Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Philippians 1:21

Ἐμοὶ γὰρ. Ἐμοὶ is emphatic, with the force not of self-assertion but of intense personal experience. This passage is linked with the former by explaining the secret of his holy equanimity in this suspense between life and death. Life and death are to him a dilemma of blessings, in Christ.

τὸ ζῆν Χριστὸς. Vivere Christus, Vulgate. Luther renders, Christus ist mein Leben, and Tindale, after him, “Christ is to me lyfe.” But this would demand rather, in the Greek, ἐμοὶ γὰρ ζωὴ Χριστός: and it destroys the balance of the two clauses; we could not go on to render “Gain is death.” He is thinking here not of the secret of “life” but of the interests of “living.” “Living,” τὸ ζῆν, is for him so full of Christ, so occupied with and for Him, that CHRIST sums it up. Such is meant to be the experience of every Christian; see Colossians 3:17, and cp. Ephesians 3:14-21.

τὸ�. “Dying.” The aorist (note the change after the present, τὸ ζῆν, which gives the thought of life as a process) denotes the act of dying, not the process, nor again the state, of death. The dying hour is to St Paul the mere gateway into the “large room” of the presence of Christ.

κέρδος. Not merely “no harm,” but positive “gain.” “Death is his” (1 Corinthians 3:22).—This wonderful saying, uttered without an effort, appropriating as a means of bliss man’s awful and seemingly always triumphant enemy, is explained just below.—It is observable that his thought here is, apparently, more distinctly fixed on death as his own experience in prospect than it seems to have been in the earlier Epistles (e.g. 2 Corinthians 5:4, οὐ θέλομεν ἐκδύσασθαι, but see Philippians 1:8 there). Meantime the hope of the Saviour’s Return is bright as ever; see below, Philippians 3:20.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Philippians 1:21

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