Week 9: Chapter 8 — Living When Dying Is Gain

1.Platt uses Paul's statement in Philippians 1:21 — "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" — as the hinge of this chapter. In your honest experience, do you believe death is "gain"? What would have to be true about your faith for you to genuinely believe that?

2.He tells the stories of Christians who have suffered — and in some cases died — for the gospel in dangerous places, and he holds them up not as tragic exceptions but as the biblical norm. How does the comfort and safety of American life make it harder to take suffering for the gospel seriously as something that might be required of us?

3.Platt draws on John 12:24–25 — the grain of wheat that must fall into the ground and die before it bears fruit — to argue that the path to fruitfulness is not self-preservation but self-surrender. Where in your own life have you seen the principle of "dying to produce life" actually work? Where are you resisting it?