Philippians Chapter 1 verse 21 Holy Bible

Philippians 1 : 21 Bible Verse Songs

• To Worship You I Live by Israel & New Breed
• Let it Be Jesus by Passion
• Christ Lives In Me by Rend Collective
• JC Squad by PlanetBoom
• Live With Abandon by Newsboys
• To Live Is Christ by Sidewalk Prophets
• Come What May by Lindy & The Circuit Riders
• I'll Live On by Acapeldridge
• Live Alive by Rend Collective
• Burial by Mitch Wong

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 21. - For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Others, as Calvin, render (not so well), "For to me Christ is gain both in life and in death." The alternative suggested in Ver. 20 leads St. Paul to a short digression on the comparative advantages of life and death; he is content with either. Life is blessed, for it is Christ; comp. Colossians 2:4, "Christ, who is our Life," and Galatians it. 20, "Not I, but Christ liveth in me;" "Quit-quid rive, Christum vivo" (Bengel). The life of Christ lives, breathes, energizes, in the life of his saints. His flesh, his incarnate life is their meat; his blood, the mystery of his atonement, is the drink of their souls. He abideth in them, and they in him. And yet death is gain; the slate of death, not the act of dying, is meant (the infinitive is aorist, τὸ ἀποθανεῖν), for the dead in Christ are at home with the Lord (ἐνδημοῦντες πρὸς τὸν Κύριον) in a far more blessed sense than the saints on earth.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(21) To live is Christ.--This, of course, means "Christ is my life," yet not in the sense that He is the source and principle of life in us, but that the whole concrete state of life is so lived in Him that it becomes a simple manifestation of His presence. The opposition in the passage is between the states of living and dying (or being dead), not between the principles of life and death. It is, therefore, in some sense distinct from the cognate passages--Colossians 3:3-4, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. . . . Christ is our life;" and Galatians 2:20, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Those passages set forth the cause; this the result. If Christ be the principle of life in us, then whatever we think and say and do, exhibiting visibly that inner life, must be the manifestation of Christ.To die is gain.--This follows from the other. Death is a new stage in the progress of union with Christ. So we read in 2Corinthians 5:6-7, "Knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord . . . we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." "To depart" (see Philippians 1:23) is, in a higher sense than can be realised here, "to be with Christ."