A few months ago, on a Saturday morning, my family was getting up and beginning our day. I was making coffee, grinding the beans, getting the pot going, and Heather and the kids were organizing breakfast. Then, all at once, everything changed. We heard popping, cracking sounds. The house started shaking. The windows rattled. We looked out and saw bright, fiery objects hurtling through the sky. Our dog, who lives outside, started trying to break down the door in panic. Every phone in the house erupted with an emergency alert.
A minute later, we found ourselves huddled in the closet of the spare bedroom, the safest place in the house, as missiles were exploding in the air and drones were flying overhead. It was an attack from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. We live very close to Iran, roughly 50 miles away as the crow flies, and the war had begun. That kind of scene would repeat itself day and night, at all hours, for the next 40 days. Official numbers since published confirm that Iran attacked the UAE with 549 ballistic missiles, 29 cruise missiles, and 2,260 exploding suicide drones, a total of 2,838 explosive attacks on our city and our country. We were there for all of it.
It is surreal to live through something like that. We watched missiles fly past our house. We were woken in the night by alerts. Around the corner from our house, a car’s roof had been caved in by falling shrapnel. One night, we lived near the airport, we were asleep when the whole house shook with a massive explosion. Looking out the window, we saw a mushroom cloud rising from the airport: a drone had struck the fuel depot where jet fuel is stored for the planes. The fire burned uncontrollably for the next 24 hours.
A few weeks into the conflict, I was teaching a seminary class in an office building about five miles from home. My students faced me; behind me, through a window on the outside of the building, I could see the skyline. I was mid-lecture when I began seeing flashes through that window and hearing the familiar sounds, and thinking, that looks like it is in the direction of my neighborhood. My phone buzzed. I told the class to take a break. A text from my wife: missile shrapnel had fallen in the front yard of the house right next door to ours.
Even as all of this was going on, people around us, in our church, among our neighbors, in the broader community, were asking: what comes next? Some people were killed by these attacks. Many were hurt. But everyone feared this was only the beginning. What would happen to the economy with shipping shut down? What if they struck the power plants, the water plants? What if there was no food coming in? What if they invaded by land? These were the questions people were wrestling with, and underneath them all: Am I going to be safe? Am I going to be okay?
I say all of this because you may never have missiles coming at your house, I hope you never do. But you will have moments something like this. Moments where life is going along normally, and then suddenly everything is different. Something happens and the world is not what it was before. It might not be a war. It might be a diagnosis, a job termination, a relational betrayal. But we will all have days when we find ourselves in a situation we cannot control, feeling as though we are on the brink of disaster. And in those moments, we start asking different kinds of questions.
Today I want to bring you two questions from God’s Word, questions this war brought to the surface for me, though you do not need to be in a war to ask them. God would have you ask them right now, so you are ready when your war comes, whatever form it takes. Both questions come from Philippians chapter one, verses 18 through 26.
Are You Ready to Die?
That is a question I had to ask myself and my family as people were dying in our city. And it is the question Paul is wrestling with in our text.
In Philippians, Paul is writing from prison. He mentions his imprisonment about three times in chapter one, sitting in chains as he writes. He does not know what the outcome will be, whether he will be declared innocent and released, or whether this is the end. As he faces the real possibility that today might be his last day on earth, what is Paul thinking?
We see it in verse 18. Paul has been wrapping up a section on the different motivations people have for preaching Christ, beginning in verse 12. Then in 1:18 he says:
Philippians 1:18 LSB: Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,
Even as the proverbial executioner is sharpening his axe, Paul has a smile on his face. Why? Because he is ready to die.
Verse 19 begins with the word for, it is explaining the rejoicing at the end of the previous verse. Why will Paul rejoice? Two reasons unfold across verses 19 and 20. The first is the certainty of his salvation. The second is the courage in his Savior.
The Certainty of His Salvation (v. 19)
Philippians 1:19 LSB: “For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.”
The word translated deliverance is the Greek word sozo, ordinarily meaning salvation. It can refer to rescue from any difficult situation: a car breaks down by the road and the AAA man saves you. So Paul could be saying he is confident he will be released from jail.
But I do not think that is what he means. When Paul uses the word soteria, he consistently uses it not to refer to salvation from present difficulty, but specifically to mean eschatological salvation, final, eternal salvation, God’s deliverance from the judgment each of us faces because of our sin. Paul is not merely talking about rescue from jail. He is talking about salvation from judgment and death.
What you may not have noticed on first reading is that Paul is doing something deliberate in verse 19: he is alluding to and reflecting on an Old Testament text. These words come from the story of Job.
Briefly: Job is a wealthy man with a large family, and everything in his life is flourishing, until calamity strikes. His entire life falls apart. He loses his family, his property, his health. He is sick, covered with boils, utterly devastated. Then his friends arrive, not to comfort him, but essentially to prosecute him. Their lengthy speeches amount to this: Job, all this bad stuff happened because you deserve it. You must have sinned against God. Having heard these speeches, Job responds in Job 13:15–16. Translated closely from the Greek Old Testament, Job says:
Job 13:15-16 LSB: Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him. This also will be my salvation,
Those are the very words Paul uses in Philippians chapter one. This will lead to my salvation. Job is bearing the shame of loss and grief, his life is in shambles, and yet he has this confidence. He knows that his hope is in God, his trust is in God, his faith is in God, and that God is the one who will deliver him and vindicate him. He is certain of that, even when in earthly terms he has no visible reason to be.
And here is Paul, in prison, feeling the connection to Job’s story. A different situation, but the same contours: like Job, I am suffering. Like Job, my friends are acting like enemies. Like Job, my life is in danger. Like Job, from a worldly perspective, I have every reason to expect shame and humiliation. But the reality is different from what it appears. Because I do have hope. I do have faith. I am ready for death because I am certain of my salvation.
Paul, like Job, is saying: I do not know what the short term holds. I do not know whether this imprisonment will turn out well in the near term. But whatever happens in the short term, this is going to turn out for my salvation in the end.
Think of it this way. When our children were young, Heather was chasing five of them around, exhausting work. On a slow evening we would occasionally sit down and try to watch a movie. We would get through the first fifteen minutes or so, introducing the characters, and then Heather would fall asleep, worn out from the long day. She would sleep through most of it, then wake up for the last twenty minutes, catch the ending, and stay through the credits. The next day someone would ask, “How was that movie?” And she would say, “Oh, it was great.” I would ask how she knew, given that she missed half of it. “I saw how it ended,” she would say. “It ended well, so it was good.”
That is what Paul is saying about his own life. I do not know what happens in the middle. But I know the end. I know who wins. I know this is going to turn out for my salvation. Whether or not Paul is vindicated by Caesar’s court, he has already been vindicated by a higher court, the court of God. He knows the end, and the end is salvation. That is the first reason he can rejoice in the face of death.
The Courage in His Savior (v. 20)
There is a second reason: not only confidence in salvation, but courage in his Savior. Paul is not going to be ashamed. Like Job, his end is salvation, not judgment, not shame, not humiliation. So what is he moving toward?
Philippians 1:20 ESV as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.
Paul looks at his situation and says: this is ultimately not about me. It is about Christ. The question is whether Christ will be magnified, whether Christ will be seen as great, whether Christ will be glorified. That is what matters. The source of his courage is not self-confidence. It is not that he can fix the situation or make the troubles go away. It is that he is seeking the glory of Christ, and that is good, whatever the outcome ends up being.
Because Paul knows that even though he deserves shame and judgment, Jesus, the perfect God-man, has died in his place as his substitute. Jesus has taken his sin upon himself, and through faith in Christ, through looking to him in trust and repentance, Paul has this salvation. His eager expectation and hope is that even though the full experience of this salvation belongs to the future, his present experience is dominated by this expectation. He lives in an ongoing state of confidence that he is saved by Jesus, that his life belongs to Christ, that his existence is for Christ, and that the greatest thing that could possibly be accomplished through him is for Christ’s name to be known and made great.
If Christ is glorified through his life, great. If Christ is glorified through his death, that is also great. His goal is not to stay alive. His goal is to magnify Christ.
Christian courage does not come from personal strength, from confidence in the government, or from the size of a savings account. It comes from the certain knowledge that Christ has already secured what eternally matters, that in every way that counts, the future is sure in Christ and life is about him. I have salvation. I have a Savior. So I am ready to die.
Are You Ready to Die? Most people, most Americans, certainly, find ways to get through much of life without genuinely facing that question. They are doing the next thing, pursuing short-term goals, advancing in their career, having a good time, and they have pushed to the very back of their minds the reality that this life is short, that it ends, that they will not live here forever.
I can see how clearly this is true because in moments when people are actually forced to confront death, they fall apart. I have seen it in war, fear, desperation, panic, people screaming and cursing, condemning everyone they think is responsible, fixated on every rumor, constantly refreshing the news. Or running, abandoning homes, jobs, relationships, every penny they have, trying to put distance between themselves and the possibility of death. Because they are afraid. Afraid of injury, afraid of suffering, afraid of dying.
It is fine to take precautions. Wear your seatbelt. Do not be foolish with your life. But what living in a war exposed to me, first in my own heart, is that I am not in control. In a war, you cannot protect yourself. You cannot protect your family. It does not matter how strong you are. If a bomb falls on your house, you can do nothing about that.
War forces you to confront the reality that today might be the last day of your life, and there is nothing you can do about it. But here is the thing: that has always been true. There are no missiles flying today, but the reality is exactly the same. Every day of your life might be your last. You could walk out of this building and be struck by a car, struck by lightning. Every breath is a gift of God. Every day is a gift of God. The Creator is holding the very molecules of his creation together at any moment. You are not promised tomorrow. You are not promised next year or ten years from now.
The fact that you cannot control the duration of your life does not change in the middle of a war, it only becomes visible there. And that visibility is a gift. May your eyes be opened to see that death can and does come at any time. But you do not have to fear it. Because with Jesus as your Savior, with confidence in his salvation, you can, and must, live as one who is ready to die.
What distinguishes a Christian from a non-Christian is precisely that perspective. For someone who does not know Christ and does not know his salvation, the equation runs in the opposite direction: to live is me, and death is something not worth thinking about. But Paul says: for to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Death is an enemy, it is, and it will one day be defeated. But for a Christian, you can face death and say: if today is my last day, that is a gain. What I receive in exchange for this body of flesh is something better. To be with Christ, to be in his presence, with sin removed, faith become sight, the inheritance of heaven fully realized, that is far better. The worst these enemy missiles can do is push you through the door of an eternity more glorious than anything we can comprehend.
Philippians 1:23 NASB But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better;
So long as you define what is best for you as things you can experience in this world, family, property, success, you will be desperate to control and protect those things at any cost. But when, in Christ, your perspective changes; when you are grateful for God’s gifts in this life and yet transfixed by the greater gain of eternity with him; then you are unshackled from fear. Then you are free to be courageous. Then you are ready to die.
For What Do You Live?
Facing death brings forward a second question. And it is only after you have answered the first, am I ready to die?, that you are truly prepared to look at the second.
Most people in this room are not going to die today or tomorrow, thank God. Chances are, most of you have years ahead, perhaps decades. But why? For what? What is the purpose of those days?
As I lived through this war and pastored people through it, I found that facing imminent danger does not only raise questions about death. It also raises questions about life. For what do you live?
Paul wrestles with this in the text. His answer is in verse 21:
Philippians 1:21 NASB For to me, to live is Christ…
That brings enormous clarity. Life is not about career, it is about Christ. Not about comfort, success, relationships, prosperity, or pleasure. It is about Christ. But what does that look like in practice?
Paul takes this up beginning in verse 22. “To die is gain” ends verse 21. But what if he does not die? What if he keeps living? In the verses that follow, Paul wrestles with that question. The struggle is not really about choosing between life and death, it is about clarifying his purpose. For what purpose will he live or die?
Having come to grips with the possibility of death, what remains is the question: if to die is gain, what is the point of continuing to live? Why remain here if not for survival’s sake? What would be God’s purpose in leaving a Christian here rather than calling him home to be with Christ now? Paul’s answer is in verse 24:
Philippians 1:24 NASB yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.
The way Paul shows he is living for Jesus is by living for the people of Jesus. He is here for others.
When the war came to Dubai, we had to face this question ourselves: do we stay or do we leave? We are not Emirati citizens. We carry American passports. Travel was difficult during the war, but it was possible. We could have gotten out. And being ready for death, the prospect of departing and being with Christ is appealing, but then again, so is going home and getting far away from all of it.
But for a missionary, and really for any Christian, that raises another question: why are we here in the first place? Why are we in Dubai? Why are you in your neighborhood, your school, your workplace? The Christian perspective from this passage is that I am not here for me. I am not here because of what I find most comfortable or most desirable. I am here, wherever here is, for you. For the sake of others. God has called me as his ambassador to a particular people in a particular place, and the real question is: what is good for them? What would serve them? What is necessary for them? Paul works through this, and in verse 25 he arrives at clarity:
Philippians 1:25 NASB Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith,
Not because it is what he would choose for his own comfort, but because that is what the situation requires. He is theologically driven here. He knows God is sovereign over everything, over who lives, who dies, who believes, who does not. But he also knows that God accomplishes his purposes through means, through people sharing truth with other people, through the Word being opened and Christ being proclaimed. If you believe in God’s sovereign plan, you should also believe in the divine necessity of being where God has placed you, using the gifts God has given you, doing the work God has given you to do. And so Paul says: I will remain and continue with you all. For your progress and joy in the faith.
That is a beautiful description of the purpose of Christian living. Why are you here? You are here for others’ progress and joy in the faith. If you ask Paul what he is living for, that would be his answer: I live to see others move toward Christ. I labor and toil and sweat so that other people take steps forward in their practice of faith and their happiness in God.
What does this fruit look like? Three things emerge from the text.
Knowledge of God
When Paul speaks of progress in the faith, he means the body of truth Christians hold, doctrine that comes out of the Word of God. Progress in the faith means studying the Bible, learning theology, sitting under faithful preaching, and gradually increasing in your knowledge of God. He wants to see them move forward in their understanding of who God is and what he has done.
Service to God
Progress in the faith is not only about what you know, it is about what you do. As Paul’s own life is marked by fruitful labor, he wants to train others who share his perspective and will increase in their usefulness to the kingdom. He calls it fruitful labor in verse 22 for a reason. Labor is tiring; it is a sacrifice. But the goal of that labor is fruit, like planting a seed, watering it, watching the tree grow, and waiting for the day when there is something to show for all that effort. Paul is staying because he expects fruit. He wants to see people moving forward.
Happiness in God
It is not just progress in the faith, but joy in the faith. Paul is rejoicing even from prison. And the goal of his work is not merely that people profess faith in the gospel, but that they are so transformed by God’s truth, so fixed on the kingdom of God, so hoping in the person of God and boasting in the good news of Jesus Christ, that they are consumed with joy regardless of their circumstances, because they know God. He will say later
Philippians 4:4 NASB Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!
A friend of mine, about fifty years old, a faithful Christian and a successful businessman, physically fit and in good health, recently had a massive heart attack. He was rushed to the hospital, barely survived. Afterward, he wrote this: “Nearly dying made me realize that I have been too focused on worldly success. It is time for me to refocus on Jesus and my family. I wasn’t afraid to die and meet Jesus, but seeing the tears in my family’s eyes as I was rolled into the operating room made me realize that I need to live on for them.”
Any husband, father, or mother hears that and feels it immediately. God has put me here to care for them, to provide for them, train them, teach them. Paul is saying the same thing: I am not here for myself. If it were only about me, I would go. But those in my spiritual family need me to stay. I am here for their progress and joy in the faith.
Can you look around at the people God has placed around you, in your church, your neighborhood, your workplace, and notice anyone who could use some help in taking steps forward in their knowledge of God, their service to God, their joy in God? We all need that kind of ministry. We all need people in our lives who will lead us forward in obedience and joy in Christ. And that is going to be a labor. But what a fruitful labor it will be.
Conclusion
I hope you never find yourself in prison. I hope you never have a war in your neighborhood. And I hope it does not take that to bring you clarity about what really matters.
There are many things that seem enormously important this week, this month, things that feel like a very big deal right now. But for a moment today, set all of that aside and sit with these two questions. Are you ready to die? For what do you live? We have heard Paul’s answer. As you go from here, believe this word and grasp this hope: for to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank you for the hope that comes from your Word. Thank you for the gift of the gospel and the sure confidence and hope we have in Christ. I know the people in this room are struggling, there are various challenges, various sufferings in their lives right now. May we have the faith to believe that this will all turn out for our salvation, because Christ has taken the greatest suffering, the greatest pain; he has taken our sin upon himself. By faith in him, we can expect that salvation. So whatever happens in the middle, may it be for the magnification of Christ in our lives. Give us the grace for fruitful labor in the midst of it all. In Jesus’ name, amen.