To die is to gain.

When we look at Philippians and we try to understand what Paul is getting at when he says in 1:21 “For me to live is Christ and to die is to gain” – we see a man who has had the opposite. He has had a full and complete life. When we look later in Philippians 3 we see a bigger picture of Paul’s life.

He was a “Hebrew among Hebrews”, he was zealous in the way he tried to protect the Jewish law and culture even to the point of persecuting the Church. He was blameless in the view when you looked at his righteousness. He was from the tribe of Benjamin, one of the most respected tribes of Israel.

But he says “I count it all loss for the sake of knowing Christ” and he’s right. When we look at what we have and what we put in our life to try and fulfill it, it’s a loss when we put it to scale with Christ.

So, when Paul writes earlier in the letter saying “To live is Christ and to die is gain” – he means it. And he knows that for the sake of knowing Jesus that it is worth his life and worth all these possessions, statuses, and accomplishments Paul had previously had in his life.

So when we look at our lives in the next month, let’s think of Paul and his call to see our lives as nothing even close to comparable to knowing and sharing Jesus with others!