He Emptied Himself

This is the passage Paul wrote to solve a practical church problem. The Philippians were divided (L10); Paul had just commanded humility (2:3–4). Now he points them to the only example big enough to make it stick: the mind of Christ (2:5). What follows is a poem so exalted that people have preached it as pure theology, and so practical that Paul meant it as a household rule. The same verses tell you who Jesus is and how you are to think. Hold both together and you have the heart of the letter.

1. Where he started: equality with God

Begin at the top, because the descent only means something if you see the height. "Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (2:6). Form of God does not mean Jesus merely looked like God; it means he was, in his very nature, God. Rogers is emphatic: "Not only is He the Son of God, but He is God the Son" ("Who Is Jesus? The God-Man," on 2:6). This is the high point from which everything in the next two verses falls.

Then the first move of his mind: he "did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (2:6). Murray renders it beautifully: Jesus gave up his rights. He had every right to the privileges of deity, and he did not clutch them. "He didn't surrender his deity but surrendered his right to be treated like deity. Jesus gave up his rights as God to make us right with God" (Murray, "Our Right to Give Up Our Rights," on 2:5–8). The first act of the mind of Christ is not grasping what was legitimately his.

2. The descent: emptied, servant, obedient

Now watch him go down, step by step. "But emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (2:7). The verb emptied (kenosis) does not mean Christ stopped being God. It means he laid aside the privilege of divine glory and took the lowest place, a servant's. Murray tracks the descent as rights, reputation, royalty: he gave up his rights, he took the lowest reputation (God to slave), he surrendered his royalty. "He did not give up being God but gave up his being known as God. He did this not by subtracting his Godhead but by adding humanity."

And he did not stop at incarnation. "He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (2:8). Not just any death. Cross death, cursed, shamed, the death of a slave and a criminal. Rogers notes the obedience: "The commander became the commanded. The lawgiver became the law-obeyer." Each step was voluntary. "It was Jesus's will to be humbled throughout his life and especially in his death." The descent was not something done to him; it was something he chose.

3. "Have this mind"

Now the point lands. "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus" (2:5). The phroneō word again, the governed disposition, the way you habitually think. Paul is not asking the Philippians for a new feeling. He is asking them to think the way Christ thought: to stop grasping their rights, to move downward toward others' good, to count the interests of others above their own.

And note the comfort buried in the phrase "which is yours in Christ Jesus." This mind is not something you have to invent. It is yours, already given in Christ. Murray: "A Jesus outlook will produce a Jesus outcome; a Jesus attitude will result in Jesus actions." You do not produce humility by sheer willpower; you receive it by looking long at Christ until his mind becomes yours. The command of 2:3 finds its power in the Christ of 2:6–8.

This is only the first half of the hymn, and it ends, for now, at a cross. But Paul is not finished. The same Jesus who went down in 2:6–8 will be lifted up in 2:9–11. The descent has a destination, and it is the highest name. We turn there next.