The Anti-Martyr
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21 NASB
To die – Jack Nicholson delivered the classic line in the movie, The Departed. “We all die. Live accordingly.” But how many of us think like this? We are so busy with life that we forget its true meaning is determined by the inevitability of death. And when we actually stop long enough to contemplate this fixed reality, we are often wont to restate Hamlet’s question in terms of our projected heavenly reward. We think that because we have faith we can play the role of martyr, a word that meant “witness” in Greek. We’ll do the best we can, and if that’s not quite enough, then we’ll be martyrs for God and insure our entrance into the Kingdom. Funny how much that sounds like the Qur’an.
Hebrew thinking is radically different. And since Paul thinks in Hebrew terms, Paul’s statement is also radically different than the martyr syndrome. The two parts of Paul’s declaration are both crucial. “To live is Messiah.” What does that mean? If we think in Hebrew terms, doesn’t this mean that we take on the same life exhibited by the Messiah? To live, to be alive, is to model, copy, imitate the same behavior, attitude and devotion as the one we follow. In this case, being alive means being exactly like Yeshua who is our guide, our teacher, our king. “Yeshua is the Messiah. Live accordingly.” The answer to the question, “What does God demand of me?” is found in the life of Yeshua. The more I know of him, the closer I draw toward YHVH. The more I live according to him, the more life becomes my answer to YHVH’s call.
If this is true, then the next part of Paul’s statement has nothing to do with obtaining a heavenly reward. “To die is gain” is not about what I get for being such a devoted follower. “To die is gain” is a statement about the completion of my response to YHVH. At death, my answer is finished. I have replied to His question. What He demanded of me has been satisfied in the life I have given back to Him. “When life is an answer, death is a homecoming.”[1]
“The deepest wisdom man can attain is to know that his destiny is to aid, to serve . . . This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for this act of giving away is reciprocity on man’s part for God’s gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die.”[2] I don’t look forward to death because I desire to escape to supernal paradise. I accept death because it is the period at the end of my reply to Him. It is the ribbon on the package returned to the God who gave me life in the first place. How I live is the repayment of by debt. When I die, the loan is paid in full. The gain in dying is knowing that I have paid back what I owed. What a celebration it will be when I can say with my Master, tetelestai, “It is finished.”
Topical Index: death, gain, life, Philippians 1:21, John 19:30
[1] Abraham Heschel, I Asked for Wonder, citing his book, Man is not Alone, p. 8.
[2] Ibid., pp. 8-9.
For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Phil 1:21
Everyday we are to die to ourselves and all our fleshly desires. We are a living sacrifice. We kill those fleshly thoughts and actions each die as we sacrifice ourselves on the golden alter of the holy tabernacle that rests in our hearts, in His temple.
To live in Christ is to die in self. Is that why Paul said if you are going to boast, boast in your infirmities. Your infirmities are a testimony of the greatness of the power of Jesus. So your testimony is really His testimony? No sin is greater than the power of His name.
How I live in the next life is determined how I died in this one. Thanks, Janel!
Dying to self, like Janel says -which is the basis for all sanctification – is the only way to obtain life in both worlds. Sanctification is not a static condition any more than salvation is. I am being saved at the same pace and in the same way that I am being sanctified. Sanctification IS how I am getting saved, for what I must be saved FROM is me, and sanctification is where I am being successively freed from me. There is no such thing as getting free next go round. If I am not dead before I die, there is no life afterwards for me.
Sanctification applies to the here and now. Its a two-for-one deal, but it is only good this side of death. To resist sanctification, then, is to resist salvation. They are really just two different ways to spell the same word. Self must die BEFORE my last breath, for there is no after. Salvation, like sanctification, only happens here. I am promised a perfected (completed) body next go round, but I have noticed the promise says nothing about a transplanted soul. Nobody is going to ‘make me good’ here or ever. Love never did ‘make’ anybody, nor will it ever. Um. that would be the other side.
First, a few good questions. Why are you a Christian, a ‘member of the family’ who professes ‘faith’ in Yeshua? If you and I had no ‘heavenly reward’, if there was ‘nothing in it for us’, would you be a follower of Yeshua, an advocate for His earthly mission? Are you a Christian because you want to avoid, at all cost, the flames of eternal torture so vividly put forth by Dante? Is that what it’s all about? Were we created in His image to think like that, to put ‘selfishness’ as our defining attribute? Maybe it’s not our fault. That is after all, how the message has been packaged for two millennia, since our Jewish roots were quarantined, made off limits, deemed outdated and not a servant to good Greek thinking. There was a mission attached to the incarnation, a mission attached to Yeshua’s life on this planet and there is a mission attached to each of us, if we are His followers. We are to help in making ‘His will be done on this earth as it is in His heaven’. We do that by doing what Yeshua taught. We do it by embracing how he lived, in our 21st century world, by following His example. We may be the ‘only bible’ anyone will ever read. How we live, what we do and why we follow are on display to anyone with eyes to see. Yeshua had very little to say about ‘heaven’ or about what came after death. Should we so focused on that, to the exclusion of his mission, our mission, for the ‘will of God to be done on this earth as it is in His Heaven’? We have our example to follow, Yeshua’s life, and if we profess ‘faith’ and follow his will, we have our reward. They go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. Yeshua and mission. Are you ‘all in’?
Signs of Life
If there was ‘nothing in it for us’, would you be a follower of Yeshua, an advocate for His earthly mission?
The answer (for me) is an unequivocal “yes!”
My friend, (really) the LORD is my Shepherd. In this life, and on this green planet, the one we now live on, He leadeth me. That’s right. Right here, right now.. His Name is Emmanuel – God with us. Our very present Help in time of need. The (very same) One who said, “I AM come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10.10)
Oh, yes. there is a (literal) Heaven and there is a place called Hell. And there will be (for some) “pie-in-the-sky-when-I-die-by-and-by.” Not to knock Heaven, with its pearly gates and streets of gold (n’ stuff), but in this life, to know my Savior is enuf. To live (really live -hello.) is Christ.
We can and we MUST know Him now. While it is called “today,” – He is the very knowable Christ.) You will seek Me and you will find me, when you seek for Me with all your heart,” is not a promise for those who no longer breathe. And speaking of “breathing,” (one of the signs of life), “let everything that breathes (every living thing) praise the LORD.” (Psalm 150.6)
~ But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, has made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved ~ (Ephesians 2.4)
Silly, it seems, but if we would pay attention (are we capable?) of the tense here, we might not be so tense!
“Has made us alive with Christ..” – not “will!” “Now” are we the sons of God!”
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21 NASB
If eternal life is to know God and Jesus the Christ, this death would then most probably imply to gain knowledge of these entities. Nothing of a great commission or responsible task or covenant… Except if this meaning of know God and Jesus Christ would imply becoming likened too. as I understand walking in the shows of your Rabbi.
Paul later proclaims that when Christ is revealed through us we are in heavenly places and if we continue in this we will receive our reward salvation…
Is eternal life and salvation the same? For their remains a Sabbath rest for those called…
How do we determine if we are gaining as all Paul later states is study to show yourself approved…
Christ – The word that takes on flesh, The power and wisdom of God, The rock that followed in the desert, The light that guides at night, The cloud of witnesses calling to repent…
God is spirit, light, love, consuming fire, the fountain of life.
If this is true then becoming fully yourself or gain would imply understand your talents and use them for they are all God provided, the rest Eve giving Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge (MY DEDUCTION)
“Yeshua is the Messiah. Live accordingly.” The answer to the question, “What does God demand of me?” is found in the life of Yeshua. The more I know of him, the closer I draw toward YHVH. The more I live according to him, the more life becomes my answer to YHVH’s call.”
It is living accordingly to the calling HE has for us individually and corporately to the best of our understanding, to say we have run a good race, and am ready to depart to be with Him, that we have fulfilled our role in being a good testimony/image/example to others; when we can say, Death, where is your sting? O death, where is your overcoming?