“To me, to live is Christ”—this is Christian life and experience in its fullness. It has often been remarked, and is well worth remembering, that Christians have many experiences which are not properly Christian experience. The man described in Romans 7 is undergoing an experience which will be for his future blessing, but it is not properly Christian experience, though it is clearly enough the experience of a Christian. Christ Himself, dominating and controlling the believer so much that his one object is to live to His glory—this is what Paul has before him in the verse above. This should be the experience of Christians at all times. But, alas, how few of us enter into it in its entirety. It implies a surrendered will, and the body yielded to the Lord who has redeemed it, that it may be used only to His praise. This is life in its truest sense, and, probably, no one ever entered into it so fully as the apostle Paul.

We may, perhaps, better understand the experience, “For to me, to live is Christ,” if we consider for a moment what life means to others. The Christless business man, whose one aim and object is to obtain wealth, might well say, “For to me, to live is money.” The careless seeker after the world’s pleasures, if he told the truth, would say, “For to me, to live is worldly pleasure.” The carnal person given up to self-gratification, would say, “For to me, to live is self.” The statesman, exulting in the plaudits of the people, and craving world-notoriety, might truthfully declare, “For to me, to live is fame and power.” But Paul could say, and every Christian should be able to say, “For to me, to live is Christ.”

And it is only such who can heartily add, “and to die is gain.” Death is no enemy to the one to whom Christ is all. To live gives opportunity to manifest Christ down here; to die is to be with Christ—nothing could be more precious than that!