Commentary on Philippians 2:5-11

Yesterday we saw Paul urging the Philippians to greater unity and he gave them some motivating reasons to help bring it about.  Today he gives what is the strongest motivation of all—the example shown by Jesus.

Paul begins by asking that the Philippians make their own, or assimilate into the very core of their being, the thinking patterns of Jesus himself:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…

Paul then goes on to explain this pattern of thinking.  It is a call, not just to model oneself on the moral behaviour of the historical Jesus, but on the entire Christ event as is depicted in the beautiful hymn that follows.  The same relationships should exist among the Philippians as they have with Jesus Christ—that is, they are to love and serve each other as they love and serve Christ.  There can be no separation of these two realities.

This comes in the form of a hymn.  It is not certain whether this was an already existing hymn which Paul borrowed or whether he composed it partially or in full himself.  It clearly expresses exactly what Paul wants to say.

The hymn is in a number of parts, each one highlighting a stage in the ‘mystery’ that is Christ for us:

• divine pre-existence
• the kenosis or self-emptying of the incarnation
• further kenosis in death
• glorification in resurrection and ascension
• adoration by the whole universe or cosmos
• the new title of ‘Lord’

As stated in the Jerusalem Bible:

“This hymn is concerned solely with the historical Christ in whose personality godhead and manhood are not divided; Paul nowhere divorces the humanity and divinity of Jesus, though he does distinguish his various stages of existence.”

Next Paul affirms that Christ had all the attributes of God himself and is fully God, who always was and always will be:

Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God…

Yet Jesus did not cling—hold on tenaciously—to that “equality with God” with all its status and privileges.  This does not mean that he renounced in any way his divine nature; that would be impossible.  But in contrast to Adam who was seduced into wanting to be ‘like God’, Jesus let go of all the honours and reverence that were his inherent right. Instead, he:

…emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.

He took on the the human condition which we all share.  He became a slave (Greek, doulos) although he was Lord (Greek, kyrios).  There is probably a reference here to the Suffering Servant we read of in Isaiah (52:13—53:12), parts of which we read during the Good Friday liturgy.

Above all, Jesus lived in total submission to his Father, saying during his agony in the garden:

…yet not my will but yours be done.

In the words of John’s Gospel, “Jesus hid himself” (John 8:59). He hid his true Self by assuming human nature and:

…has been tested as we are, yet [is] without sin. (Heb 4:15)

Or, as the hymn today puts it, he assumed “human likeness”. In Greek, this ‘emptying’ is kenosis, the word often used in commentaries for what Jesus did for us.

The glory which was his by nature and by right could now not be seen (except in the momentary breakthrough of the Transfiguration).  He was seen as just a man, a human being. He shared all our limitations—”as we are, yet without sin”.

That said, we have to be careful to keep a balance in our understanding—Jesus was truly God, but he was also truly and in the fullest sense, a human being (Greek, anthropos homo) and a male human being (Greek, aner vir) at that.  Even today, one hears Christians understating Jesus’ humanity, as if it was only an external veneer.  It was a real man who suffered and died on the cross; anything less diminishes the full meaning of the Incarnation and the witness of God’s love which the Passion is.

But Jesus was not just incarnate as a human being.  Even in human terms, he further:

…emptied himself…he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Here is the ultimate submission and obedience to the Father’s will: the surrender of his life.  And it is the ultimate in self-emptying.  There was hardly anything more degrading and humiliating than crucifixion.  The crucified person was a convicted criminal and put to death by a method of appalling cruelty in full view of the public. He was left hanging naked, stripped of every vestige of human dignity.  This was the degree of degradation that Jesus accepted in order to show the depth of God’s love for us sinners. (And for us, there is no shame in Jesus’ nakedness. It is a sign of his total innocence. It is a reversal of the situation of our First Parents, when, after their sin, their nakedness became a badge of shame and guilt.)

If his death on the cross had been the end, Paul says:

…then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Cor 15:14)

But Paul says:

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name…

“Exalted” in the original Greek means “raised him high” through his resurrection and ascension. The Risen Jesus’ “name that is above every other name” means that he is now addressed as “Lord”—the name that belongs to him as the Son of God, sharing the very nature of his Father.  It is a name which puts him above all other created beings, including angels and archangels.

Across the whole universe:

…every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth…

Bending the knee expresses even greater submission than standing in the presence of a greater person.

And finally, the hymn says:

…every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

This is the very essence of our Christian belief: Jesus is Lord, sharing in the very nature of God.  By calling Jesus Lord, we give glory to God the Father.

This hymn is one of the crucial passages in Paul’s letters and indeed in the whole New Testament.  It goes right to the heart of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.  As Paul states at the beginning, it expresses the very mind of Christ, and until we have fully assimilated that “mind” into our own way of seeing our lives, we are not yet fully his disciples. We, too, have to learn how to empty ourselves and surrender ourselves totally into the hands of Jesus and the Father.