Establish my footsteps in Your Word ~ Psalm 119:133

The most succinct description of what it means to be a Christian has been written in God’s Word in Philippians 1:21.

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

To live is Christ: What does this even mean? To live AS Christ would be loving as Christ loved, forgiving as Christ forgave, sacrificing as Christ sacrificed (laying His life down for those He loved).  This is to live AS Christ. But Paul writes ‘to live IS Christ’.

The answer is found right in the text: ‘if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me’ (v.22). Paul says that ‘living’ will mean laboring for the cause of Christ. Everything about his life will be for the sake of Christ. Gordon D. Fee says in his commentary, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, that Christ is the name that: ‘sums up for Paul the whole range of his new relationship to God: personal devotion, commitment, service, the gospel, ministry, communion, inspiration, everything’.