To Live Is Christ: Finding Joy You Can’t Lose - Philippians 1:21

What Are You Really Living For? A Question That Changes Everything

Most people never stop to ask what their life is really built on. They just keep moving—chasing success, protecting relationships, building something that feels secure. But underneath it all, there’s a sentence quietly shaping everything: “To live is ______.” And whatever fills that blank will determine not just how you live—but how you handle pressure, loss, and ultimately, death itself.

In this Easter message from West Palm Beach Church, Pastor Rajiv brings you face-to-face with a truth that’s impossible to ignore: if your life is built on anything that can be taken away, then your joy will always be fragile. But what if there was a foundation that couldn’t be shaken? What if there was a kind of joy that didn’t depend on circumstances, success, or even survival?

Walking through Philippians 1:21—“to live is Christ and to die is gain”—this message doesn’t just inspire, it confronts. It challenges you to examine what you’re truly living for and invites you to discover a life anchored in something eternal. Because if Jesus really did rise from the dead, then everything changes—not just your beliefs, but your identity, your purpose, and your future.

Easter Message by Pastor Rajiv | West Palm Beach Church

Key Takeaways

• Every person is living out the sentence: “To live is ______.”

• Whatever fills that blank controls your emotions, fears, and decisions

• If your life is built on anything temporary, loss is inevitable

• Jesus is the only foundation that cannot be taken away

• The resurrection proves death is not the end—it is the beginning

Full Sermon Transcript

A Joyous Occasion

Today is a joyous occasion. We celebrate the fact that our Lord and Savior is alive. He has risen. Amen. Let's give God a, a round of applause of praise.

All right. This morning, I'm gonna start off by saying this, every person in this room, every single person in this room is finishing a sentence right now. Whether they know it or not to live is success. To live is the portfolio, the address, the lifestyle I've built to live is my beauty, my killer, good looks to live is finding the right person, being loved the way I need to be, loved to live is my family staying intact to live is, is proving everyone else wrong and that I'm right to live is staying numb from the challenges of the world.

Now, you may not have said it, you may not have even thought about it until now, but something is filling in that blank and whatever fills it is shaping your emotions, your decisions, your fears, and the way you face everything that's gonna come at you.

Joy in Chains and the Series Context

This week, the Apostle Paul gives us one answer and it changes everything. Two weeks ago, we began a series asking why a man in a Roman prison could write one of the most joyful letters in history. In the New Testament, we discover that joy is possible even in chains, even when you're locked up in chains, because the news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection was advancing through them.

Last week, we introduced whether Jesus is your main thing or just an important thing alongside a bunch of other important things, right? When everything's important, nothing's really that important. Today is Easter Sunday and today we're gonna double down on that and really understand what that actually means.

Scripture Reading: Philippians Chapter One

So this morning we open our Bibles to Philippians chapter one. You've got Bibles in your pews, you've got Bible apps, or you can follow along on the screen as I read through it. Philippians chapter one.

Starting in verse 19,

for I know that through your prayers and God's provision of the spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but what? But have sorry. But we'll have sufficient courage so that now as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I'm to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know I'm torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body convinced of this.

I know that I will remain. I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith so that through my being with you again, your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me. This is God's word.

The One Sentence That Changes Everything

There's one sentence in this passage, 10 words. Everything else Paul writes is basically context for this one sentence.

And this one sentence is either the most delusional thing you've ever written or ever, ever read, or it's gonna be the most important thing that you hear all year.

That sentence is verse 21, for, to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

That's the whole sermon this morning. Two halves, one sentence, because here's what that sentence means when it's actually true in a human life.

Real Joy Is Found in a Person

You see, real joy isn't on that list that I shared earlier. Right, the Palm Beach lifestyle, the relationship, the beauty, no real joy is found in a person you cannot lose.

To live is Christ.

See, Paul fills in that sentence without hesitation. To live is Christ. Not to live for Christ. To live is Christ.

Now that, let me help you understand that's a, that's a different thing entirely, right? If I said, I live for my work, I'm telling you where all of my effort is pointing towards, you know, Christ is my goal, my direction, my aim. That's one thing. But Paul doesn't say that. He says to live is Christ.

See, Christ isn't his goal. Christ is his life. I mean, if you stripped away everything else from him, Christ would still be there all the way down through and through.

What Organizes Your Life?

If you think of it this way. When someone says, music is my life, they don't mean music is something they work toward. They mean music is, is what they're made of it. It's everything. It's in everything to them. It's not something that they do, it's what they are.

Paul is saying the same thing about Jesus Christ is not what, where, where Paul points to Christ is saying that that Christ is what Paul is made of.

Now this sentence, this sentence causes a question to come up. What organizes your life? What? What is your life centered around? Not what you believe, not what you, you put at the top of your priority list, but what is the thing that drives you?

What's the thing that drives your decisions at 7:00 AM on a Wednesday when nobody else is watching?

Because whatever that is. That's your sentence to live is blank, whatever that is.

A Diagnostic for Your Life

And here's how you find out. If you're not sure, if you're, if you're struggling to think through this, let me give you some diagnostic questions to really help you think through this.

What do you run to for comfort when things are just falling apart? Not what should you run to? What do you actually reach for?

What do you daydream about? What's the thing your mind is so fixated on the most?

What are you afraid of losing? What do you, what are you most afraid of losing in your life?

Or how about this? What makes you feel like you actually matter, that you're actually worth something?

The Stress Test of Life

See Paul's answer is Christ and a Roman prison proved it. Chains around the clock. Career over separated from everyone. He loves possible execution by every measurement the world uses to decide whether someone's winning or losing.

Paul is losing, and yet his joy is completely intact, which means whatever is consuming, Paul is none of those other things.

You know, I know we have a few engineers in the room. Engineers call this a stress test, right? You apply enough pressure until you find out what something is actually made of.

And look, you've all felt that a diagnosis, a financial hit, a relationship breaking. Pressure in life. It doesn't just hurt it. It hurts pressures of life. It can hurt. It can be challenging. It hurts, but it doesn't just hurt.

It reveals anger, fear, anxiety, despair, things you didn't even know were in there. And what starts coming out of you in those moments shows you what you're really living for, what you're really trusting in.

And Paul's stress test is prison with a possible execution verdict. And what that pressure reveals in him is Jesus all the way down through and through.

The Danger of Building on the Wrong Thing

Now, most of us can't say that. Think about the novel, the Great Gatsby for Gatsby. It was Daisy. He built everything around her, his money, his house, his life. He believed that if he could just get her, if he could just get Daisy, everything would finally be right. But she couldn't carry the weight. And when she collapsed under it, so did he.

Friends, I need you to understand something, right? The lesson from Gatsby. The lesson I'm trying to help you to see is that when you take any created thing, if you take any created thing from this world and you make it your everything, it will either crush you or you will crush it.

And friends, we all have a daisy something or someone we're afraid of losing.

What You Fear Losing Reveals Everything

In fact, I'll tell you this. You show me what you're afraid of losing, and I'll tell you what you're actually living for.

And look, I say that, look, I know that. Because I've been there. I've lived it.

Pastor Rajiv’s Story

See, I grew up in a Hindu family, genuinely devout, you know, maybe even more so than my parents. I would go to the temple. In fact, I would ask my parents. I would beg my parents at times to take me to the temple. I did the rituals. I was committed to the faith.

When I was about 14 years old, there were these reports coming from India that Ganesh the elephant god was blessing people, right? That the statues were drinking milk offerings from spoons.

So my mother gets a call from our relatives in Mumbai. We get super excited. We went to our mini at-home temple and we started doing the ceremony, our ritual offering.

So my mother put milk in the spoon, and we served it up toward God. We closed our eyes, served it up to the Ganesh statue, we closed our eyes and we just sat there and we waited and we waited and we waited.

And church, you're not gonna believe what happened next. You're not gonna believe this. We waited there, and then when we opened our eyes, all the milk was still in the spoon.

So my mother puts it down, she looks at me and she says, beta, which is “son” in our language, “looks like the gods aren't going to bless us right now.”

I went to school that day angry, and actually I started asking questions I'd never asked before. You know, maybe there is a God, but maybe there isn't. Either way for me right now, it's irrelevant.

So I did what most of us do. I swapped one answer for another.

Popularity became my main thing, then success, then wealth.

And by the time I was in my early twenties, my wife and I had launched our first successful company. I started buying fancy cars, jet boats, real estate. I started showing it off to everyone, and soon people twice my age started looking up to me.

I felt for the first time like, wow, I had made it.

But then I needed a new goal, because every time I hit the number, I walked away empty.

You see, there was this hunger inside of me. There was this hunger that nothing in this world could satisfy. So I kept moving the goalpost.

But you know what I never did? I never actually stopped to ask the question:

Is all that I'm chasing after actually worth my life?

I had never actually done the examination that Paul's describing in this passage. I just kept living for all these things without examining it.

A Personal Breaking Point

So here's what I want you to do right now, not later, right now, at your seats. I want you to fill in the sentence honestly.

To live is what for you?

Not the answer that sounds right in church—what's the real answer?

Let me give you a few other diagnostic questions that might help you think this through.

Look at where your money actually goes. Where do you spend your money on most? And I'm not talking about the essentials. I'm not talking about your mortgage or your rent payment or food. After all the essentials, where does most of your money go? That might be the thing you're living for.

What do you spend most of your time doing when nobody is telling you what to do?

What are you fixated on? What are you consumed by?

Maybe you're anxious right now. What are you anxious about?

See, you think through those questions and you're gonna find your answer. Whatever that is, that is what you're living for.

To Die Is Gain — The Test

You see, for Paul to live is Christ. The question is whether you know what goes in your sentence, because whatever goes there, that is what you're built on.

And now Paul doesn't stop there, he goes further.

And the second half of this sentence—I'm giving you a heads up—it’s not a comfort, it's a test.

He says, “to die is gain.”

Try telling someone on the street that today. They're gonna look at you and think you're crazy.

Because this is not how human beings think about death. Death is loss. Death is the end. Death is what we spend our lives trying to avoid.

So how does Paul say this and mean it?

Because he does mean it.

He says elsewhere, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.”

He's not performing courage. He's done the math.

If to live is Christ, then death can't take your life—it gives you more of what your life already is.

Death is not ending. It’s arriving.

The Gospel: The Only True Foundation

Every person in this room has filled in that sentence with something other than Christ.

The Bible calls that sin.

It means you're building your life around yourself and what you want rather than around God and what God made you for.

And that has a consequence. It separates you from the only foundation that can hold you.

Jesus came to deal with that separation.

He lived a life none of us have ever been able to live.

He went to the cross voluntarily.

He took the punishment for every wrong answer, every life built on the wrong foundation so that we wouldn’t have to.

And then three days later—this Easter Sunday—He rose from the dead.

Death couldn’t hold Him.

That means the separation is closed.

The foundation is available.

When Everything Changed

Now let me show you when that actually finally landed for me.

I went back to bed that night angry. Blanket pulled over me. Done with the conversation.

But that’s when it happened.

I didn’t go looking for God. He came looking for me.

He began to reveal Himself to me.

And over time, I realized:

Jesus is God. He is the only God. He is my God.

The God I had been rejecting had come to find me.

We sold everything. We moved to India.

And what I discovered when everything else was on the table was this:

None of it was the foundation.

Jesus was.

A New Life

Before Jesus found me, everything I did was about lifting the name of Rajiv.

The business, the cars, the real estate—it was all Rajiv.

And then Jesus walked into my life and filled in my sentence.

Now the only name I want to lift up is His.

Jesus is everything. Jesus is risen. Jesus is alive.

So to live is Christ—and that should be true for you.

Closing Invitation

See, some of you came in here today not sure if any of this is real.

You’ve heard “He is risen” your whole life and felt nothing.

But I’m not asking you to feel it—I’m asking you to look.

Look at Paul. A man in chains, facing death, yet more free than anyone else.

Something happened.

And I’m telling you, something happened to me too.

So to live is what for you?

Some of you know exactly what the answer is.

You’re holding onto something—not because you don’t see the problem, but because you don’t know if you can trust Jesus enough to let it go.

Let it go.

Today is the day to say:

Jesus is enough.

Final Words

If you are in Christ, you’re going to walk out of here and something will threaten what you’ve been living for.

When it happens, you don’t need a technique.

You just need to come back.

Come back to the one who filled in your sentence.

Because “to live is Christ” is not a standard you maintain—it is a person you return to.

Final Prayer

If you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ, understand this:

He already came looking for you.

He proved it on the cross.
He proved it in an empty tomb.
And He is proving it right now.

So say to Him:

Jesus, I need you.
I have not been living for you.
I believe you rose from the dead.
I want to give my life to you.
I am yours.