“Now his work was done; the faith had been proclaimed from Jerusalem to Rome, and maybe even further west; and the old man, aged beyond his years, fell asleep. His life, and his death, illustrate what he meant when he wrote, ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’. Ever since the day when the light streamed about him on the road to Damascus, Paul had lived for Christ. His own words best describe that life. ‘I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith,, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me,’ In that life he bore about in the body the dying of Jesus, that ‘the life also of Jesus may be manifested in his body’. 

To him, death was gain. The crucifiying was over, and he sleeps in Jesus until the time comes for him to realize his life’s aim, and be ‘forever with the Lord’.

– W.H. Boulton, Paul the Apostle