Philippians 1 · Passage · Death and Dying
To Die Is Gain
An apostle awaiting the verdict of a Roman court weighed the gain of dying against the need of a church.
Paul wrote “I do not know” of his choice between life and death, and three verses later “I know that I will remain”.
For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
- The passage
- Philippians 1:20 to 26
- Book
- Philippians
- Hold in memory
- Philippians 1:21, Philippians 1:23
Summary
In Philippians 1:20 to 26 Paul set his own death beside his life and found Christ in both. Life in the body meant fruitful work for the churches, and death meant departing to be with Christ, which he called far better. Of the two he judged remaining more necessary for the Philippians.
- Paul's verb for departing is the word whose noun names his own death in 2 Timothy 4:6.
- Readers place the letter at Rome or at Caesarea, according to how they read the palace guard of Philippians 1:13.
- Cyprian, John Chrysostom and Charles Spurgeon preached the passage to believers who feared death.
A Prisoner Weighs His Death
Paul set out what his death and his life would each mean to him and to the church.
The question this study answers is how Paul could call death gain and still choose to live. It sets the two goods he weighed side by side, each with its verse, and reads the Greek words for gain, for being torn and for departing. It also gives the teachers who have preached the passage to the dying and two of the places readers have proposed for the prison where he wrote it. It closes on what Paul's choice teaches a person who faces death.
Paul told the Philippians that his imprisonment had served the gospel, since “it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ” (Philippians 1:13).
I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have complete boldness so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.The verse stands here because it states the hope that governs the passage.
The hope Paul held in his chains, from the end of Acts to his letters, has its own study.
Each chapter of the letter is taught in the book's study guide.
The Two Goods Paul Weighed
Paul names what each choice would bring and for whom.
The rows of Philippians 1:22 to 26 move from the good of Paul himself to the good of the Philippians.
| The choice | Verse | The Berean words | Whom it serves |
|---|---|---|---|
| To remain in the body | Philippians 1:22 | “But if I go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me.” | The work Paul still had to do |
| To depart | Philippians 1:23 | “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed.” | Paul himself |
| To remain in the body | Philippians 1:24 | “But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” | The Philippians |
| Paul's conclusion | Philippians 1:25 to 26 | “and will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith” | The Philippians, whose exultation in Christ would grow at his coming |
Gain, Torn and Departing
The Greek words for gain, for being torn, for departing and for far better carry the passage from the gain of death to the choice to remain.
The word for gain is kerdos, used three times in the New Testament. Paul's next use of it turns the word around: “But whatever was gain to me I count as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7).
The Berean “I am torn” renders synechomai, glossed “I am pressed”. Strong's gives the verb as “to hold together, i.e. to compress (the ears, with a crowd or siege) or arrest (a prisoner)”, and Luke 8:45 uses it of the crowds pressing on Jesus.
The verb for departing is analuo, glossed “to depart”, which stands twice in the New Testament. In Luke 12:36 it is the master's return “from the wedding banquet”.
Paul's “far better” piles up three Greek words, glossed “very much”, “more” and “better”.
Far Better, and Yet to Remain
Paul's words on departing raise a question about death, and his words on remaining a question about his release.
Readers have drawn from “far better” a teaching about the believer at death. Albert Barnes held that the passage is “language derived from the belief that the soul will be separate from the body at death”. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, following Bishop Pearson, set “the partial life eternal” between death and the return of Christ. That question, whether the believer is present with the Lord between death and the resurrection, has a study of its own.
On Paul's conviction that he would remain, John Wesley wrote of “a prophetic notice given him while he was writing this” and held that “doubtless he did see them after this confinement”. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown held that “He did not yet know the issue, as far as human appearances were concerned”. What became of Paul after this captivity is the subject of the study of his last imprisonment.
How the Text Has Been Taught
Each teacher drew a different lesson from Paul's words on gain and on being torn.
died 258 · Cyprian
Cyprian of Carthage, in his treatise On the Mortality, read the gain as “no longer to be held by the snares of this world”. He read death as the summons “to go at the call of Christ to the joy of eternal salvation”.
died 407 · John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom, in his fourth homily on Philippians, set Paul's longing against common fear. He said, “We all shudder at death, I am wont to say, some by reason of our many sins, of whom I too am one, others from love of life, and cowardice”. He went on, “This then, which we all shudder at, he prayed for”.
1834 to 1892 · Charles Spurgeon
Charles Spurgeon preached on Philippians 1:21 in 1857 and noted that between living and dying in the verse “There is but a comma”. In 1873 he suggested that a soldier chained to each of Paul's hands may have given him the picture of being held between two.
Where Paul Wrote
Each reading of the word praetorium has its holders and an objection.
Rome, where the palace guard is the emperor's guardHeinrich Meyer, with the scholars he lists, J. B. Lightfoot among them
Heinrich Meyer, in his Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Philippians, read the praetorium of Philippians 1:13 as “the Roman castrum praetorianorum, the barracks of the imperial body-guard”. He listed de Wette, Ewald, Weiss and J. B. Lightfoot among those who read it so. He named the commander of that guard as the officer to whom Paul was handed over on reaching Rome.
The objection: Meyer himself notes that the word was the standing name for the palaces of provincial governors, as in Matthew 27:27 and Acts 23:35, where Paul was kept “under guard in Herod's Praetorium”.
Caesarea, where the praetorium is the governor's palaceBöttger, as Heinrich Meyer cites him
Meyer cites Böttger for the reading that follows if the letter was written at Caesarea, where Paul was held for two years (Acts 24:27): the praetorium would then be “the Procurator's palace in Caesarea”.
The objection: the letter sends greetings from “the household of Caesar” (Philippians 4:22).
Christ in Life and in Death
The passage ends with Paul choosing the harder good for the sake of others.
Paul could call death gain because Christ was already his life, so death would bring him closer to the One he lived for. The one who faces death learns from him that both staying and going belong to Christ.
Paul's joy in his chains, and the joy he hoped to bring the Philippians, has its own study.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (TBESG) and the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (TAGNT), Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0.
- James Strong, A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament (1890), entry 4912.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Philippians 1:21 and 1:25.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Philippians 1:24.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Philippians 1:23 and 1:25.
- Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality (Treatise 7), in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 5.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on Philippians, homily 4, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 13.
- Charles Spurgeon, The Good Man's Life and Death, Sermon 146, The New Park Street Pulpit (1857)
- Charles Spurgeon, Forever With the Lord, Sermon 1136, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (1873)
- Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, the Epistle to the Philippians, English translation, note on Philippians 1:13.
Keep Studying
In this trial6
People and groups8
Doctrines2