God permits awful things, but (to paraphrase Dorothy Sayers) something so grand and glorious is going to happen in the world’s finale that it will more than suffice for every pain we experienced on this planet. God will exponentially make up for every tear (Psalm 56:8), and will abundantly reward us for every hurt (Romans 8:18).

I remember it like it were yesterday. I was fresh out of the hospital, barely out of my teens, and sitting at our family table with my friend Steve Estes with our Bibles and sodas. We had become acquainted when he heard I had tough questions about God and my broken neck. He also knew I wasn’t asking with a clenched fist, but a searching heart.
So, Steve made a bargain with me. I’d provide sodas and my mother’s BLT sandwiches, and he would provide—as best he could—answers from the Bible. Though I cannot reproduce our exact words, the conversations left such an indelible impression on me that even now, over fifty years later, I can capture their essence.
“I always thought that God was good,” I said to him. “But here I am a quadriplegic, sitting in a wheelchair, feeling more like his enemy than his child! Didn’t he want to stop my accident? Could he have? Was he even there? Maybe the devil was there instead.”
Decades later, Steve would tell me, “Joni, when I sat across from you that night, I was sobered. I mean, I had never met a person my age in a wheelchair. I knew what the Bible said about your questions, and a dozen passages came to mind from studying in church. But sitting across from you, I realized I had never test-driven those truths on such a difficult course. Nothing worse than a D in algebra had ever happened to me. But I looked at you and kept thinking, If the Bible can’t work in this paralyzed girl’s life, then it never was for real. So, Joni, I cleared my throat and I jumped off the cliff.”
God Permits What He Hates
That night, Steve leaned across the family table, and said, “God put you in that chair, Joni. I don’t know why, but if you will trust him instead of fighting him, you will find out why—if not in this life, then in the next. He let you break your neck, and perhaps I’m here to help you discover at least a few reasons why.”
Steve paused and then summed it up with ten words that would change my life:
The sentence hit me like a brick. Its simplicity made it sound trite, but it nevertheless enticed me like an enigmatic riddle. It seemed to hold some deep and mysterious truth that piqued my fascination. “Tell me more,” I said. “I want to hear more about that.” I was hooked.
God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
Over that summer with Steve, I would explore some of the most puzzling passages in Scripture. I wanted to know how God could permit hateful things without being in cahoots with the devil. How could he be the ultimate cause behind suffering without getting his hands dirty? And to what end? What could God possibly prize that was worth breaking my neck?
He Does Not Afflict Willingly
So, let me parrot some of Steve’s counsel to me that summer. He started off with Lamentations 3:32–33:
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. (NIV)
In the span of a verse, the Bible asserts that God “brings grief,” yet “he does not willingly bring…grief.” With that, Steve was able to reassure me from the top that although God allowed my accident to happen, he didn’t get a kick out of it—it gave him no pleasure in permitting such awful suffering. It meant a lot to hear that.
But what about my question of who was in charge of my accident? When it comes to who is responsible for tragedy—either God or the devil—Lamentations 3 makes it clear that God brings it; he’s behind it. God is the stowaway on Satan’s bus, erecting invisible fences around the devil’s fury and bringing ultimate good out of Satan’s wickedness.
Buck Stops with God
“God’s in charge, Joni, but that doesn’t mean he actually pushed you off the raft,” Steve said. “Numbers 35:11 pictures someone dying in an ‘accident,’ calling it ‘unintentional.’ Yet elsewhere, of the same incident, the Bible says, ‘God lets it happen’ (Exodus 21:13). It’s an accident, but it’s God’s accident. God’s decrees allow for suffering to happen, but he doesn’t necessarily ‘do’ it.”
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Having a Philippians 1:21 heart doesn’t mean you despise the God-given joys and giggles of life on earth—it means you realize that another life’s coming, another world, one that’s better than this one, even at its best. And not better by a little, but better by far. 

A few weeks ago, my seven-year-old informed me that he wanted to be eight—but not any older than that. “Buddy, why don’t you want to be any older than that?” I asked. “Well, because when you get old, you die.” Fair enough. Eight seemed safe and exciting enough, I guess (he has some eight-year-olds in his class), but nine—now nine was a different story. Who knows what might happen then? Better stick with eight.
It’s a sobering thing, isn’t it, to watch your children begin to wrestle with a reality like death (and then to force you, as a dad or mom, to try and explain something like death). I think our verses this morning are a great help to dads and moms (and teenagers and twenty-somethings and sixty-somethings) in answering the biggest questions we ever ask. What’s going to happen when we die? What does it mean to really live?
A couple of years ago, on June 28, 2021, my (then) 64-year-old dad had a heart attack. I’ll never forget the moments I spent beside his hospital bed that week, as he waited for quadruple-bypass surgery. I felt my own mortality, watching the strongest man I’d ever known now fighting for his life. I know some of you have experienced this. When you’re growing up, Dad is the embodiment of strength, almost immortal. I mean what can’t Dad do? A toy breaks? Oh, Dad will fix it. Want to know what makes an airplane fly? Dad will know that. My three-year-old’s been worried that skunks are going to get into her room at night (longer story there), but I’ve said to her, “Honey, I promise, Daddy won’t let any skunks in your room.” And she believes me! Because I’m Daddy.
And then dads grow older, and their arteries fail—or they get really sick, or their minds begin to go. Slowly, they’re a little less superhero, and a little more human. And in the process, we realize just how human we are.
By God’s grace, my dad’s doing really well, but I thought of him leading up to this message because our conversations over these last couple of years (one in particular) remind me of these verses. He told me that he’s more aware than ever that every day he has is a day he’s been given for Christ, that however many days he has left—whether hundreds or thousands or just one—he wants them to honor Jesus. My dad came close enough to death to be able to remind his son how to live.
And that’s what we have in Philippians 1:19–26: we have a man, a spiritual father, who has come close enough to death that he’s able to tell us (whether we’re 8 or 38 or 68) how to live and die well.
The Happy, Driving Passion
As we’ve learned over the last several weeks, Paul wrote this letter from prison in Rome. The situation’s serious enough that his friends in Philippi are worried if they’ll ever see him again. And on top of the dangers and hardships of his imprisonment, he had enemies (even in the church) trying to make things even worse for him.
I don’t want it to be lost on us over these next few months in Philippians that the most joy-filled letter in the New Testament was written in horrible circumstances. That tells us something, doesn’t it, about how much joy we can expect to experience even on our hardest days. Look how joyful he is even now, even in prison! And they tell us about how much we can still help others enjoy Jesus—even on our hardest days.
As Pastor Jonathan showed us last week, Paul responds to all of this—imprisonment, mistreatment, betrayal—in an otherworldly way, because he had a different passion than the world. And what was that passion? The glory of God magnified through the advance of the gospel. That passion is why he can rejoice while his enemies preach Christ (verses 15–18). That’s why he can rejoice even while he sits in prison (verses 12–14). That’s why he prays like he does (verses 9–11). That passion is why his love for these people runs deeper and richer than many of our relationships (verses 3–8). And now, in our verses this morning, he’s going to tell us about that passion. He leans in, after all of that, as if to say, Do you want the secret? “To live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
What Kind of Deliverance?
Our passage begins in verses 18–19:
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.
Now, right away, what kind of deliverance do you think he’s talking about? What’s he going to be delivered from? Is he talking about deliverance from prison (which is what we probably assume)—or is he talking about some other kind of deliverance?
Let’s keep reading: “I know that…this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (verses 19–20). Why do I expect that all of this will turn out for my deliverance? He doesn’t go on to talk about judges changing their minds, or about him developing some goodwill with the jailers, or about a large group of Christians putting together a petition.
“No,” he says, “I’m confident this will turn out for my deliverance because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will be honored in me.” That phrase—“whether by life or by death”—is the biggest reason I don’t think he’s talking mainly about being delivered from prison. He can’t die in prison and be delivered from prison. “I might die here in prison,” he’s saying, “but I’ll still be delivered. Even if I’m never released from these chains, I’ll still be set free.” How could that be? How could he be delivered without being delivered?
I think that question is massively relevant for us, because some of you are praying for deliverance right now. Not from prison (because you’re here)—but what you’re suffering might feel worse than prison some days. Intense, prolonged conflict with someone you love. Hostility where you work. Cancer. A child who’s walked away from the faith—and maybe from you. By the end of this sermon, I’m praying that you’ll be able to say, to anyone who cares about you, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this pain, this conflict, this cancer will turn out for my deliverance”—not mainly because the pain might finally let up in this life, or because the relationship will necessarily get better, or because the cancer will go into remission, but because I believe my life, and my suffering, and even my death will say something true and beautiful and loud about how much Jesus means to me. About how much he’s done for me. About how much I’m dying to go and spend the rest of my life with him.
What kind of deliverance is Paul expecting? Not mainly deliverance from prison (although, as we’ll see, he clearly expects that too). No, deliverance from spiritual ruin, from the intense temptations that come with suffering, from walking away from Christ. “I’m confident I will be delivered,” he says, “because I’m confident that, whether I live or die, Christ will look great—and that’s all I really want.”
“I count everything as loss,” he’ll say in chapter 3, “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (3:8–9). That’s what deliverance looks like, the most important kind of deliverance, the kind we all need, especially when suffering comes.
These next verses, then, are a mural of the delivered life—the life freed from self and sin and death, and filled with Jesus. Again, they teach us how to live and die well: “I know that…Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.” Verse 21: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We know that verse, and we think we get it—but do we really get it? Could you explain it to a seven-year-old? These next verses help us see both sides of this precious, life-altering (and death-altering) verse.
To Die Is Gain
Let’s start with death, though, with the second half of the verse: “I know that…Christ will be honored in my body…by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” How is Christ honored in a dying person’s body? Our death honors Christ, he says, when we begin to see our death not as loss—not as the end, not as defeat, not ultimately as a tragedy—but as gain.
So how could Paul look at death, even a death alone in horrible circumstances, and see victory, see reward? The next verses take us deeper. Beginning now in verse 22: “If I am to live in the flesh”—to live is Christ—“that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”
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Scripture is clear that faith unites us to Christ, and through faith in him we receive all that he has to give us–namely the forgiveness of sin accomplished by his death, and the gift of righteousness based upon his life of faultless obedience. Through faith in Jesus, our sin is imputed to him so that he pays for these sins on the cross and through that same faith his righteousness (his merits and holy works) becomes ours (via imputation). This is what we mean when we speak of being justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. This is the gospel! God freely gives us in Christ’s merits what he demands of us under the law.

Reformed Christians affirm without hesitation that the doctrine of justification is the article of faith by which the church stands or falls. Although the oft-cited comment is attributed to Martin Luther, it was actually a Reformed theologian, J. H. Alsted (1588-1638), who first put these words to paper–echoing Martin Luther in doing so.
The reason why the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, is important is because it is so closely tied to the gospel and the saving work of Jesus Christ. If we do not understand how it is that we as sinners are declared to be righteous before a holy God (which is what it means to be “justified”), we may not only misunderstand the gospel–and therefore risk standing before God on the day of judgment expecting that our own righteousness will be sufficient–but we will miss out on the wonderful comfort which this doctrine provides for us.
The good news of the gospel is that through faith, our sin has been reckoned to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness has been reckoned to us (Romans 5:12, 18-19). But now we possess the greatest gift imaginable, a conscience free from fear, terror, and dread (2 Tim. 4:18). The knowledge that our sins are forgiven and that God is as pleased with us every bit as much as he is with his own dear Son (2 Corinthians 5:21), not only quiets our conscience and creates a wonderful sense of joy and well-being, but it also provides powerful motivation to live a life of gratitude before God (2 Corinthians 1:3-7). A proper understanding of this doctrine is the only way we will be able to give all glory and thanks to God, which is the ultimate goal of our justification.
We need to be perfectly clear here–we are justified by good works. Not our good works, mind you, but Jesus Christ’s good works which, just like his sacrificial death, were done for us and in our place. Jesus Christ not only died for our sins, but through his life of perfect obedience to God’s commandments he fulfilled all righteousness (Romans 5:18-19). In Philippians 3:4-11, Paul speaks of this righteousness of Christ which comes from God through faith alone.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

But how is it that our sins are imputed (reckoned, credited) to Christ and his merits are imputed to us? This occurs only through the means of faith, which is why we cannot be justified on the basis of anything we have done or even could do since all of our works are tainted by sin and always done from sinful motives (Galatians 2:16; Romans 3:9-20). Faith is the instrument which links us to Christ so that all his righteousness becomes ours. In Galatians 3:23-26, Paul states “before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.”
It is important to understand that faith is not that one work God expects us to perform. Faith is not something which God sees in our hearts which he then rewards with a status of “justified”–a view widely held throughout American evangelicalism. Rather, as J. I. Packer so helpfully puts it, faith is “an appropriating instrument, an empty hand outstretched to receive the free gift of God’s righteousness in Christ.” Paul speaks precisely in these terms in Romans 4:4-5 when he writes, “now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
Scripture is clear that faith unites us to Christ, and through faith in him we receive all that he has to give us–namely the forgiveness of sin accomplished by his death, and the gift of righteousness based upon his life of faultless obedience. Through faith in Jesus, our sin is imputed to him so that he pays for these sins on the cross and through that same faith his righteousness (his merits and holy works) becomes ours (via imputation). This is what we mean when we speak of being justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone. This is the gospel! God freely gives us in Christ’s merits what he demands of us under the law. In Romans 3:21-26, Paul makes this very point.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

If we are not clear about this great doctrine, we have no assurance of our salvation, no foundation for living the Christian life, and we have no gospel to preach to the unbelieving world around us. Apart from this doctrine, ours is a fallen church. But once we embrace this doctrine, Paul reminds us in Romans 8:31, “what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” Once Christ’s merits are reckoned (imputed) to us through faith, we are declared righteous before him, and therefore able to approach the holy God without fear or terror, because we are clothed with the righteousness of his own son.
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