Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Philippians 2:9 - 2:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Php_2:9. The exaltation of Christ,—by the description of which, grand in its simplicity, His example becomes all the more encouraging and animating.
διό ] for a recompense, on account of this self-denying renunciation and humiliation in obedience to God ( καί , also, denotes the accession of the corresponding consequence, Luk_1:35; Act_10:29; Rom_1:24; Rom_4:22; Heb_13:12). Comp. Mat_23:12; Luk_24:26. Nothing but a dogmatic, anti-heretical assumption could have recourse to the interpretation which is at variance with linguistic usage: quo facto (Calvin, Calovius, Glass, Wolf, and others). The conception of recompense (comp. Heb_2:9; Heb_12:2) is justified by the voluntariness of what Christ did, Php_2:6-8, as well as by the ethical nature of the obedience with which He did it, and only excites offence if we misunderstand the Subordinatianism in the Christology of the apostle. Augustine well says: “Humilitas claritatis est meritum, claritas humilitatis praemium.” Thus Christ’s saying in Mat_23:12 was gloriously fulfilled in His own case.
ὑπερύψωσε ] comp. Song of Three Child. 28 ff.; LXX. Ps. 36:37, 96:10; Dan_4:34; Synes. Ep. p. 225 A; it is not found elsewhere among Greek authors, by whom, however, ὑπερύψηλος , exceedingly high, is used. He made Him very high, exceedingly exalted, said by way of superlative contrast to the previous ἐταπείνωσεν , of the exaltation to the fellowship of the highest glory and dominion, Rom_8:17; 2Ti_2:12; Eph_1:21, al.; Joh_12:32; Joh_17:5.[118] This exaltation has taken place by means of the ascension (Eph_4:10), by which Jesus Christ attained to the right hand of God (Mar_16:19; Act_7:55 f.; Rom_8:34; Eph_1:20 f.; Col_3:1; Heb_1:3; Heb_8:1; Heb_10:12; Heb_12:2; 1Ti_3:16; 1Pe_3:22), although it is not this local mode, but the exaltation viewed as a state which is, according to the context, expressed by ὑπερύψ . It is quite unbiblical (Joh_17:5), and without lexical authority, to take ὙΠΈΡ as intimating: more than previously (Grotius, Beyschlag).
ἐχαρίσατο ] He granted (Php_1:29), said from the point of view of the subordination, on which also what follows ( κύριος … εἰς δόξαν Θεοῦ πατρός ) is based. Even Christ receives the recompense as God’s gift of grace, and hence also He prays Him for it, Joh_17:5. The glory of the exaltation did not stand to that possessed before the incarnation in the relation of a plus, but it affected the entire divine-human person, that entered on the regnum gloriae.
τὸ ὄνομα ] is here, as in Eph_1:21, Heb_1:4, to be taken in the strictly literal sense, not as dignitas or gloria (Heinrichs, Hoelemann, and many others), a sense which it might have ex adjuncto (see the passages in Wetstein and Hoelemann), but against which here the following ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ is decisive. The honour and dignity of the name of Jesus are expressed by ΤῸ ὙΠῈΡ ΠᾶΝ ὌΝΟΜΑ , but are not implied in ΤῸ ὌΝΟΜΑ of itself. Nor is it to be understood of an appellative name, as some have referred it to κύριος in Php_2:11 (Michaelis, Keil, Baumgarten-Crusius, van Hengel, Schneckenburger, Weiss, Hofmann, Grimm); others to ΥἹῸς ΘΕΟῦ (Theophylact, Pelagius, Estius); and some even to ΘΕΌς (Ambrosiaster, Oecumenius, and again Schultz; but see on Rom_9:5). In accordance with the context
Php_2:11, comp. with Php_2:6—the thought is: “God has, by His exaltation, granted to Him that the name ‘Jesus Christ’ surpasses all names in glory.” The expression of this thought in the form: God has granted to Him the name, etc., cannot seem strange, when we take into account the highly poetic strain of the passage.
[118] In the conception of the “exaltation” Paul agrees with John, but does not convey expressly the notion of the return to the Father. This is not an inconsistency in relation to the doctrine of pre-existence (in opposition to Pfleiderer, l.c. p. 517), but a consequence of the more dialectically acute distinction of ideas in Paul, since that change of condition affected the entire Christ, the God-man, whereas the subject of the pre-existence was the Logos.