NOTES for Php 1:23-24
Paul says of himself that it makes no difference to him whether he remains in this world a little longer or leaves it. Following Christ's will, he is ready to choose what is better for the ministry entrusted to him. The apostle himself would like to be released and be with Christ, but if it is more useful for his brothers that he continue his earthly path, he agrees to this as well.
Paul considers such an attitude toward life and death normal and natural for a Christian, and he calls his Philippian brothers to look at life and death in the same way he does. This is not surprising: with the coming of Christ much really changed here. Above all, the relationship between our untransformed world and the Kingdom changed, the Kingdom which, in the Savior's words, "has drawn near."
Before Christ's coming, death in one way or another meant departure into the world of shadows, which the Bible calls Sheol; in Greek and Greek-language books the Greek analogue of Sheol is mentioned, Hades, from which, incidentally, the Russian word for hell comes. There were, for example in Egypt or Greece, ideas of another afterlife, but it is hard to say exactly what stands behind them or what kind of spiritual experience. The idea of a world of shadows can be considered universal, common to humanity; in one way or another it exists among all peoples. There, in the world of shadows, there is no life, only its pale semblance, which can be called life only with great reservation.
Rather, it is a kind of existence between being and nonbeing, in which memory of earthly life does not remain and self-awareness barely glimmers. With Christ's coming everything changes. The process of universal resurrection begins already at the moment of the Savior's death on the cross; the first risen ones come out of the tombs at precisely this moment. Later it continues: Sheol, the world of shadows, no longer exists in its former form, and if before death meant the final loss, until the Messiah's coming, of the fullness of life, now it is only the boundary separating stages of a Christian's path.
For a Christian, the completion of earthly life means only the beginning of a new one, and what it will be depends on how he has passed through his earthly path. That is why the apostle says that for him there is no difference between life and death: he does not live by his own will; his earthly path is determined by Christ's will, and therefore Christ Himself will determine the moment when this path is completed. Such is the Christian's path, and this is the path Paul calls his Philippian brothers to walk.