Philippians 1:22-26

Philippians 1:22-26

But if I live in the flesh this is the fruit of my labour

I.

The personal weighed with the public, or the difficulties of the veteran philanthropist.

II. Man’s sublimest reason for not wishing immediate translation is that he may be of spiritual service to the world.

III. The next best condition to that of being with Christ is to be working for his people.” To be with Christ … to abide with you.” How could there be hesitation in deciding the choice? Selfishness could not have hesitated. True, but selfishness would never have been called upon to make the election. Benevolence has its difficulties as well as selfishness. Love lifts a finger to the heavens and points another to the earth. The choice is between gain and service, and rightly estimated service is gain. It is worth all pain and inconvenience to remain out of heaven so long as you can prepare your contemporaries for it. You are with Christ as long as you are with His work. The apostle is not a dreamy contemplatist always wishing for some more pleasant conditions of existence. He is a worker who finds satisfaction in labour. There is a disease in the Church which confounds religion with wishing for heaven. Persons afflicted with it hold their heads so erectly as not to see the spiritual darkness around them. They are dreamers, transcendentalists, but are they Christians? They are fond of hymns that warble the blessedness of heaven; they revel in texts that describe the rest, the power, the fascinations of the heavenly state. Let such diseased ones mark how the apostle conjoins “labour” and “gain,” and how he balances what is “needful” for man with what would be pleasant to himself; and let them be rebuked and stimulated by the joy with which he anticipated restoration to his laborious life.

IV. There is only one world in which you can serve men evangelically; do not be in indecent haste to escape the opportunity. When you wish to enter heaven may you have a strong drawing to the service still to be done on earth.

V. God never leaves the earth entirely destitute of great men. Elijah may deem himself alone, but God knows that there are seven thousand who have never kissed the world’s dumb god. (J. Parker, D. D.)

St. Paul’s choice

As an overfondness for life is a mean, effeminate passion that exposes us to the basest impressions, and renders us insensible to every honourable purpose, so a contempt of death has been esteemed one of the principal ingredients in a great character. From the views of heathen morality it is difficult to understand why he who had no sure prospect of another life should be over prodigal of this; but when we behold a man raised above the world by a just sense of immortality we cannot but applaud the example as an honour to human nature, and a glorious instance of the power of the gospel. Notice--

I. The reasons that inclined Paul to desire to depart--“To be with Christ.”

1. This signifies that state of happiness revealed by our Lord in His promise to His disciples that where He was they should be also.

2. What the nature and degree of it is the Scripture has nowhere informed us; and, indeed, in our present state exact notions of it are impossible.

3. It is enough to know that to be with Christ is to be partakers of His glory. This is two-fold.

(1) Real but imperfect immediately upon death.

(2) Complete after the resurrection.

II. The motives that reconciled him to a longer stay.

1. He had not only a certain prospect of happiness in another life, but uncommon reasons to be weary of this.

2. But persecuted and discouraged as he was and would still be, his charity for the souls of men, and his zeal for his Master, prevailed with him to defer his own felicity. He was moved with compassion to the errors of a deluded world, and affected with the concern of a father for the happiness of his converts.

III. The submission he expresses to the wisdom and appointment of God. He did not presume to make his own choice. He knew (Philippians 1:25) that God had determined he should abide, and therefore he cheerfully acquiesces in the Divine will, and is as eager to promote the glory of God in one world as to partake of it in another. Application:

1. The prospect of being with Christ is as much ours as it was his.

2. This prospect is a powerful support against death, and a great encouragement to duty.

3. The prospect, however, of being of use to Christ here should beget a willingness to postpone our departure that Christ’s will may be done. (J. Rogers, D. D.)

A strait betwixt two

I. Continuance. Continued life meant--

1. Continued labour. Nothing which God makes is without a work to do. “All things are full of labour.” To God’s moral creatures is given the sublime privilege that not blindly through the action of material laws, but consciously and by resolutions of their own, they may fulfil the end of their existence.

(1) To work, then, according to the faculties and opportunities which God has given us is our duty.

(2) Work is the law of the new life in Christ Jesus. “Son, go work.”

(3) The manifestation of God’s life is holy, beneficent activity. Here is our example.

(4) The highest conceivable honour for God’s creatures is to be “labourers together with Him.”

(5) As this is duty, so is it the direction in which the love of Christ constraineth us to turn our energies.

(6) But what if through illness, etc., a Christian cannot work? Then he works by the influence of his resignation and his prayers.

2. “Fruit of labour”--success in the work to which God calls him.

(1) As a rule honest, hearty labour of every kind succeeds more or less. Yet there are often failures. Shipwreck overwhelms the vessel, or fire consumes the factory, or disease enfeebles. The Christian, when calamities of this kind overtake him, recognizes in them a reminder that there is higher wealth and nobler work than that which has to do with this world.

(2) In the spiritual sphere there is always “fruit of labour,” though very often neither as, nor when, nor where we look for it. All earnest effort for personal spiritual advancement succeeds, for “this is the will of God.” Fruit of this kind is yielded, too, by every Christian effort to benefit others. With regard to the direct effort of Christian labour for the good of others, even where there is little or no visible fruit, still the conscientious worker has abundant ground of encouragement. Christian labourers casually learn, long after, of spiritual good done when they complained of labouring in vain. The seed may long lie inactive.

3. This, then, is what Paul sees to counterbalance the influence of the reflection “to die is gain.”

II. Departure.

1. One grand thought. Paul’s wish was that by departure he should be with Christ.

2. Some Christians have held that the intermediate state is one of sleep. But our Lord’s declaration to the dying thief disposes of that; and had it been Paul’s view he would have counted it better to remain with Christ here.

3. To depart and be with Christ was “better by very far” than remaining in a world of ignorance, and sin, and trouble.

III. The strait between the two.

1. Of struggle between liking and a sense of duty every soul of any strength and nobleness has experience every day.

2. Paul was led to choose the less desirable personally out of love to Christ and His cause.

3. The principle on which this choice was based is that God, having a plan of life for each of His people, no one of them will pass away so long as any work remains for them to do. No Christian dies prematurely. (R. Johnson, LL. B.)