Passage

Philippians 2.5-6

Book: Philippians · NASB95

Verse

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped," (Philippians 2:5-6, NASB95)

Immediate context (±2 verses)

NASB95 (NASB95)

"3. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4. do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others."

"5. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6. who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,"

"7. but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:3-8, NASB95)

Setting

Speaker: Paul the Apostle (in his apparent quotation of an early Christian hymn).
Audience: the church at Philippi, Paul's first European church-plant (Acts 16), with whom Paul had warm pastoral relations.
Location: Paul writing from Roman imprisonment (Philippians 1:7, 13-14), c. AD 60-62.
Time period: c. AD 60-62. The hymn quoted (vv. 6-11) is widely held to be pre-Pauline, possibly dating from the 30s-40s AD, placing this Christology within ~10-20 years of the resurrection.

Theological reading

The passage opens what is universally called the Carmen Christi ("Hymn of Christ"), Philippians 2:6-11, one of the densest single-paragraph Christological statements in the NT. The hymn structures Christ's:

Pre-incarnate divine state (v. 6, en morphē theou hyparchōn)
Self-emptying (v. 7, heauton ekenōsen)
Incarnation as servant (v. 7, morphēn doulou labōn)
Humility unto death (v. 8, etapeinōsen heauton… mexri thanatou)
Even death on a cross (v. 8, thanatou de staurou)
Divine exaltation (v. 9, ho theos auton hyperhypsōsen)
The Name above every name (v. 9)
Universal worship (v. 10, every knee will bow)
Universal confession (v. 11, Jesus Christ is kyrios)

Verses 5-6 set up the whole hymn by stating Christ's pre-incarnate state, the high point before the descent.

v. 6, pre-incarnate divine identity

Three crucial claims in v. 6:

He existed in the morphē of God. En morphē theou hyparchōn. See G3444 - morphe. Morphē theou names the essential divine nature, Christ's pre-incarnate divine identity. The participle hyparchōn ("existing") suggests prior, ongoing state.
Equality with God. To einai isa theō. Christ existed in isa theō, equality with God. Not merely "like God" or "next to God", equal (the Greek isos is the strong term for parity; same root as English "isosceles"). Christ pre-incarnately possessed equal divine status with the Father.
Did not regard it a thing to be grasped. Ouch harpagmon hēgēsato. The contested noun harpagmon, derived from harpazō (to seize, snatch). Two readings:

"Something to be grasped" (active sense), Christ did not seize equality as a prize He didn't already have.
"Something to be held onto / clung to" (retentive sense), Christ did not cling to His equality but voluntarily relinquished its independent exercise.

Modern scholarship (R. W. Hoover, HTR 1971) argues for a third reading: harpagmon hēgēsato as an idiomatic phrase meaning "to take advantage of" / "to use to His own advantage." On this reading: Christ already had divine equality but did not exploit it for His own benefit, instead chose self-emptying.

The cumulative force: Christ pre-incarnately possessed full deity (morphē theou, isa theō) and voluntarily chose not to exploit it but instead emptied Himself in the kenosis (v. 7).

The kenosis (v. 7)

V. 7 builds on v. 6: all' heauton ekenōsen morphēn doulou labōn, "but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave." See G2758 - kenoo and G3444 - morphe for the full lexical treatment.

The participle labōn (taking) explains the manner of the kenosis: Christ emptied Himself by taking the morphē of a slave. The kenosis is not the subtraction of deity but the addition of humanity-and-servitude. Christ adds the morphē of slave to His morphē of God, without subtracting the latter (per Colossians 2.9, "all the fullness of Deity dwells in Him bodily", present indicative; deity remained throughout).

v. 9-11, the universal worship

The hymn climaxes (vv. 10-11) with a deliberate citation of Isaiah 45:23:

Isaiah 45:23 (NASB95), "I have sworn by Myself… To Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance." Phil 2:10-11, "at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth… and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is kyrios."

The Pauline citation deliberately applies Isaiah 45:23's YHWH-exclusive worship to Jesus. The Isaiah-context is monotheistic-exclusive (Isa 45:5-6, 18, 21-22 all repeat "I am the LORD, there is no other"). Yet Paul applies the verse to Christ. The Christological argument: Jesus is the Lord (YHWH) of Isaiah 45, the only one to whom every knee may rightly bow. See Isaiah 44.6 for the parallel transfer pattern.

Patristic / scholarly note

The patristic tradition uniformly reads Philippians 2:5-11 as the foundational Pauline Christological statement. Tertullian (Against Praxeas 27, c. AD 213); Athanasius (Discourses Against the Arians III.6-7, c. AD 358); Cyril of Alexandria (Letter to Nestorius; On the Unity of Christ); Augustine (De Trinitate 1.7, 1.14). The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), the orthodox Christological standard, implicitly relies on the Pauline morphē and kenosis terminology for its two-natures formula.

The Reformation: Luther's Heidelberg Disputation (1518) and Calvin's Institutes II.13-14 develop the extra Calvinisticum, the Word's incarnation does not exhaust His divine being, directly from Philippians 2.

The 19th-century strict-kenotic theologians (Thomasius, Frank, Gess) read v. 7 as Christ literally emptying Himself of divine attributes. Their reading was rejected by orthodox theology and is generally considered a Christological deviation. The modern conservative position (Wellum, Fee, Bockmuehl, O'Brien): the kenosis is the addition of humanity-and-servitude, not the subtraction of deity.

Modern scholarship: Gordon Fee (Pauline Christology, 2007); Peter T. O'Brien (Philippians NIGTC, 1991); Markus Bockmuehl (Philippians BNTC, 1998); Stephen Wellum (God the Son Incarnate, 2016); R. W. Hoover (HTR 1971 harpagmon article).

The hymn's pre-Pauline character

Most modern scholars read the hymn (vv. 6-11) as pre-Pauline, quoted by Paul from earlier Christian tradition. Evidence:

Stylistic features, rhythmic, parallel, hymn-like structure unusual for Paul's prose.
Hapax legomena, words like harpagmos and isa theō construction are not typical Pauline vocabulary.
The dating implication, Philippians is written c. AD 60-62. If the hymn predates Paul, it represents very-early Christian Christology, within ~25 years of the resurrection.

Combined with 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 (the pre-Pauline gospel creed), Philippians 2:6-11 is a major piece of evidence for early high Christology. The Christological content of the Carmen Christi, pre-existence, full deity, kenosis, exaltation, universal worship, was already in the church's hymnody within a generation of Christ. This refutes the "evolutionary" theory that high Christology developed gradually over the first century. Larry Hurtado (Lord Jesus Christ, 2003) and Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008) develop this case.

Apologetic significance

The verse anchors:

Christ's pre-incarnate full deity, morphē theou, isa theō.
The doctrine of kenosis, Christ's humbling without loss of deity.
Anti-Watchtower Christology, the NWT translates v. 6 as "Christ existed in God's form", but cannot avoid v. 6's isa theō (equality with God) and v. 9-11's Isaiah 45:23 application of YHWH-exclusive worship to Jesus.
Anti-modalism, the Father exalts the Son (v. 9); they are personally distinct.
Anti-Arianism, the pre-incarnate Son is isa theō, not a creature; the morphē theou names essential divinity.
Early high Christology evidence, the hymn's pre-Pauline dating shoots down evolutionary-Christology theories.

Key words

G3444 - morphe, morphē (form / essential nature), appears twice in the hymn
G2758 - kenoo, kenoō (empty), the central kenosis verb
G2316 - theos, theos (God)
G2962 - kyrios, kyrios (Lord), climactic confession
G2472 - isos (pending), isos (equal), the equality-with-God claim

Connection to other passages

John 1.1, John 1.14, Johannine pre-existence + incarnation parallels
Colossians 2.9, theotēs fullness preserved through incarnation
John 17.5, pre-incarnate glory
Isaiah 44.6, Isaiah 45.18, strict monotheism the verse applies to Christ
Isaiah 45:23, directly quoted in vv. 10-11 to apply YHWH-exclusive worship to Christ
Hebrews 2:9, Christ "made for a little while lower than the angels"