Charles Ellicott Commentary Philippians 1:21

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." — Philippians 1:21 (ASV)

To live is Christ.—This, of course, means “Christ is my life,” yet not in the sense that He is the source and principle of life in us, but that the whole concrete state of life is so lived in Him that it becomes a simple manifestation of His presence. The opposition in the passage is between the states of living and dying (or being dead), not between the principles of life and death.

It is, therefore, in some sense distinct from the cognate passages—Colossians 3:3–4, You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. . . . Christ is our life; and Galatians 2:20, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. Those passages set forth the cause; this the result. If Christ is the principle of life in us, then whatever we think and say and do, exhibiting visibly that inner life, must be the manifestation of Christ.

To die is gain.—This follows from the other. Death is a new stage in the progress of union with Christ. So we read in 2 Corinthians 5:6–7, Knowing that, while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord . . . we are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. To depart is, in a higher sense than can be realized here, to be with Christ.