FIRST QUARTER 2026
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #3
JANUARY 17, 2026
"LIFE AND DEATH."

Our memory verse for this week is Philippians 1:21, “For me [Paul] to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” As I was considering what it means that, “for me to live is Christ,” I recognized that both in my personal experience, and in my emotional understanding, I don’t really know what that language means. I don’t really know what that experience is, and thus I would be unable to share any valuable or valid insight into what Paul is describing. 

So, from my own need to understand – and I pray also to experience to some modest degree – what Paul was describing, I turned to the Spirit of Prophecy. I read every place where she used the language of this verse. It was humbling as she describes Paul’s experience, and I recognized how foreign it was to me. It was a blessing to have hope awakened in my heart as she expressed that Paul’s experience could be mine (ours). It was convicting, that as a life-long Seventh-day Adventist, my life was so foreign to Paul’s experience, yet “for me to live is Christ.”

I don’t know your experience as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, but perhaps it aligns with Ellen White’s observation that what Nicodemus needed when he met with Christ late at night was not “theoretical knowledge” but “spiritual regeneration.” I pray for myself, and for you as an interested party to the 1888 message, and to our SDA church at large, that we will know very soon, what it means in our daily experience that “for me to live is Christ.”

“The one who stands nearest to Christ will be he who on earth has drunk most deeply of the spirit of His self-sacrificing love,—love that 'vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, ... seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil' (1 Corinthians 13:4, 5),—love that moves the disciple, as it moved our Lord, to give all, to live and labor and sacrifice, even unto death, for the saving of humanity. This spirit was made manifest in the life of Paul. He said, 'For to me to live is Christ;' for his life revealed Christ to men; ‘and to die is gain,'—gain to Christ; death itself would make manifest the power of His grace, and gather souls to Him. 'Christ shall be magnified in my body,’ he said, ‘whether it be by life or by death.’ Philippians 1:21, 20.” —Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 549, emphasis supplied here and onward.

“When the apostle Paul, through the revelation of Christ, was converted from a persecutor to a Christian, he declared that he was as one born out of due time. [1 Corinthians 15:8.] ‘For me to live is Christ,’ he declared. [Philippians 1:21.] This is the most perfect interpretation in a few words in all the Scriptures, of what it means to be a Christian. This is the whole truth of the gospel. Paul understood that which many seem unable to comprehend. How intensely in earnest he was. His words show that his mind was centered on Christ, that his whole life was bound up with his Christ. Christ was the author, the source, and the support of his life.” —Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, Vol. 12, Ms. 41, 1897, par. 13.

“Paul was a living example of what every true Christian should be. He lived for God’s glory. His words come sounding down the line to our time: ‘For to me to live is Christ.’ ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ He who was once a persecutor of Christ in the person of His saints now holds up before the world the cross of Christ. Paul’s heart burned with a love for souls, and he gave all his energies for the conversion of men. There never lived a more self-denying, earnest, persevering worker. His life was Christ; he worked the works of Christ. All the blessings he received were prized as so many advantages to be used in blessing others.”—Ellen G. White, The Review and Herald, May 29, 1900, 6BC p. 1112. 

“Are you willing to cast down the idols you have cherished? Are you willing to let Jesus enter the heart to cleanse it from all that defiles? Are you at all times and under all circumstances, obtaining the mastery over yourself? Can you say, 'For me to live is Christ,’ I am His? Whatever I have, of time, or strength, or influence, all is His? Are you representing Him by your forbearance, your patience, your unselfishness? Are you learning to be like Him?”—Ellen G. White, Signs of the Times, April 9, 1902, par. 10.

"You must not feel that you are above your brethren. You injure the cause of God, and the impression [is] left upon minds that there is no unity, and that the truth we cherish does not make us wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Your feelings will flash out sometimes unexpectedly, and you injure your soul, you hurt the heart of Christ, you give a wrong impression to the minds of those who are in any connection with you. Can you say with the apostle, ‘For me to live is Christ’? [Philippians 1:21.] That is, Christ is the Author of your spiritual life. His grace is the support of that life, and Christ’s glory the great object for which you are laboring. These words possess a depth of meaning which is the mystery of godliness, better experienced than explained.”— Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, Vol. 12, Lt. 46, 1897, par. 5.

~Robert Hunsaker.