Philippians 1:12-20 – Philippians

Today's reading is from Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 to 30.

Philippians 1:12–30

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.

What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

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, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but will that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

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

If I am to live in the flesh, 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.

But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.

Convinced of this, I know I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you, and that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation and from and that from God.

For it has been granted to you for uh that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I have still.

We are going to look at that text that uh that Abby read for us uh from uh Philippians chapter one.

Uh, what do you need to know in order to live the best life you can?

What do you need to know in order to live the best, most meaningful life you can?

Do you need to know what you're going to become?

Who you'll marry, where you'll live, where you'll travel, what you'll do, what do you need to know?

It's not any of those things.

In order to live the best life you can, that is the most meaningful, joyful, valuable existence possible, you need to know one crucially important thing this morning.

You need to know whether or not your death will begin or loss.

That's all you need to know.

In order to live the best life, you need to know whether or not your last day is going to be your best day.

No one here this morning is ready to live until you are ready to die.

It is only when you know the end that you will joyfully risk everything in the adventure of a lifetime.

Only when your end is secure can your present be stable.

Just every now and again, every now and again, a preacher comes to a text on a Sunday morning that has such force that he knows that in standing up, it is the power to upend people's lives.

That's this morning.

And that's what I'm feeling.

How do I know that this has the power to upend people's lives?

Because it has done it before.

This text, when understood and implanted in your soul, is like a depth charge that will ripple through every corner of your existence.

I specifically refer to only two verses that we will look at the entire passage.

We will look at it all, but I refer specifically to two verses.

They are verses 20 and 21.

Those are dynamite.

This morning, my prayer is that by the Holy Spirit that He would come to your life and He'd light the blue touch paper.

Let me remind you of those verses.

Verse 20, Paul writes, As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be ashamed, but that with full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

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

In the original, the verse 21 is even more forceful.

There's no uh verb to be, there's no word is.

Do you know what it is literally?

It is for me to live Christ.

To die again.

To live is Christ.

To die again.

What does that mean?

It sounds stirring, but what's it about?

To live is Christ means to be so captivated by Jesus that every pursuit of your entire life is to see him made much of.

That is uh what Paul says in verse 20.

This my eager expectation and hope that Christ would be what?

That he would be honored.

Other translations put the word magnified.

That is, that people would see the largeness, the greatness of Jesus from everything that you do, every decision that you make, every circumstance that you find yourself in, every action, relationship, situation, it all has one direction and thrust.

The Christ would be honored in your life, whether by life or by death.

And it is only when that fuels your life and sets the course and direction of the rest of your existence that you can call death gain.

Because it is as though you set up a pair of scales, and on one side of the scales, you put everything that you are and have, everything that you love, everything that you have been given, every talent, your career, your relationships, you put it all on this side of the scales, and on the other side of the scales, you put Jesus seeing him in unfiltered beauty, unmediated magnificence.

You put that on the other side and you realize that he outweighs it all.

Only then can you look at your life and say that death is gain.

To know him, to see him face to face, and to hear his well done, good and faithful servant enter into the joy of your master.

This is why this text has the potential by the Spirit of God to completely transform your life this morning.

Everyone in this world, and maybe even you in this room, sees death as loss.

The loss of life, the loss of freedom, ability, joy, adventure, love, relationship, loss.

And you fear the loss of those things.

The potential that those things will be taken away from you keeps you awake at night, it gives you anxiety.

You fear that one day they will slip through your grasp.

But it is only when you realize that death ushers you into unending life, eternal joy, abundant, lavish goodness in the presence of God your Savior, you are liberated to live a life of joyful risk taking.

Do you see the power, the potential that these words have for completely transforming the direction of your life?

That if you see death as gain, you can no longer be given to fear.

You'll be released from it.

You'll be released from anxiety, from worry.

Because for you to live is Christ and to die is gain, all of you here this morning are alive, but not all of you are living.

To live is Christ.

The very essence of what it means to be a human being is to be orientated by our whole being towards Him, to live for Him.

That's what we were made for.

To become a Christian is to become more fully human because to live is Christ.

Let me show you from this text three ways that it changes everything right now.

First, it reframes your suffering.

Second, it reshapes your priorities, and third, it removes fear.

First, it reframes your suffering.

Let's have a look at uh verses 12 to 14 of Philippians 1.

I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me, what is that has happened to him, he's in prison.

We saw that last week.

Paul's in jail for the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

What has happened to me, it really sucks.

No?

What has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard, that's the soldiers that are watching him, and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Paul, in writing this letter from prison, never once says, Get me out of here.

Send a cake with a file in it, so that I can uh chisel away at the bars.

No, not once.

No, he looks at his situation, at his circumstance, at this suffering, and says, I can see so much purpose in it.

I want to encourage you with that, Philippian Christians.

That God has really been working through my suffering and trial.

I'm so glad that I can see God's fingerprints all over my suffering because the gospel's been advancing, the gospel's going out.

Soldiers are turning to Jesus, people are coming to know him.

It has advanced the gospel.

And what's more, it has strengthened others who are free to preach the gospel.

That's what he says in uh in verse 14.

They become more confident.

How could his imprisonment do that?

Well, it's shown that Paul's the kind of guy who's not just prepared to talk the talk, he'll walk the walk as well.

He's prepared to put his money where his mouth is.

He really does believe it.

The first sign of suffering, he doesn't just go, oh well, some Jesus that is, told me that uh my life would all be great.

No, no, no.

He says, I willingly, gladly go to prison.

And these guys look and go, he must really believe this.

There really must be something in this.

And they become more bold, more confident to preach there's purposefulness in his suffering.

The whole direction of your life is seeing Jesus magnified.

To live is Christ.

Then you will no longer see suffering as an interruption, an interruption to you getting on with your life, an interruption to the purpose of your life.

Rather, it will reshape your suffering, and you will see that far from it being meaningless, purposeless, suffering is full of significance.

As people see both how and why you endure such trial.

And if death is gained, then suffering is sweetened by the nearness of the Savior.

Moreover, if the whole goal of our life is to magnify Christ and not ourselves, then we can endure better when people speak badly of us, when people are badly motivated towards us.

Look at verses 15 to 18.

This is so remarkable, especially in a world where we're so given to kind of protecting our reputation and we get so easily slighted by people uh saying kind of snarky things about us.

Look what Paul says here.

So some preach, some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I'm put here for the defense of the gospel, and the former proclaim Christ out of rivalry, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me, to do me harm in my imprisonment.

What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.

Just let those words sink in.

What is motivating Paul?

What's Paul's emotional life here?

He's rejoicing that Christ is preached.

He's like, Yeah, I know there's jerks out there.

And they don't particularly like me.

But they're preaching the gospel.

And so if Jesus is getting out there, fine.

Good.

In that I rejoice.

The actions, opinions, motives of others, they make or break us all the time.

But there's something gloriously freeing about Paul saying, Do you know what?

I can still rejoice because it's all about Jesus.

It is not as though he approves of these rivals.

Don't mishear me.

Or uh that the Bible is suddenly saying that motives don't matter.

Their motives do matter, but he's not gonna let that gnaw at him unendingly, the way it might gnaw at us when somebody is badly motivated about us.

It's all about Jesus.

It's not about me.

So people can take my name and they can rake it through the mud.

People can walk away from me.

But I don't want them to walk away from Jesus.

You see how getting to live as Christ and to die as gain actually is like a death charge in your soul.

It actually does up-end everything.

Because it will take your suffering and it will completely reframe it.

Reshape it.

You'll be able to see the purposefulness in it.

The second thing that to live is Christ and to die as gain does in your life now.

So we've just seen that it re sh reframes your suffering.

I and not for nothing.

Um, sorry, just by the by the way, before we move on, why do you need to know this?

Why am I telling you this on a wet Sunday morning in October?

I'm sure you you could go you could go to a church, you could make a service later on where people will just tell you to be happy and that God loves you uh and that everything's gonna be great in your life.

You could find those churches.

Why do I sit here talking to a whole bunch of 20 and 30 year olds predominantly?

Um uh saying uh the um the gospel reframes your suffering.

Because you only need to live long enough before you experience it.

And some of you are experiencing it now, and some of you have experienced it in the past.

Suffering is not a reality that we shirk away from in city church.

It's not something that the gospel shirks away from.

It looks at sin and trial in the world full in the face and says, I'm gonna fill that with significance.

And you need to know that.

Because in knowing it, it'll put ballast in the boat of your life, weight that holds you down in the sea of trial, so that you don't capsize when wave after wave begins to break over your back.

You need to know it in your twenties, you need to know it in your thirties, because it'll come in your forties and your fifties and your sixties.

Second.

It reshapes your priorities.

Uh we're going to look here at verses 22 to 24.

So we've been seeing how to live as Christ and to die as gain relates back.

Now we're looking to see how it relates forward in this text.

Paul expresses this dilemma.

He says, If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

Yeah, which shall I choose?

I cannot tell.

I'm hard pressed between the two.

My desire is to depart.

That's to die, to depart and to be with Christ, for that is far better.

But to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your account.

Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith.

Paul's death at the hands of his captors, or who or the hands of whoever would see him dead, would release him, it would set him free, it would usher him in to unending glory.

He would see Christ fully.

And his acquittal, his release from prison, would enable him to preach Christ more, more freely, more boldly.

And so he doesn't know which to choose.

But just note that this is even a dilemma for Paul in the first place.

So foreign to our ears.

If dying is gain, then for Paul, longing to go and be with Jesus, longing to die, is a is for Paul a kind of selfishness.

How strange.

He would rather go and be with Jesus, but there's still God.

Work to be done.

There's still work to be done in these young Christians' lives.

And so for Paul, self-denial is remaining alive so that he can continue to tell others about Jesus and grow these Philippian Christians to spiritual maturity.

His top priority above all else is to tell others about the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus and seeing Christians built up in them, which is why he says in verse 25, convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all.

Why?

For your progress and joy in the gospel.

And you need to note that word joy because Paul here this morning, and I here this morning, are not advocating some sort of emo death cult where we're just kind of, oh well, just can't wait to be uh to be beyond this physical existence, nor is it something that is merely stoic, a kind of stiff upper lipness about our life.

No, no, to live for Christ alone and to see death as gain is not about some about going around in some morbid, uh depressing asceticism.

No, if Christ is your life and all of your life is orientated towards him, and you know that beyond this life there is only increasing measures of joy and delight, then you can have joy now.

And so he's able to look at the rivalry and the malignment and still rejoice.

Living for Christ now is living a life that is suffused with unending joy.

A joy that can never be taken away from you because it's not attached to a circumstance, but to a person who's alive and reigning in heaven.

And that joy only increases until you see him face to face.

This must surely challenge our goals and priorities.

So often I have conversations with people at City Church that are along the lines of, what should I do?

I don't know what decision to make.

This impacts all of that.

It challenges what we are prioritizing in our lives.

It asks questions of us.

Like, why do you study?

Why have you taken on further courses?

Why are you dating this person?

Why are you married?

What do you think is the overarching purpose of it?

Why do you do what you do?

The answer is not give it all up and become a monk.

But these questions should begin to poke around in your heart.

Because Paul's priorities is to see the gospel advance and Jesus magnified no matter what.

You can do that in every sphere of life, but have you considered it with the direction of your life?

That actually you're going to give your whole existence to something bigger outside of yourself?

Or are you just going about, just trying to build your own thing that will ultimately be taken away?

Paul's whole drive is shaped by different, bigger, more magnificent, eternally lasting priorities?

Do you live, work, study, and love for the honor of Jesus?

Or for your own self-satisfaction?

Do you do all of those things for the progress and joy of others in the faith?

Can you look at all of those things of value and say if I lost them, yeah, I'd be sad.

Some of those things, if I lost them, would be devastating and take a terribly long time to come to terms with.

But if I suffered the loss of them, I could still have joy.

Because my joy and my hope's in Jesus.

I could still get up in the morning.

I could still put one foot in front of the other spiritually speaking.

Because my joy hasn't been stolen.

It's not in those things.

It's not in their loss.

And I believe in a God of resurrection and restoration and renewal.

And I'm going to a place of ever increasing and unending joy.

Do you suffer the loss of those things that you hold dear and say that in the final analysis my death would begin?

Because I know Jesus.

It reframes your suffer suffering.

It reshapes your priorities.

And it removes fear.

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear that you are standing firm in one spirit with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

This is a clear sign to them of their destruction and of your salvation, and that is from God.

For it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ.

You should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Again, there are so many phrases, aren't there, that kind of trip up your brain, our natural brain.

Granted?

Granted to suffer for his sake?

What do you mean by that, Paul?

We get granted gifts.

How can suffering be that?

What do you mean?

The kind of questions that I've been banging off this text this week.

What does it mean to be granted to suffer for his sake?

Let me illustrate it like this.

Jesus said to the disciples before he died, he said, um, if you love me, in paraphrasing, because I haven't put it written a diamond notes, I wasn't going to say this, so let's see where it goes.

Jesus said, If you follow me, you're going to have suffering in this world.

If they hated the master, how much more will they hate you?

And it will be a sign that you are mine and that I am yours.

Right?

Jesus said that to the disciples.

Get into the book of Acts, get to Acts chapter 5, and uh uh Peter and uh and James are uh are arrested by the religious leaders and they are beaten, put in prison, uh, and then finally released.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

And we read in that text that after their beating and their release from imprisonment, that they rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer for the name.

How do you get from there to there?

How do you get from Jesus' words to rejoice, to be counted worthy to suffer from the name?

Or, as Paul says it here, granted to you to suffer for a little while.

Jesus says these words to uh to Peter and to and to James, and he ascends up into heaven and he's he's gone for a while.

I'm there thinking, are we are we really Christians?

Are we really believers in Jesus?

It just seems all so hard to wrap your head around.

It all seems so fantastical.

And you are we going to endure, is he gonna preserve us?

And then the suffering comes along and they remain true and they suffer, and they suddenly realize Jesus said that that would happen, and that if that happened, it would be a confirmation that we are his and he is ours, and he's with us in it, and so they rejoiced because they realized it's all true.

They rejoiced to be kind of worthy to suffer for the name.

I'm gonna tell you about a man called Mehdi Debaj.

He's a Christian from Iran.

He was put in prison for the crime of apostasy because he had converted from Islam to Christianity.

He was sentenced to death and languished in prison for years.

During one of his court hearings, he said this to those who were judging him.

Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Savior.

To know him is to know eternal life.

I, a sinner, have believed in his beloved person and all his words and miracles recorded in the gospel, and I have placed my life in his hands.

Life for me is an opportunity to serve him, and death is a better opportunity to be with him.

Therefore, I am not only satisfied to be imprisoned for the honor of his name, I am ready to give my life for the sake of Jesus, my Lord.

A few years later, uh the United States State Department negotiated his release from prison.

Upon his release, he remained in Tehran, preaching Christ open openly, and after being free for seven months, he was murdered in a public park because he continued to speak the name of Jesus without fear.

If Christ is your life and death is gain, what have you got to fear?

It surely cannot be death.

As Christians, brothers and sisters, you and I must see death in this light.

The world does not because it cannot.

It must deny death or try to ignore it or despair over the reality of it and feel crushed by it.

But we can live in the liberating knowledge that the best day of our life will be our last one.

The grave, brothers and sisters, is not sovereign over the Christian, but a servant that brings us to Jesus.

Do you have this confidence?

Do you believe that to die is gain?

If you live for Christ, then to die will be gain.

However, if you live for anything other than Him, your death will be a loss.

To live as Christ, to die again.

It reframes our suffering.

You know, it's not just that we go through this world looking for fights or looking to suffer.

Nor is it that when suffering comes we just go, great.

That's why I mentioned last week that one of the things that Paul says in 2 Corinthians is that he is sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

It doesn't mean that you can't feel the pain of suffering.

That's what I mean by it's not some stoicism.

Is that you can feel the pain of suffering and still have hope and still have joy and begin to see God's fingerprints all over it.

It reframes your suffering, it reshapes your priorities, and it removes fear.

Everyone in this room needs to hear this.

For some of you sitting here this morning, this will simply make no sense.

Why would anyone rejoice in suffering?

Why would anyone possibly see death as gain?

Only the person who is in possession of something that no suffering, not even death, can take away, will be able to comprehend the magnitude of these words.

We need to hear this also because by and large we don't know how to suffer.

But you will before the end.

If Christ is your motivation and your highest goal, then you can suffer in a way that points people to him.

We need to hear this also because we I think we can become, and I'm not talking just about this room, I just think us all generally, we can become far too self-absorbed.

It pokes around, like I said, in our priorities and asks questions of us like what is your life for?

What are you doing?

What is the direction of your existence?

Are you gonna make it count?

Why are you here?

What are you building for yourself, for those who love you, for the people around you?

Are you doing it all for temporal gain, or are you doing it for the greatest cause and deepest joy that you'll ever know?

Your people have read texts like this, and it's completely changed the direction of their life.

They're like, Do you know what?

I need to give my entire life, everything that I do, to this Maybe it'll change the direction of your life.

Maybe some of you sit here and you will look back on today in some years hence and say that this is the day when everything changed.

Not because Mark was eloquent or funny.

But because Christ grabbed you.

With an irresistible grip.

And he hasn't let go of you since.

And he turned the course of your heart and pointed it in a new direction.

Thank God that I walked through the rain to be at City Church that day.

Our world needs to hear this, our world that is in the grip of fear, people crushed by the fear of death, by the seeming purposelessness and meaninglessness of sin and of suffering.

We have a message that liberates them.

Our world needs to hear this because our world is addicted to stuff.

It's addicted to me, myself, and I, and all of the things that will not last.

We offer gain.

As someone far more godly and more famous than I said, One life will soon be past.

Only what is done for Christ.