Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. I. BY THOSE WHO LOOK AT LIFE ON ITS BRIGHT SIDE. 1. To me to live is gaiety, delightful society; and to die is the quenching of all joy, to plunge into I know not what, and to go where I do not wish to go. 2. To me to live is the indulgence of the luxury of my senses; to die is the destruction of all that gratifies them. 3. To me to live is affluence in what all are coveting; to die would be to have all this seized by others. 4. To me to live is successful enterprise, competition overcome, prosperity, power, fame; to die that would be to lose the field of my career. II. BY THOSE WHO LOOK ON THE DARK SIDE. To me to live is a hard thing; it is to endure privation, poverty, pain. Well then, would you die in preference? Oh, no, that would be worse. Why so? Sometimes the person can hardly tell — there is an undefined horror of death, but sometimes there is the power of conscience in the case. III. BY WHOSE WHO LOOK ON LIFE IRRELIGIOUSLY. 1. To me to live is a course in which my pleasures are poisoned with vexation; but at any rate it is for so long an exemption from what I have to expect hereafter. Besides, while I live I may repent and reform; but to me to die is perdition. 2. To me to live, says the atheist, is to have the play of all my senses, to take all I dare or can of immediate good, to exult in defiance of what superstition has feigned an almighty power, perhaps to command great attention by my genius. On the contrary, to die is to have all this broken up, and to become a clod of earth. IV. BY THE CHRISTIAN. To live is Christ and to die is to be with Him, therefore gain — far better. (John Foster.) Parallel Verses KJV: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. |
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