To Live is Christ To Die is Gain (Phil 1:21) | Skull with Cross on Red Floral Texture | Orthodox Christian Art Poster

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

- Philippians 1:21

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"I am living a new kind of life, and Christ is everything to me—my breath, my life, and my light." The word life encompasses 'natural life' ("For in Him we live, and move, and have our being" - Acts 17:28), the 'life of sin' ("How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein" - Romans 6:2), and 'eternal life,' 'according to Christ' ("our conversation is in heaven" - Philippians 3:20).

Here, Paul is not rejecting his natural life, but the life of sin, which follows the deception of the world. Rather, he confesses that Christ is his true life, as he says elsewhere: "I live by faith in the Son of God" (Galatians 2:20). "To die is gain because then I shall understand more clearly. So those who seek to remove me from this earthly life are providing me with gain by sending me to Christ, Who is my life."

+ Blessed Theophylact

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If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

- Romans 14:8