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OET (OET-LV) For/Because to_me which to_be_living is chosen_one/messiah, and which to_die_off is gain.
Paul wanted to bring honor to Christ whether he lived or died. He knew that dying and being with Christ would be the supreme good, but he also wanted to be with the Philippians to help them grow in their faith. And he expected that God would let him continue living and helping others.
Paul wanted very much to go and be with Christ, but it was more necessary for the Philippian believers that he continue living.
For to me, to live is Christ,
¶ For as for me, I live only to honor Christ,
¶ This is because as far as I am concerned, the purpose of living is to glorify Christ,
For: This word introduces the reason why Paul hoped that he would always glorify Christ. It means “since” or “because.”
to me: In Greek this is an emphatic pronoun. In this verse it is put at the beginning of the sentence for added emphasis. It indicates a change in topic. Paul was now focusing on his personal situation. If you have emphatic pronouns in your language, you may be able to use one here.
to live is Christ: In Greek this is a short and dramatic statement. For Paul, the whole purpose of being alive was to know Christ, to love him, to serve him and to honor him. In some languages, however, a literal translation of the phrase to live is Christ will be meaningless or it may even have a wrong meaning. If this is a problem in your language, it may be possible to say:
If I continue to live it will be to honor Christ.
The meaning of my life is to know Christ.
and to die is gain.
and when I die, it will be even better than living on earth!
and when I die, it will be better than if I continue living!
to die is gain: Paul meant that for him to die would be better that continuing to live because then he would be with Christ. However, if you translate the phrase to die is gain literally, your readers may not understand this. You could restate it as:
dying will be even better for me
Other possible translations that include more implicit information are:
when I die, that will be better for me because then I will be with Christ
when I die, it will result in something that is better than living on earth.
Note 1 topic: figures-of-speech / abstractnouns
κέρδος
gain
If the abstract noun gain would be unclear in your language, you may express the meaning behind this word by using a verb phrase. Alternate translation: [to die is to go to Christ] or [to die would give me more blessing]
1:21 dying is even better: For believers, death holds no fear, as death leads directly into the presence of Christ (see 1:23; cp. John 5:24; 11:25-26; Rom 8:38-39).
OET (OET-LV) For/Because to_me which to_be_living is chosen_one/messiah, and which to_die_off is gain.
Note: The OET-RV is still only a first draft, and so far only a few words have been (mostly automatically) matched to the Hebrew or Greek words that they’re translated from.
Acknowledgements: The SR Greek text, lemmas, morphology, and VLT gloss are all thanks to the CNTR.