Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Philippians 2:7 - 2:7
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7. ἀλλὰ. “But”; not “yet,” which would require ἀλλʼ ὅμως. (See note on ἁρπαγμὸν above.) The word introduces the infinitely gracious action of the Saviour as not what He would have done had He “thought His Equality a prize.” See Ellicott’s careful note here.
ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν. Ἑαυτὸν is slightly emphasized by position, with a stress on the sacred freedom of the Lord’s will.
R.V. “emptied himself”; Vulg. semetipsum exinanivit, following which the Rhemish (Romanist) Version, 1582, renders, “exinanited Himself”; Wyclif, “lowide him silf.”
From the verb, the noun κένωσις has passed into theology, appearing here and there in the Fathers (e.g. Cyril. Alex., dial. V. de SS. Trin. p. 571; ἦν γὰρ φύσει καὶ ἀληθὼς Θεὸς καὶ πρὸ τῶν τῆς κενώσεως χρόνων), and in many modern treatises. Of late years much has been said on this great mystery by way of proving or suggesting that “in the days of His Flesh” (Heb 5:7) our Lord (practically) parted with His Deity, and became the (Incarnate) Son of God only in His glorification after death. In particular it is suggested that He accepted all the limits and defects of humanity as it is in us, moral defects excepted (and this exception is not always adequately made); and so was liable not only to hunger, fatigue, and agitation, but also to mistakes about fact, even in so great a matter as the nature of the O. T. Scriptures. On such inferences it must be enough here (see further Appendix G.) to say first that they can be connected only remotely with this passage, which practically explains the κένωσις to mean His becoming the truly Human Bondservant of the Father; and then that they are little in harmony with the whole tone of the Gospels, which present to us the Lord Jesus on earth as “meek and lowly” indeed, but always mysteriously majestic; dependent indeed on the Father, and upheld by the Spirit, but always addressing man with the manner of absolute knowledge and of sovereign power to meet his needs.
It is enough for us to know that this κένωσις was for him unspeakably real; that He was pleased, as to His holy Manhood, to “live by the Spirit,” as we are to do; yet that the inalienable basis of His Personality was always, eternally, presently, Divine. The ultimate and reasoned analysis of that unique Phenomenon, God and Man, One Christ, is HIS matter, not ours. It is for us to accept Him in its good and certain results, at once our Brother and our God. Lightfoot says here nearly all that can be said with reverent confidence: “ ‘He divested Himself’ not of His Divine nature, for this was impossible, but of the glories, the prerogatives, of Deity. This He did by taking upon Him the form of a servant.”
μορφὴν δούλου λαβών. Ἐκένωσε λαβών naturally means “He emptied (Himself) in taking”; not as if there were two acts, but two aspects of one act. The κενῶσαι lay in the λαβεῖν, not in something before it, or after it.
μορφὴν δούλου. On μορφή see note on Php 2:6 above. It points to an essential and manifested reality, not to a mere semblance or make-believe. As He was Θεός, essentially and in manifestation, so He became δοῦλος essentially and in manifestation. And in what respect δοῦλος? In that He stooped to serve men? Or in that He undertook, in the act of becoming Man, that essential condition of humanity—bondservice to God? The order of thought is in favour of the latter. The Apostle goes on to say that His taking μορφὴν δούλου was coincident with His coming to be ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων, “just like men.” But men as men are not each others δοῦλοι, while they are, as men, δοῦλοι Θεοῦ. To God, as Lord of Man, the Incarnate Christ ἐδούλευσε, and was in this, as in all things, the Archetype of His disciples.
True, He made Himself the Helper of all. And on one occasion (John 13.) He literally took a menial’s place; a fact to which Chrysostom here alludes. But at that very moment He took care to assert Himself Κύριος all the while. Literal “slavery” to man He certainly never accepted; royally descended, working as a free artificer, and speaking always with authority.
ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων. Two facts are suggested here: (a) He was really like men, as He was truly man; accepting a truly human exterior, with its liabilities to trial and suffering; (b) He was also more than men, without which fact there would be no significance in the ὁμοίωμα, for there would be simple identity. See Rom 8:3, for a somewhat similar suggestion in the word; ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας.
ἀνθρώπων, not ἀνθρώπου. The thought given is as concrete as possible; He was like, not abstract Man, but men as we see men.
γενόμενος. “Becoming.” Another aorist participle, closely connected, like λαβών just before, with the aorist ἐκένωσε. These aspects of the Humiliation are given as coincident.
G. THE ‘KENOSIS’ OF THE SON OF GOD. (CH. Php 2:7)
“IF we seek the true import of the word Kenosis, as applied to our Incarnate Lord, the Philippian passage (Php 2:7), its original source for us, must be consulted. And it seems to guide us in a line exactly opposite to that which would make fallibility an element in our Lord’s Humiliation. Ἐκένωσεν ἑαυτὸν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών. If we interpret the Greek by well recognised facts of idiom, we should take the aorist verb, ἐκένωσεν, and the aorist participle, λαβών, as conspiring to give us, from two sides, one idea. ‘He made Himself void,’ not anyhow, but thus—‘taking Bondservant’s form.’ The ‘making void’ was in fact just this—the ‘taking.’ It was—the assumption of the creaturely Nature, the becoming, in Augustine’s words (ad Dardanum), ‘Creature, as Man’ (quoad hominem, creatura); and the assumption of it in just this respect, that in it, and by the fact of it, He became δοῦλος, Bondservant. Now what is the implication of that unique, that absolute, unreserved, unhindered Bondservice of the Incarnate Son? What does it say to us about His capacity to do the Father’s work, and convey His mind and message? The absolute subjection of the Perfect Bondservant gives us an absolute warrant—not of the precariousness but of the perfection of His deliverance of His commission from His Father and Master. ‘He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God.’
“His own servant Paul was one day to claim complete authority as messenger because of the absoluteness of his slavery to the Lord. ‘Let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the στίγματα, the brands, of the Master, Jesus.’ The supreme Bondservant, the Bearer of the Stigmata of the Cross, has He not as such the right to claim our unreserved, our worshipping silence, when He speaks? He, in perfect relation to His Sender, perfectly conveys His Sender’s mind. He says nothing otherwise than as His Sender bids Him say it. ‘He whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God.’ ”