Commentary on Philippians 2:1-13

Philippians 2:1-13

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 

⁶who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

⁷but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

⁸he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.

⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

¹¹and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

¹²Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

(Note: some of these verses – in particular, 5 through11 -- are part of the Palm Sunday liturgy.)

Well, this just about sums it all up, doesn’t it? If we want to be Christ-like, we have to be humble and completely self-effacing. It’s in the very nature of who we understand Christ to be, and that the Pauline epistles do such a good job of reminding us: one who was the greatest became a humble human, and not just a human but a peasant in the farthest, out-of-the-way occupied corner of a vast and relentless empire. Jesus faced rejection again and again, even to the point of being accused of being a rebel and blasphemer and dying for it.

At verse 7, Paul speaks of Jesus “emptying himself” of all his rightful honor and glory due to him as the Son of God, and choosing to be born lowly as a human. The Greek term for this is “kenosis,” and this section of Philippians is known as “the kenosis hymn.”

Kenosis is emptying ourselves of our willfulness, all of our prerogatives for self- aggrandizement, and becoming completely obedient to God. For Jesus, this means giving up all of the power he could wield as the Son of God, all of his ability to simply say “NO!” and being obedient to God’s will. As Christians, we seek to emulate Christ’s humanity as much as possible, and we are also called to obedience and humility—and after all, we have a lot more to be humble about!

This is an act of obedience, of bending our human will to the will of God. Discipleship leads to paradox—being humble will lead to exaltation, the last shall be first, the youngest will triumph over the eldest. We see this pattern over and over again in scriptures, and we’ve noted it several times this year.

The final two verses remind us that discipleship has to be oriented to doing God’s will, not our own. It’s too easy to fall into the belief that Jesus, God incarnate, is just like us rather than trying to be more like Him.

In one of my classes this week, we were talking about this quote from Anne Lamott:

That’s always been one of the main challenges in Christianity. We anthropomorphize God, turning that whole “made in God’s image” thing from Genesis on its head. We don’t need a God who is more like us. We need to be a people who are more like God. And the good news is, we already have a template: God has lived among us as one of us, and God continues to live among us. And as self-proclaimed members of the Body of Christ, there is our charge. Even though it is clear, it certainly is not easy. Transformation never is. Transformation, both of ourselves and of our world, requires work, and that starts with the will to do it (v. 13).

May we have the will to do the work. May we allow God to be at work in us, so that we may do God’s work in the world.