christianity and a few months ago he announced his conversion to his father and to the world in an Israeli newspaper article.

“I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he'll understand this and that God will give him and my family the patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity.” In another article he was asked, “Aren't you terrified that somebody is going to try to kill you for saying these things — which would be approved of according to parts of the Koran?” He responded, They (sic) got to kill my ideas first, (and) that's it, they're already out. So how are they going to kill my idea? How are they going to kill the opinions that I have? ... They can kill my body, but they can't kill my soul.

He is paraphrasing Luke 12:4-5 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

If someone wants to kill us, we should be able to say in return, “Is that the best you can do? Is that all you’ve got? If you kill me, I am better off by far. If I die, it is gain. Even if cancer gets a hold of me, or heart disease, or a stroke, or a smallpox vaccination, for the believer, it is gain. To live is Christ, but to die is gain.

Rich Maurer

October 5, 2008