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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Philippians 2:8 - 2:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
8. καὶ. Here another movement of thought begins. We have seen the κένωσις of simple Incarnation. We now pass to the Sacrifice to which, in Manhood, He descended.
σχήματι. Habitu, Lat. Versions. Σχῆμα indicates appearance, with or without underlying reality; and thus is a partial antithesis to μορφή (see first note on Php 2:6 above, and cp. Rom 12:1). In itself it neither affirms nor denies reality; it emphasizes appearance. Thus here it carries out the suggestion just given by ὁμοίωμα. The Lord was (a) man not only in nature but in look, patent to all; and He was (b) more than met the eye: the true and manifest Manhood was the veil of Godhead.
The dative (σχήματι) is the not infrequent dative of relation, connexion; cp. 1Co 7:34, ἁγία σώματι καὶ πνεύματι, and in the classics such phrases as φύσει κακός (see Eph 2:3), γένει Ἕλλην.
εὑρεθεὶς. He was “found,” as one who presented Himself for scrutiny. Εὑρίσκω in Biblical Greek somewhat tends to less distinctive meanings; e.g. Luk 9:36, εὑρέθη Ἰησοῦς μόνος, where in effect we have Him simply “seen alone.” But the thought of inspection, examination, is suggested by association here.
ὡς ἄνθρωπος. Either, “as man,” or (A.V., R.V.) “as a man.” As the Second Man, Head of redeemed Manhood, He is rather Man than a man. Yet we may remember that the point of thought here is not on His difference from His brethren but on His likeness to them; He moved among them, in fact, as “a man.” So, with wonderful condescension, He calls Himself (the rendering must obviously be thus there) “a man that hath told you the truth” (Joh 8:40).
ἐταπείνωσεν ἑαυτὸν, “under the mighty hand (cp. 1Pe 5:6) of” His Father, in the life of surrender which led to the supreme surrender of the Cross. The following context seems to point the reference in this direction.
γενόμενος ὑπήκοος. The aorist participle, in close contact with the aorist verb (ἐταπείνωσεν), brings together the thoughts of self-humbling and of obedience; the “humiliation” coincided with, was expressed in, the “becoming obedient” to the Father’s will that He should suffer.
μέχρι θανάτου. “To the length of death.” “Even unto death,” R.V. Usque ad mortem, Lat. Versions. The A.V., “obedient, unto death,” might seem to mean that He “obeyed death.” This He never did; He obeyed His Father in dying, in order to “abolish death” (2Ti 1:10); dying as our Sacrifice, to meet the κατάρα τοῦ νόμου (Gal 3:13), by the holy will (Act 2:23) of the Lawgiver. Thus He carried His life-long “Patience” “to the length of” His “Passion,” seeking not His own will, but the will of the Father in our salvation.
θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ. The δὲ carries a slight connective force; “nor only death, but death of cross.”—The Cross (infelix arbor) was the death not only of extreme agony but of the utmost degradation; to the Roman, certainly in all but the earliest ages of Rome, it was reserved for the slave and for the basest ruffian. Mors si proponitur, in libertate moriamur … nomen ipsum crucis absit non modo a corpore civium Romanorum, sed etiam a cogitatione, oculis, auribus (Cicero, pro C. Rabirio, v. § 10). In the case of our Redeemer’s Crucifixion, we see combined the Hebrew’s dread of any death-penalty by suspension (Deu 21:23) with the Roman’s horror of the servile cross. Thus the supreme Obedience expressed the Sufferer’s willingness both to “become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13) as before God the Lawgiver, and to be “despised and rejected of men” (Isa 53:3) as “the outcast of the people.” “Who shall fathom the abyss Where Thou plungedst for our love?”