The Hymn of Christ, verse 1

Context: Phil 2:1-4, and 12-18!

1. The Doctrinal Context: The Trinity

a. Mat 3:16-17

b. There is One God and One Mediator between God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus—1 Tim 2:5

c. Because God is a Trinity:
(1) He is a God of relationship
(2) We have representation
(3) We have reconciliation and redemption

d. A solitary God, One who is alone, like the false “god” of Islam, can have no relationship, there can be no representation, there can be no reconciliation, no redemption

2. The Point of the Passage—2:5
a. This is thought by many scholars to be an ancient hymn of the Faith that Paul quoted to them. The first “verse” is 2:6-8, and the second verse is 2:9-11
b. But this whole passage looks back to 2:1-4.
(1) What we have here is the supreme example of the self-denial and humility that is to be the hallmark of true believers everywhere.
(2) We are to have the mind of Chist (1 Cor 2:16), we are to think like Jesus
c. One
(1) Love
(2) Accord
(3) Mind

d. In lowliness of mind
(1) No selfish ambition
(2) No conceit—and if anyone had a right to be conceited, it was Him

e. No self interest, thinking only of others

f. This is how the Triune God acts within Himself.

(1) The internal relationships within the Triune God are the standard of cooperation and one-anothering that we should be doing.
(2) There is no Jealous ambition—The Father glorifies the Son—Mat 17:5
(a) The Father and Son Work together—John 5,
(b) The Spirit exalts the Son—Jn 15:26, 16:7-15. The Son speaks highly of the Spirit—
(3) The Father is eternal—John 1:1, The Son is eternal—Jn 1:1-3, Micah 5:2, The Spirit is eternal—Heb 9:14

3. Jesus is God, but He does not have an attitude about it—Phil 2:6

a. If we are anything at all, we have an attitude about it. Some folks have no justification at all for having an attitude, but we have one anyway.
b. “Who” It really is about Him
c. “Being”— huparchon—
(1) a present active participle, continuous
(2) Combined with the next word, this is a clear statement of the eternality and deity of Christ
b. “In the form of God”
(1) This does not refer to Christ as merely an image of God—
(2) This does not refer to His appearance
(3) This is the word morfh--morphe, which means “the outward expression of an inward reality.” We will see this again in the next verse.
(4) This outward expression of an inward reality refers to His eternal manifestation of Glory, the Glory due His Name, the glory that Isaiah saw in the temple—Jn 12:39-41
(a) The only thing Christ asked to be returned to Him was His glory—Jn 17:5
(b) The form of God, therefore, is God’s essential nature manifested, worshiped and glorified, as in Rev 4 and 5

c. “Did not consider it robbery to be equal with God…”
(1) The Attitude of Attitudes of the King of Kings
(2) Christ did not consider this exalted position of honor WHICH WAS AND IS HIS RIGHTFUL POSSESSION, to be something that He must grasp and hold onto.
(3) How unlike us this is—we grasp and hold on to any human position and honor as if our very lives depended upon its retention! These human honors and positions are, at best, vapors that are here today and gone tomorrow, and sometimes the things we hold onto are base and not God-glorifying anyway. And, sometimes, we don’t need to have them anyway. We may not be truly the right person for a position, or we might not really be qualified or capable. What Christ was sacrificing, however, was the glory of Heaven itself, a glory He is worthy of, qualified for, and entitled to! But He did not hold on to it, so that He might save us!

4. Jesus Humbled Himself to save us—2:7-8

a. Most of us could use some humbling, and we react with great displeasure when put in our place, but Jesus humbled Himself, and not just once, but often, and continually, for over 30 years
b. He emptied Himself by taking on Himself the morphe of a servant—(all verbs aorist),
(1) Emptied
(a) Not of Deity
(b) Not of Attributes, for He often demonstrated every attribute, even omnipresence—Mat 18:20
(2) He emptied Himself in two ways
(3) By what He gave up (MacArthur)
(a) Glory, and the worship of Heaven
(b) The Riches of Heaven
(c) Independence
(d) Full exercise of His attributes, though He retained all of them, He did not always use them
(e) Face to face communion with the Father—Jn 1:1-2, Mat 27:46

(4) By what He took on—the form of a servant—He took on…us. He took on the form (morphe again) of a servant
(a) The Eternal has taken on servanthood (doulos, the lowest form of a servant)
(b) A servant for life until His death or the death of His master!

(5) When did He empty Himself by taking on the morphe of a servant?
(a) At His conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, when He literally became flesh.
(b) John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
c. He came “in the likeness of men,” in other words, really a man—1 John 2:18-23, 4:1-3
(1) He came—genomenos—aorist participle. There was a definite time when He came—
(a) In John 1:1-2, the Word already was, in Ph 2:6, Jesus huparchon, he existed continually as God.
(b) In John 1:14, the Word became flesh—egeneto, the aorist verb of the same root as “came” in this verse.

d. And “being found in appearance” (schemata) as a man 2:8a—in other words, really a man, not an imitation—

e. Six stages in the Self Humiliation of Christ

(1) He was, is, and never ceased to be God forever
(2) He became a servant at a point in time
(3) He came as a man at a point in time
(4) He was found in appearance as a man—
(a) at a point in time they “found” him, and His manhood was all they could see of Him.
(b) He showed them a glimpse of His true self when He flattened the whole crew in the garden—Jn 18:6
(c) But He allowed them to take Him anyway, and then they crucified Him
(5) “He humbled Himself”— again, aorist tense and active mood—He was the actor, not a victim, He self-humbled again, to die for us—John 10:17-18
(6) “And became obedient”—aorist—Heb 5:8 "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered."
(a) obedient—old word which means “gave an ear to.” He heard the voice of His Father, He said, “not my will but thine…”
(b) To death, even the death of the Cross—“The bottom rung in the ladder from the Throne of God. Jesus came all the way down to the most despised death of all, a condemned criminal on the accursed cross…” A.T. Robertson
(c) It was not the nails He feared
(d) It was not even the curse
(e) It was becoming sin for us that drove Him to sweat great drops of blood in the Garden.
(f) It was the certain trial of trials that He knew He would face, to be cut off from the Father’s love for us.

f. He left the love of His Father, the comforts of Heaven, the indescribable glory of worship that He received continually (John 17:5,24)—He left this behind for our salvation.
(a) He could hold on to the glory of heaven
(b) He could hold on to the adulation and worship of the Angels in Heaven’s court
(c) He could hold on to riches beyond our comprehension.
(d) He could hold on to the intimate closeness He had with the Father and Spirit in Glory, the Love experienced between He and the Father from before the world was made
(e) Or, He could come to seek and to save us:
(f) but He could not do both.

In the light of all this, we return to Phil 2:1-4—How can we act as grasping, self-important, self-glorifying, fussing children, in the light of this humiliation?
The first verse of the hymn of Christ is sung, but, it doesn’t stop here—because He did not stay on the Cross, and He did not stay in the tomb.