Jim Rogers is a New Yorker, legendary on Wall Street as an investor who made his fortune with George Soros in the famous “Quantum Fund,” which gained 4000% in the seventies. He “retired” in 1979 at the age of 37. He’s now 60 and the author of a book, Adventure Capitalist, about his 152,000-mile trip around the world in a custom-built bright yellow Mercedes with matching trailer. He recently gave an interview to William Hanley of the Financial Post. Speaking of the Quantum Fund, he said,

St. Paul said, “To me, to live is Christ.” It’s such a sweeping statement, one can hardly say what it means. You can’t say anything without saying everything. But wait: Paul was an adventure evangelist, a traveler who walked the roads and rode the waves and who finally came to Rome where he “retired” to a prison cell watched by the imperial guard (Phil 1:13). We might adapt Jim Rogers’ words and have Paul say,

“Christ is my passion. I am consumed by Him. I love him. If I had to go back to work, He is what I’d do. It’s the most wonderful way in the world to live.”

As a restatement of today’s text, that’s actually not too bad. But we can do even better, from Paul himself. As we look at the whole passage in which his declaration stands (Phil 1:18b–30), we can see how he spells out its meaning for us. His words will show us what it means to be an adventure Christian.

1. “To live is Christ” means that we trust him to turn bad situations to good (18b–19).

   Paul has already spoken of his imprisonment (v 7) and how it has turned out to the benefit of the gospel (vs 12–14). Now, he picks up that theme again and says, “I know this will turn out for my deliverance” (v 19).

   Of course, some bad situations are our own doing, and we need to accept the consequences that flow from our mistakes. In making those bad choices, we invited those consequences. It may seem different with the distress that just befalls us, but we have to accept it as well. In both cases, the Christian’s faith about all suffering is that God will bring good out of it. As the Study Catechism says,

   God provides for the world by bringing good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that he does not bend finally to the good (Q. 22).

   But how does this “bending to good” come to arrive? Two things bring it about (v 19):

   • The first is “... through your prayers.”

     Paul opened this letter to the Christians at Philippi by speaking of his own prayer for them (vs 3–4). Now he acknowledges that, he counts on theirs for him.

     We believe that prayer can alter circumstances—even imprisonment—through changing people’s attitudes and ideas. They may be my own attitudes, I who am in distress, or they may be those of the people around me. Often, such change is gradual, partly because we are slow to see ourselves as God sees us and partly because we may even resist changes within ourselves. God is not a bully and respects people that he made with the power of choice. But the prayers of God’s people will help bring about those changes.

   • The second is “... through the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.”

     “Help” is such an ordinary word, but there is an interesting picture behind it. The particular word Paul chooses can be broken down to mean “for the chorus.” The picture is of a wealthy person underwriting the costs of the chorus in a Greek drama. It is the help that a patron of the arts can provide, someone with a deep pocket whose generosity benefits the public.

     The Spirit of Jesus Christ is underwriting your show and wants to get it into production. And God has a deep pocket! Sometimes the need is money, but as often as not, it’s more than that. Sometimes what we need is physical strength, it’s self-knowledge, it’s emotional stability, it’s persistence, it’s the capacity for trust and the ability to wait. In the case of Paul’s imprisonment, it might require time for influence to be felt or political circumstances to change. But when your testimony is, “To me, to live is Christ,” then the risen Christ is there, helping things turn out for good.

2. “To live is Christ” means that Christ can show himself off in us (20–21).

   If we were in prison, our idea of “turning out well” would be release from prison, vindication in the courts, and media competition for the story, with big movie rights thrown in. Think of Jessica Lynch. Paul is thinking of his release, too, of course, but with a very different hope, and it shows us how important Christ can be to us. Paul’s “eager expectation and hope” that his imprisonment will turn out well means two things to him (v 20):

   • The first is that he “will not at all be ashamed.”

     Our distressing circumstances put us to the test; they display who and what we are at that moment. They are therefore also an opportunity for us to show the strength that Christ gives us. For our distress to turn out well, then, means that we conduct ourselves within it to God’s glory, that we give the best witness possible, that we not fail in the pressures we are under. Paul will be unashamed of himself if Christ is not embarrassed by him.

   • The second is that “Christ will be honored in my body.”

     We think at once that Paul might need the courage to bear physical abuse in prison, but the words mean far more than that.

     For one thing, the Greek word soma, usually translated “body,” often seems to denote the whole person rather than just “flesh.” Long before his “Honest to God” days, Bishop John Robinson wrote a scholarly monograph that reached this conclusion. “To live is Christ” involves the whole person: inner life and outer life, spiritual and physical, flesh and spirit.

     And then, “honored” says only part of the truth. The Greek says, “Christ will be magnified.” To magnify means to make large. Many people have a diminuitive idea of Jesus because they have seen him only in the lives of people who minimize him or even conceal him. We are called to maximize Christ, to magnify him, to let people see him as fully as possible.

     Of course, Christ is already larger than life: a sinless divine-human person raised from the dead and present to his people individually around the world.

     What he wants is an opportunity to be displayed in us, so that his greatness can become apparent. He wants a chance to show who he is and what he’s got. With Paul, then, “to live is Christ” means that “Christ will display his greatness in me” (REB).

     For our distress to turn out well, then, means that we will live the way Christ lived and taught. When people see us, they see Jesus. Our behavior must conform to his; his ways must become ours. His sternness with evil, his compassion for all peple in need, must become ours.

     If we could want nothing more from today’s reading than this—that Christ’s greatness be displayed in us—then he would become our life (Col 3:4), and his hand would guide everything else in our experience. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” (Mt 6:33).

   “I Digress.”

   When Paul says that to live is Christ and to die is gain, he is suddenly back at the alternatives that confront him as a political prisoner, and he stops for a moment to talk about them (vs 22–26). These lines are nearly all about his own feelings and wishes, and we see deep into his own heart. He is torn between wishing “to depart and be with Christ” (v 23) and to remain alive for “fruitful labor” (v 22).

   Those of us who do not yet long to depart this life must remember that Paul had already suffered terribly for his faith. Five times he had been flogged by Jewish authorities, receiving thirty-nine stripes, and three times he had been beaten with rods. He was shipwrecked three times, once adrift for a night and a day. He had been in danger, as he says, from rivers, from robbers, from both Jews and Gentiles, in danger in the city, in the wilderness, and at sea. See his long statements in 2 Corinthians 11:23–29 and 6:4–10. All this helps us understand his longing.

   In the end, he is convinced that God still has work for him to do and even hopes that he can visit Philippi once more (v 26).

3. “To live is Christ” means that we make common cause in outreach for Christ’s way (27–28).

   Coming back to the life Christ wants to live through us, we hear Paul say, “Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” He uses a verb here formed from the word “citizen.” It started out to mean something like, “to behave as a good citizen should,” that is, with loyalty to the country’s history, principles, and laws. Paul actually was a Roman citizen, unusual for Jews, but here he is thinking of our heavenly citizenship (3:20). We must live our lives in loyalty to the holy history of God’s self-disclosure and the principles that Jesus Christ shows us.

   We learn immediately part of what this means:

   “Stand firm in one spirit,
   with one soul striving together for the faith of the gospel,
   not being intimidated in anything by your adversaries (vs 27–28).

   That is, the life worthy of Christ includes working together to spread his way. You might have thought that “a life worthy of the gospel” would be to follow Jesus’ teachings, to be good, love one another, seek peace. Which it is.

   But it’s larger than that: In Rome, the Christians were a minority group. But in and through those Christians, Christ wanted more than a few converts here and there. He wanted the city and the empire. The church is not just for ourselves—it’s for the world of unbelief—and when Christ is our life, we know ourselves sent to make common cause in that outreach.

   My brother told me recently of a pastor who had taken a congregation of about forty and built it up to over a hundred. But part of his growth is in a Saturday night service he holds in a storefront downtown. He gets about forty there, all of them otherwise unchurched. Jesus wants this kind of growth. Jesus wants the city, he wants the streets and alleys, he wants the neighborhoods, he wants the people who didn’t grow up in Christian homes.

   We are not now a minority here in North America; closer to it in urban Canada than in the U.S. But it is changing, and it is already different in Europe, as a notice in a recent First Things points out. Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna has said that Christians in Europe are now much like the Jews in their dispersion. “This hostile, rejecting attitude in our secularized countries is felt ever more frequently. We are increasingly regarded as foreign bodies, disturbing the peace in a neo-pagan society.” In Paul’s world, both Jews and Christians were regarded as “highly intolerant” because they would not subordinate their God to the gods and goddesses of the larger society (Apr. 2003, p. 89).

   Wherever we are, now and in the future, “to live is Christ” means that we stand firm as Christ’s people, working side by side for the faith of the gospel.

4. “To live is Christ” means that we accept suffering and struggle for him (29–30):

   “It has been granted to you to suffer for Christ, having the same struggle that you saw I had and hear that I still have.”

   A “grant” sounds like it might be free money for a good cause. People in business and politics are always looking for grants, usually meaning money from the government or from some foundation. Graduate students compete fiercely for university money to support their studies and research. Towns give grants or tax waivers in order to attract business.

   A grant to the church. Yes! And Paul does not use the ordinary word for “give someone something,” which is why our translation uses “grant.” It means “give freely and graciously as a favor.” The same word is in Luke 7:21, where Jesus gives sight to the blind, and in Acts 27:24, where God promises Paul the safety of the whole shipload of people threatened by a storm at sea. Those were gracious gifts indeed.

   But it seems to be the wrong word here. Suffering is a gracious gift?

   When I was a kid in school, we all knew that when Nathan Hale was about to be shot as a spy, he said, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Paul has this same high sense of love and loyalty in suffering for Christ’s sake; he wants us to feel the same way. He says, “God has granted you the privilege of suffering for Christ’s sake.”

   Our suffering for Christ is very small, sometimes confined to smiles or snickers behind our backs, sometimes breaking out in rude taunting, but not usually rising to that endured by Christians in many other parts of the world. Even so, Christ wants us to count those embarrassing moments as privileges given to us as those who know and follow him with all our hearts, and he wants us to join him in every form of struggle for right against wrong, truth against error, his ways against the ways of the world.

Conclusion

We started out to consider the words, “To me, to live is Christ.” To say them means that we allow Christ both to determine and enable the ultimate goal of our lives. When we do that, the goal will be Himself: his ways, his mission, his life. This is the “good work” that God begins in us and promises to carry forward to completion (Phil 1:6).

Be an adventure Christian! Say, “He is my passion; I am consumed by him; I love him. It’s the most wonderful way in the world to live.” From your heart, say, “To me, to live is Christ!”