Luke #23: A Line In the Sand (9:18-27)
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Luke 9:18-27
N:
Welcome
Welcome
Bye, kids!
Good morning again, and thanks for being here today, whether you’re in the room of online, to worship the Lord Jesus together, and to spend time in fellowship and in the study of His Word with the family of Eastern Hills.
If you’re a guest in the room today, I would like to encourage you to fill out the communication card that you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. We would just like to be able to know that you were here this morning, be able to pray for you, and to send you a note thanking you for your visit. When you’ve filled that out, you can get it back to us by dropping it in the offering boxes that are by the doors as you leave later on, or better yet, if you could bring the card down to me here at the front once service has ended, I’d like to meet you personally and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit today. If you’re online and visiting with us today, you can fill out a short communication card on our website: ehbc.org, under the “I’m New” tab.
I wanted to say thanks to the ladies who serve on the Women’s Ministry leadership team. Our Women’s Ministry is really working to connect and disciple the ladies of Eastern Hills, as well as those who aren’t a part of Eastern Hills yet. And this morning, they organized and made the guys breakfast! Thanks, Women’s Ministry leadership team, for all you are doing for the church family.
Opening
Opening
It’s great to be back in the pulpit this week after missing last week following my surgery. I can hardly begin to express how grateful I am for the encouragement, the prayers, and the cards that I’ve received over the past week and a half. I can say that don’t feel really much different than before the surgery, other than I am pretty certain that I haven’t had any aFib since then, so praise the Lord for that. Again, church family, thanks for your care for me and for my family during the last couple of weeks.
I also really appreciate Rich and his service in ministering to the church body while I was out. Rich preached last week, and did a great job expounding on the first part of Luke 9. He also ran staff meeting on Tuesday as well as prayer meeting on Wednesday for me. Thanks, Rich.
Like Mother’s Day, this day can actually be rather painful for many. Some of you men have been unable to have children, though you would like to have children. Some of you have children who are no longer with us. Some of you have children that are living in rebellion and sin. The pain of these situations is a real burden that you carry. My heart goes out to each of you I have just mentioned.
Many of you have the missing of a father who has passed away, or the pain of an absent father in your life. We pray for your peace as well.
And for some of you men, you aren’t at a place where you want children, and so you feel like this message will be useless for you. Some of you ladies might be expecting to feel the same way.
But today’s message isn’t just for dads. It’s for all of us. So while I might use dads as an illustration or two today, that doesn’t mean that this is the only way this message will apply.
This morning, we come to what is likely my favorite passage in Luke. The verses that we’re looking at this morning are kind of the highpoint (with next week) of the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus is, and the midpoint of Jesus’s earthly ministry overall. From this point forward, we are moving inexorably toward the cross, and today’s passage includes the first clear declaration of the fact that the cross is coming in Luke’s record.
So as we are able to do so, let’s stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word as we turn in our Bibles or Bible apps to Luke 9, and I will read verses 18-27 of that chapter:
18 While he was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19 They answered, “John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, that one of the ancient prophets has come back.” 20 “But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.” 21 But he strictly warned and instructed them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “It is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day.” 23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it. 25 For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and the holy angels. 27 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
PRAYER (unrest in LA, pray for Israel)
I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it much, but have you noticed that we read different things in different ways because there are different purposes in reading them? For example, I skim news stories. I read the headline and usually the first paragraph to see if I want to read the whole thing. If it seems like something I want to/need to know, I’ll read on, but rapidly. The purpose here is quickly getting basic information.
Another example: I just finished “reading” a series of novels. I’ve always enjoyed the fantasy genre—knights and dragons and the like—I suppose because the earliest real book I remember reading all the way through was The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. But when it comes to novels, I did air quotes because I didn’t exactly read the novels I just finished. I mostly listened to them as audiobooks, usually while I was driving, running, or doing yard work. I could get the story while doing something else physically. They were novels: they didn’t demand my undivided attention, no highlighting was necessary, and there would be no test. I’ve listened to political commentary, biographies, and even some lighter devotional books this way. The purpose in this kind of reading is to get the big picture.
There are other books that I have to sit down and concentrate on. I’m reading a couple of those now: one on pastoring and another on mentoring. These books get focused attention and a highlighter and pen nearby. I want to interact with these books, understand the concepts being presented, and see whether I agree, and decide if taking the authors’ advice would be beneficial. The purpose in this kind of reading is comprehension and understanding.
Finally, when I read Scripture, I try to give it my utmost concentration. I spend time in prayer first, and then when I read, I always have my journal open, and have a pen and highlighter on hand. When a passage grabs my attention, I usually write it out verbatim and often jot down a couple of thoughts so I can be reminded of why it got my attention later. The purpose in this kind of reading is application, heart change, and retention.
I am, in a way, approaching Luke in the same way as my own personal devotional reading. However, this moment—the preaching moment—is a little different. It was through prayer and other study that I landed on preaching through the Gospel of Luke this year. But I suppose a great question to ask is: Why? Why are we going through the Gospel of Luke? We’re going through this Gospel for two primary reasons: 1) to KNOW Jesus more; and 2) to FOLLOW Jesus more closely. This morning’s passage provides wisdom for both questions. How else are we going to be or become “people helping people live out the unexpected love of Jesus every day” if we don’t know Him and follow Him?
Today, we will address the question that we must all answer, hear the truth that all who are saved must all believe, and learn of the path that those who profess Christ are called to follow, as we read of Jesus speaking with His disciples following the feeding of the 5,000, which Rich preached on last week.
In that passage, we saw the power of God on display through Jesus. As a result, Jesus chose to ask His disciples a question—and it is a question that we all—and I mean everyone—must answer.
1: The question we must answer
1: The question we must answer
Do you remember the show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (play a little clip of the music) It was hosted by Regis Philbin, and originally ran in the US from 1999 to 2002. Remember that it was 15 questions that contestants had to answer that got increasingly more difficult, culminating in a final question worth $1M. They had three lifelines to use to get help during the game, and there were two “safety net” levels after 5 and 10 questions ($1,000 and $32,000, respectively). Millions of people watched with anticipation as contestants tried to get to and answer the million dollar question. It captured our collective attention, and many of us dreamed of being contestants and winning it all.
Don’t get me wrong: answering a question for a million dollars would be a big deal. But that’s not the question that we all must answer. The question that we must answer is nothing like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? There are no lifelines, and there is no safety net. And the value of the question is infinitely beyond the worth of money. It’s a question that we’ve seen presented several times in the Gospel: “Who is Jesus?” We’ve seen it in some form or another six times in Luke’s writing to this point.
Well, it’s time to get an answer.
Jesus opens the discussion about this question with His disciples in verse 18:
18 While he was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” 19 They answered, “John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others, that one of the ancient prophets has come back.”
Remember that we’re coming to this right after the feeding of the 5,000. The crowds are fresh on the minds of Jesus and the disciples. After prayer (and we’ve already seen in Luke that every major moment in Jesus’s ministry is prefaced by prayer), Jesus asks the disciples who the crowd think that He is. And the opinion of the crowd, as far as the disciples know, is that Jesus is some continuation of something that has come before: He’s a resurrected John the Baptist, or Elijah or some other prophet. They aren’t exactly wrong. Jesus is the continuation of God’s redemptive plan. But more correctly, Jesus is greater than any of these options, because He is the culmination of that plan.
Grant R. Osborne comments on this passage:
“He is not the Baptist returned from the dead, but He is the One the Baptist has come to introduce. He is not Elijah, but He like the Baptist has come in the spirit and power of Elijah. The Baptist reenacted the preaching of Elijah, Jesus the miracles of Elijah. He is “one of the prophets” but far more; He is the Messiah prophesied by the prophets.”
— Grant R. Osborne, Luke: Verse By Verse
We might think that this is a good question to ask, because we don’t want to run afoul of what the prevailing popular opinion is about Jesus. But it ultimately doesn’t matter what the crowds think about Jesus. Their opinions hold no weight, because salvation isn’t a group process. No one else’s opinion about Jesus has any impact in your salvation. Do you hear that, students? Your parents’ faith won’t save you. Your grandparents’ faith won’t save you. Gentlemen: Your wife’s faith won’t save you. Your kids’ faith won’t save you.
The point of this passage, the question that we all have to answer, is found in verse 20:
20 “But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
“But you… who do YOU say that I am?” This is the single most important question that we can answer, because how we answer this question literally determines our forever.
Thabiti Anyabwile says it this way: “Heaven has a one-question pop quiz for all humanity: ‘Who do you say that Jesus is?’”
It comes down to two options: Jesus is Lord and Savior, God the Son in the flesh, the Christ, the Messiah; or He is not. There is no other acceptable third option, because of the things that Jesus said about Himself. He either is exactly who He says He is, or He is a fraud or a fiend: a fake, a phony, a liar, or a maniac.
If you don’t think that Jesus is the Messiah, don’t try to soften it by saying that He was a good moral teacher or an example to follow, because good moral teachers and models aren’t fake. If you don’t think He’s the Messiah, don’t try to rebrand Him as some political revolutionary or social justice warrior. Those things are not why He came. He came to upset a much greater adversary than the government, and meet much greater needs than social ones.
When you take Jesus in these ways, you make Him less than who He really is, not more. You take away from His character, you don’t improve it. Let Jesus define who He is. He is Messiah, and Peter says so. Peter draws a line in the sand: a line that marks what he (and as spokesman, the other apostles) believes. And this declaration—That Jesus is the Messiah—is supposed to serve as a line in the sand for each of us as well.
The term “Messiah” literally means “the anointed one,” and reflects Jewish thought regarding the promised Savior who would come into the world, promised in verses like Psalm 2:2 and Daniel 9:26. Jesus is this promised deliverer from God, as Peter declared, and as such He is both Savior (rescuer) and Lord (sovereign).
The parallel of this passage in Matthew affirms the correctness of Peter’s answer a little more directly and strongly than Luke’s does:
15 “But you,” he asked them, “who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus responded, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.
The “rock” that Jesus refers to here is not Peter himself, but Peter’s correct confession of Jesus as the Messiah. The reality—the truth of Jesus’s identity as the Messiah—was revealed to Peter by the Father through the Spirit. It’s not something that He came up with on his own. It’s the work of the Spirit of God to lead us into the truth, according to Scripture.
13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come.
But He can do that in a zillion different ways. Maybe one such way is the fact that you are here this morning, listening to this message in which you’re hearing about the fact that we all have to answer this one question: Who do you say that Jesus is? Is the Spirit at work right now in your heart and mind, calling you to trust Jesus as Messiah?
But what does it mean that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Savior? Exactly how does Jesus save us? This is the truth that we must believe.
2: The truth we must believe
2: The truth we must believe
To this point in Luke’s recording of the Gospel, Jesus has spoken of His identity, He’s spoken of His mission, He’s spoken of and displayed His power. But He hasn’t yet completely clearly articulated how His mission was going to be accomplished. Verse 22 makes it absolutely clear:
21 But he strictly warned and instructed them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “It is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day.”
Let’s address verse 21 first. After hearing Peter’s confession of Him as God’s Messiah, Jesus warned His disciples not to tell anyone about that fact, even though Peter was correct. Why would He do this if it was the truth?
I would propose that there were likely a few reasons: First, the Jewish people had some very clear, very strong ideas about what Messiah would do. Their belief was that the Messiah would be, like David, a military and political leader, who would come in and overthrow whatever government oppressing the Hebrew people. Calling Jesus “Messiah” or “Christ” at this point publicly would have instantly created a Rome vs. Jesus conflict in the eyes of the Jews (at least those who believed). And this would not have served Jesus’s purposes, because the oppressive enemy He was looking to overthrow wasn’t the Roman government.
The second reason is that it just wasn’t time for it. The conflict that the announcement of Jesus as Messiah could bring with Rome would have greatly accelerated Jesus’s trip to the cross, but He wasn’t done with His ministry yet. That time would come, but when it was right, not before.
And finally, even though Peter’s confession on behalf of all of the disciples was correct, that doesn’t mean that they completely understood what it meant yet. Just because we know something doesn’t mean we know everything. Jesus still had teaching to give to the disciples if they were going to continue His mission to save the lost after He was crucified.
So Jesus for the first time very clearly tells His disciples about what His future held: suffering, rejection, and death, followed by resurrection. But there’s one word here that I want to key on for a second: The word “necessary.”
Jesus said that it was “necessary” for Him to go through all of that. The death of Christ was a divine imperative: it literally HAD to happen in order to fulfill the plan of God to redeem the world. Jesus here gives the centerpiece of the Gospel message to His disciples: that He would conquer through suffering, overcoming even death itself.
The Scripture is clear about the work that Jesus’s death has accomplished. Through the shedding of His blood, He has paid our debt so that our sins may be forgiven:
22 According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
He has taken the curse that we deserve for our sinfulness on Himself, becoming accursed on our behalf:
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
He has reconciled us to God the Father through the shedding of His blood, because He is God in all His fullness:
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
And He had freed us from sin by His wounds, so that we are at liberty to live righteously in His sight:
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Peter didn’t exactly appreciate this statement, according to Mark’s record of this conversation. He actually had the audacity to rebuke Jesus because He couldn’t stop thinking about Jesus from a Jewish point-of-view:
32 He spoke openly about this. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning around and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.”
If we claim to belong to Jesus through our confession, answering the question we all must answer by saying, “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” then the truth that we must believe is that Jesus really lived, really died, and really rose again so we could be saved. Without those three things, we don’t have a Savior at all. This is the essence of the Gospel, which Paul would later explain in 1 Corinthians 15:
3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
And it is in this belief that we are saved:
9 If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
But remember, Messiah wasn’t merely a title that meant “Savior.” It also, through its use in Psalm 2 especially, incorporates the idea of Messiah being in charge, sovereign over all things, the Lord of everything. But this then continues to imply something further if we confess like Peter that Jesus is God’s Messiah. If we say that we believe that’s who He is, then it creates an obligation to follow Him:
3: The path we must follow
3: The path we must follow
Even now, the idea of a surrendering our rights to ourselves now in order to be saved forever might chafe some of us a little bit. But remember, when we draw this line in the sand, saying that Jesus is the Messiah, then we are saying that He is both Savior—the One who rescues us—and Lord—the One to whom we owe our entire lives. If we owe Him our lives, then we are to listen to His leadership. And what does He call us to? He calls us to follow Him:
23 Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Now, I want to be clear: Jesus doesn’t say that if you are going to be saved, then you earn it by following. No. He says that if you’re really saved, then you’ll choose to follow. The concept of a Christian who never strives to follow Jesus is foreign to Scripture. And this is exactly what Jesus meant by His use of the cross.
As we see in Jesus’s own crucifixion, it was Roman practice that the condemned person would carry their own crossbeam to the place they would be crucified. The person was essentially a “dead man walking,” carrying the very tool of his impending demise. Though Jesus hadn’t gone to His own cross yet, the imagery would not have been lost on the disciples: the cross was to them always and only an instrument of death, and it was one that Jesus would soon experience.
Following Jesus isn’t some individualistic walk where we make up our own path—it’s following HIS path and imitating HIM. This is the essence of denying ourselves. It’s declaring that it’s not actually about us at all. It’s all about Him. And since it’s about Him, I’m essentially going to lay down my life so that I can be more like Jesus.
The great Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his work The Cost of Discipleship:
“When Christ bids a man to follow Him, He bids that man to come and die.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
And this death that we are to experience is a daily, ongoing death. Every single day we are called to declare that it’s not about me: it’s all about Jesus—not so that we might BE saved, and not so that we might STAY saved, but because of the reality that we ARE saved. Jesus gave His all for us by dying on the cross, and so He is worth our all as we follow His model of self-sacrifice.
This isn’t to say that taking up our cross and following Jesus is just cultivating a weak, nonassertive, doormat personality. There has never been a person, never been a man, as tough as Jesus. And it’s not to say that following Jesus is merely denying ourselves certain pleasures over a long period of time. That’s only a piece of the puzzle of following Jesus—look at all He DID, not just what He didn’t do. This means that as Christians, we will not set our desires and our will against the right that Christ has in our lives. We will walk in submission to Him.
Dads, I know that it’s Father’s Day. And in lots of ways, we’ve already been treated far better than we deserve. But what if since it’s “our” day, we choose to fill the rest of it by looking like Jesus: dying to ourselves as we serve those around us—our very closest neighbors (our families)—because we love them, and we love God? I know, it’s a tall order. But it’s a tall order because its paradoxical. A day set aside for us to do whatever we want (sort of), and we choose to pour ourselves out for the benefit of others?
Jesus illustrated the meaning of this call to follow Him with three fairly paradoxical statements of His own in each of the next three verses:
A: Dying and living
A: Dying and living
The first paradox is the contrast between saving one’s own life and losing it, or dying and living. This illustration is found in verse 24:
24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it.
Jesus actually makes an interesting play on words here, and by this He is saying that if we are so busy trying to “save” our rights to our own lives through failing to deny ourselves, then we will ultimately lose our lives—we will be judged by God because we deemed ourselves and our wants, desires, and purposes as more important than Jesus. However, if we DO deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him—lose our lives because of Him—we will actually save our lives by receiving eternal life.
Jesus gave another illustration explaining this in the Gospel of John:
24 Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. 25 The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
The seed that clings to its life as a seed will not bear fruit. It’s only in ceasing to be a seed that it can produce the fruit it is called to produce.
Paul’s viewpoint of this in His own life is summed up beautifully in Galatians 2:
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
If we have died with Christ, then we only live because Christ lives in us. Thus, our lives are HIS life to do with as He pleases. Our hands are to be completely open for His use, because nothing we have—not our time, not our talents, not our skills, not our resources...the very breath in our lungs—is our own. It’s all His.
B: Gaining and losing
B: Gaining and losing
The second paradox that Jesus uses to illustrate denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily, and following Him is found in verse 25 and is in the form of a question:
25 For what does it benefit someone if he gains the whole world, and yet loses or forfeits himself?
The world would tell us that we need to gain, gain, gain. Gain money. Gain a platform or power. Gain popularity. Gain followers. But Jesus asks what good that does us if we have to sell our souls to the devil to get them. If someone were to became the most powerful person on the planet, and yet didn’t have Jesus, when their life ends, they lose literally everything, including themselves.
No, the world’s priorities are part of what we have to die to when we take up our crosses and follow Jesus:
14 But as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world.
This verse actually gives us a great segue to the last illustration that Jesus gives in this passage. To boast in something is to glory in it. The opposite of that would be to be ashamed of it. Paul says that he will never boast about anything except the cross of Jesus.
C: Shame and glory
C: Shame and glory
To be fair, Jesus’s last illustration isn’t really paradoxical—it’s really just comparative. It’s found in verse 26:
26 For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and that of the Father and the holy angels.
Jesus said that if someone is ashamed of Him—which essentially means that they don’t believe in Him, because why would you be ashamed that you know the Son of God—if someone is ashamed of Him, then He will be ashamed of them when He comes to rule in the fullness of all of His glory.
Paul said that the gospel message—That God loves sinful humanity so much that He gave His Son Jesus to die in our place so we could be forgiven, and raised Him from the grave so that we can have eternal life—is nothing to be ashamed of, because it is the very power of God for that salvation, and it’s available to everyone!
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.
And the last part of the Gospel is something Jesus spoke of in verse 26: He’s coming back, and when He does, He will do so in all of His glory as the King of kings. Jesus spoke of this return and what it would look like for believers in Mark 13:
26 Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 He will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
He’s coming back again to fully establish the kingdom of God: the righteous rule and reign of God on earth. If we are believers, we are to revel in the fact that we know Jesus, and we are called to declare that we know Him because not only are we not ashamed of Him, but we want to introduce others to Him. We should want to take every opportunity that God gives us to proactively share the gospel in a clear and compelling way.
Closing
Closing
Verse 27 sets us up with what we are going to look at next week, when we consider the Transfiguration, which offers us a glimpse of the coming kingdom of God:
27 Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”
We’ll start with this verse next Sunday.
This is our line in the sand. Believers should want to know Jesus more, and follow Jesus more closely. This is why this question, this truth, this path are so important, and why this passage is essentially the highpoint of the theological arc of Luke. We have to answer the question: “Who is Jesus?”, and then we have to act on that answer. If Jesus is who He says He is—the anointed one, the Messiah—then the only right response is surrender. Any other response is rebellion.
Have you believed the Gospel and surrendered to Jesus in faith? You are not in this place, in this room, this morning, by accident. Trust Jesus and be saved. Let us know.
Baptism
Church membership
Prayer
Giving EHBCGIVE to 888-364-GIVE
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Mission Statement (make more blanks)
Bible reading (Mark 14, Pro 8)
No Pastor’s Study (Father’s Day). Because of a lot of conflicts in our evening schedule this summer, we won’t have Pastor’s Study until August.
Prayer Meeting starting on Ezra’s prayer in Ezra 9 this week.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
20 My eager expectation and hope is that I will not be ashamed about anything, but that now as always, with all courage, Christ will be highly honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
