Paul sits in custody. He is using his waiting time well - writing to the churches that he has helped establish as he has journeyed through Asia and not into Europe - talking of Jesus to the guards that are chained to him. But he does not know the outcome of his impending trial. He does not know if he will be released to continue his work ... or if he will be put to death.
His desire was that Christ be "exalted in his body" (verse 20). Other translations use the word "magnified in his body". In other words, his life was to magnify Christ - through living or through dying. A magnifying glass brings things closer - makes them seem bigger, clearer. Paul wanted his life to make Christ more easily seen by the people around him. What about you and me? Is that my desire as well? Do I want people to be able to see Christ more clearly because they have come in contact with me?
Ellicott said: "My body will be the theater in which Christ's glory is displayed." Oh how I want my body to be that theater as well! Ellicott echoes the heart of Paul.
It is in the experiences where we have to face our own mortality where our priorities are clarified. Have you had such experiences? Perhaps an accident that was close to fatal. Or a sickness that could take your physical life. Sometimes when a person we love dies, we are forced to think about how fast life passes. Are you afraid as you think about such things? As Paul thought about them, he wrote about his feelings.
Paul could see benefit on both sides ... the continued living in space/time history and the passage to being with his Lord, face to face. Nothing in his writing communicates panic, or fear, or dread ... just his own conflicted mind as he found himself wanting both things.
It is all about perspective. Our reactions to death and dying are all about our perspective on life here and life eternal. If you know Christ ... you, too, need not fear that passage that we call dying. Our earthly bodies - which we are to use to magnify Christ - will finish their work one day. And we will take on a new body - a perfect one - that can magnify Christ perfectly! Amazing grace!!
How is your perspective?
Loraine Boettner, in his book Immortality, wrote:
Lord, give us your perspective on all of living ... and dying.
I am standing on a sea shore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean blue. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to meet each other. Then someone at my side says, 'There, she is gone.' Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living weights to its place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment, when someone says, 'There she is gone,' on that distant shore there are other eyes watching for her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes!' and such is dying.
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