In chapter four of Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper writes in reference to Philippians 1:20-25:

Ordinarily faith would mean trust or confidence you put in someone who has given good evidence of his reliability and willingness and ability to provide what you need. But when Jesus Christ is the object of faith there is a twist. He himself is what we need. If we only trust Christ to give us gifts and not himself as the all-satisfying gift, then we do not trust him in a way that honors him as our treasure. We simply honor the gifts. They are what we really want, not him. So biblical faith in Jesus must mean that we trust him to give us what we need most—namely, himself. That means that faith itself must include at its essence a treasuring of Christ above all things.

Now we are in a position to see why Paul’s two aims for his life are in fact one. According to verse 20, his aim is to magnify Christ in life; and according to verse 25, his aim is to promote the progress and joy in the Philippians’ faith. That is why he believes God might let him live. This would be his life: to labor for their “progress and joy in the faith.”

But now we have seen that faith is essentially treasuring Christ. The word “joy” in verse 25 (“for your … joy in the faith”) signals that this treasuring is a joyful treasuring. And if Christ is joyfully treasured, he is magnified. That is the single, all-embracing passion of Paul’s life. In other words, Paul is saying, “My life is devoted to producing in you that one great experience of the heart by which Christ is magnified—namely, being satisfied in him, joyfully treasuring him above all else. That’s what I mean when I say, ‘For me to live is Christ.’ That is, for me to live is your Christ-magnifying faith.”

(Emphasis added.)

Wow. What a powerful insight. In just a couple of paragraphs, Piper has effectively shown how our responsibility toward God is intertwined with our responsibility toward others. Do you live that Christ might be magnified in your relationships with others? Do you seek to draw others up into your joy in God? Is your aim in life to live in such a way that God would be magnified by your joy in him and that others would be drawn up and into that same kind of joy?