-Survival. It is a French word, meaning ‘to live on.’ This was the daily battle for most of the world in Paul’s day, and continues to be so for much of the world today. A race of survival, desperately trying to outrun death. For us in the west, death is more of a phantom off in the distance, an afterthought - he's not catching up to us for a long time. But hunger, disease, natural disaster - their constant presence still keeps the reality of death on center stage in much of the two-thirds world, just as it did in Paul’s day. Death is mentioned more than 400 times in the NT alone. In fact the words for death occur more frequently there than the words for life. Back then life meant existing much more on the margins, a daily endeavor just to put food on the table and to survive. Today most of us in the west are deceptively insulated from things like these that make death a constant companion, lurking around every corner. In our present-day western civilization survival into old age is virtually guaranteed, death has been pushed into the further recesses of our minds, and we spend much more time thinking about vacation and recreation than we do death and resurrection. We hide the horrors of dying behind botox and enbalming fluid, and we do our utmost to squeeze every last drop of life out of the here and now.
-And yet it lurks, even in the modern west. There is no escape. It creeps up and encroaches in the form of old age. It leaps on the unsuspecting in the guise of terrible tragedy. Much as we try and deny it and hide it and forestall the inevitable, death awaits us. It is our common destiny, our common enemy. We are all mortal, dying. It is one inviolable rule of life in a fallen and broken world - sooner or later, everyone dies. Death, the unpurposed unintended end of God’s glorious creation, entered in at the fall and began its reign - final and inescapable (Romans 5.12). Until Jesus. Christ defeated death. He reversed the curse. He rose from the dead, removed the power of death and now stands ready to abolish it forever (cf 1Corinthians 15.20-26). He is giving life to the dead and the dying - this is the Good News, that all who die in Christ will live again, will live forever in the presence of their Creator, the Eternal God, the One Who made them for this, life as it was always intended.
-This is the hope of the resurrection, and this is what Paul is talking about. As he longs to know Christ and gain Christ, part of that means entering into eternal life with Christ, life beyond compare or comprehension, life as it was always intended. Life out of death. Eternity out of finite finality. And it was more on the mind of Paul perhaps because death was indeed his constant companion (cf Romans 7.24, Romans 8.36, 1Corinthians 4.9, 1Corinthians 15.31, 2Corinthians 1.9, 2Corinthians 6.9, 2Corinthians 11.23). But he also was dying and desperate to be with Jesus. How 'bout you and me? Not that we should have a death wish, but how often do we even think about the resurrection, about the prospect of life after death and finally getting to be with Jesus forever? We wouldn't expect this from someone who doesn't believe in Jesus, who hasn't come to know Him, but what of those of us who claim to follow Him, to believe in Him, to know Him? Is He better to us, better than anything or anyone, better than life? I would suggest that to the extent that we do not think about the resurrection and living forever with Jesus, we have not yet come to really know Him.
-Kirk and Picard told us that space is the final frontier - the extreme limit of that which is known or has been explored - as they boldly went where no one had ever gone before. Some suggest that death is the final frontier. But no, when you stop and think about it - Jesus is the real Final Frontier. Has any one ever really come to know and understand and appreciate all the infinite wonder and breathtaking goodness and lofty majesty of this One Who made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, Who loved us and died for us and then rose again, Who reigns in heaven surrounded by mighty angels who cannot stop talking and singing about how amazingly awesome He is? For one to do so would take a lifetime and then an eternity - one would have to live forever to even begin to tell about it... Which is precisely the point.
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