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Philippians 1:27–2:11
Read Philippians 1:27–2:11 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.
You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross! As a result God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:5–11
Worthy of the Gospel
Paul has finished speaking about his own situation. He turns now to the Philippians’ situation, with a single word of transition: only. Whatever happens to him, whether he lives or dies, whether he sees them again or not, only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.
The verb translated conduct yourselves is a single Greek word, politeuesthe, and it is loaded. It is built on the noun polis (city) and the related noun politeuma (citizenship, civic body). To politeuesthe is to conduct one’s life as a citizen of a particular city. The Philippians, of all people, knew what citizenship meant. They lived in a Roman colony, a city that prized its Roman status, and its citizens prized the legal protections that citizenship carried: no beating without trial, the right of appeal to Caesar, membership in the great civic body that ruled the world. The Philippian magistrates had learned firsthand how seriously Rome took those protections. When Paul, beaten and jailed in their city without a trial, made known that he was a Roman citizen, they were alarmed (Acts 16:37–38). Paul takes this language and turns it. Live as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ, he tells them. Whatever Roman standing you have, you also have a deeper citizenship. And it is the deeper citizenship that should shape the way you walk through your days.
The theme will return later in this letter, in chapter three. Our citizenship, Paul will write, is in heaven. Here in chapter one he is sowing the seed of that idea. The Christians at Philippi are not first Romans who happen to be Christians; they are first Christians who happen to be Romans. And the manner of life that flows from their gospel citizenship will sometimes diverge sharply from the manner of life their Roman citizenship would require of them. They must choose which citizenship comes first. Paul calls them to choose Christ.
What does this citizenship look like in practice? Paul says it shows in two things: standing firm together, and not being frightened. He hopes to hear that they are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, contending side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not being intimidated in any way by your opponents.
The image is athletic and military both. Contending side by side (synathlountes in the Greek) is the verb for athletes in a contest, working as a team. Standing firm is the verb for soldiers holding their ground against a charge. Paul sees the Philippian church as a body of fighters arrayed for battle, holding their position together, refusing to break ranks under pressure. The opposition is real. They have opponents. But the opponents have not yet broken them, and Paul prays that they never will.
And then comes one of the most counterintuitive sentences in the New Testament. It has been granted to you, Paul says, not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him. The verb has been granted (echaristhē) is built on the noun for grace, charis. What has been granted is, literally, what has been graced to them. Suffering for Christ, Paul says, is a grace. It is a gift. It is something God has bestowed on the Philippians as a sign of His favor.
This is not the way the world hears the word grace. Grace, in our ordinary usage, is associated with ease, with favor, with a softer path. Paul reverses it. The grace of God can take the form of suffering for Christ, and when it does, that suffering is not a sign that grace has failed but a sign that grace has come. The same Lord who gives faith gives the privilege of suffering for the faith, and the second gift is no less a gift than the first.
Luther’s theology of the cross holds that God is known in suffering and the cross (Heidelberg Disputation, theses 19–21), and in On the Councils and the Church (1539) Luther even lists “the holy possession of the sacred cross” among the marks by which the church is recognized. The Augsburg Confession defines the church as “the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel” (AC VII 1), and that assembly, gathered around the Crucified, sooner or later bears His cross. We are not given suffering as a punishment for being Christians. We are given suffering as a means by which Christ shapes us into His image.
Paul ends this section by linking the Philippians’ suffering to his own. They are encountering the same conflict, he tells them, the one that you saw me face and now hear that I am facing. The word conflict (agōn) is the word for the athletic struggle in the arena, the contest. Paul and the Philippians are in the same arena. They saw him beaten and imprisoned among them; they have heard of his Roman chains. And now they themselves are running the same race against the same kind of opposition. The body of Christ is one body. What happens to one happens to all.
Same Mind, Same Love
The exhortation continues, and intensifies. If there is any encouragement in Christ, Paul writes, any comfort provided by love, any fellowship in the Spirit, any affection or mercy. Paul piles up four conditional phrases, but the conditionals are not real conditions. He is not asking whether these things are true; he knows they are. He is laying out four reasons that what he is about to ask follows.
There is encouragement in Christ. There is comfort provided by love. There is fellowship in the Spirit, koinōnia pneumatos, the same word from chapter one (there rendered participation), here applied to the Spirit. There is affection and mercy: splanchna kai oiktirmoi, the deep affections and the compassions. All these realities exist among the Philippians. So Paul says: complete my joy and be of the same mind, by having the same love, being united in spirit, and having one purpose.
The fourfold parallel is striking. Same mind. Same love. United in spirit. One purpose. Paul is not asking for theoretical unity. He is asking for the actual experience of a congregation that thinks together, loves together, agrees together, and has its mind set on the same things. This kind of unity is not produced by congregational management techniques. It is produced by a shared participation in Christ that runs deeper than any of the differences His people might bring with them into the room.
And what is the chief threat to such unity? Paul names it directly: selfish ambition or vanity. Instead, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself.
The word selfish ambition (eritheia) is the same word he used in chapter one of the bad-motive preachers in Rome. It is the word for partisan rivalry, for the spirit that wants to win at the expense of others. Vanity (kenodoxia) literally means empty glory, the desire to be thought greater than one is. These are the two great enemies of Christian fellowship. Both of them feed on the self. Both of them produce factions. And Paul’s Greek is blunt: nothing (mēden) is to be done from these motives.
What he commands instead is harder than what he forbids. In humility, they are to treat one another as more important than yourself. Behind the NET’s treat stands the Greek verb hēgeomai, the verb for considering, regarding, counting, accounting. To count others more important is not to feel sentimental affection for them but to make a deliberate accounting in which their interests, their needs, their reputation, their good is placed above one’s own. The humility Paul calls for is not a feeling about oneself. It is a posture toward others.
Each of you should be concerned not only about your own interests, Paul adds, but about the interests of others as well. The word behind be concerned (skopountes) is the verb for fixing one’s eyes on something, scanning the horizon, attending carefully. Each Christian is to scan the horizon for the interests of his fellow Christians, not only his own. The Lutheran teaching of vocation is precisely this: every Christian is placed by God among neighbors, and the work of his vocation is to look after their good. The mother for the child, the husband for the wife, the worker for those he serves, the citizen for the city, the pastor for the flock, the Christian for the brother sitting next to him at the Lord’s Supper. We are placed for one another. The humility Paul commands is the humility appropriate to those who know that their lives are not their own.
The Form of a Slave
And now Paul moves from exhortation to song. You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, he writes. The transition is gentle, but it is also decisive. The unity Paul has been calling for, the humility he has been commanding, the looking-out-for-others he has been describing: all of this has a model and a source. Paul’s Greek can be read two ways, either as the NET takes it, the attitude that Christ Jesus had, or as older translations take it, the mind which is yours in Christ Jesus. Both readings ground the attitude in Christ. On the first, Christ Jesus is the model. On the second, He is also the source: the Philippians already have this mind, because they belong to Him, and Paul is asking them to live what is already true of them.
What follows in verses 6 through 11 is widely considered to be one of the most important Christological passages in the New Testament. Many scholars believe it was an early Christian hymn, perhaps used in worship before Paul ever wrote this letter: a piece of liturgical poetry that Paul takes up and embeds in his exhortation because it says what he most wants to say. We will follow its course in two movements. The first is the descent: God becoming a slave. The second is the ascent: the slave being exalted as Lord.
Who though he existed in the form of God, Paul sings, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. The word form (morphē) does not mean outward shape only; it means the essential character of a thing, the substantial reality. To say that Christ existed in the form of God is to say that He shared the essential reality of God, that He was God in the substantive sense. The Lutheran Confessions (FC SD VIII), and the broader catholic tradition, have always read this verse as a witness to the pre-existence of Christ. Before His incarnation, He existed in the form of God: true God, very God of very God.
And He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped. The Greek word here, harpagmon, has been the subject of much scholarly discussion, but the basic sense is clear. Christ did not regard His divine equality as something to be clutched, hoarded, used for His own advantage. Adam, in the garden, had reached out to grasp at being like God. The Second Adam did the opposite. He did not grasp at what was His by right; He let it go.
But emptied himself, the hymn says, by taking on the form of a slave. The verb emptied himself (ekenōsen) has given a name to one of the most discussed doctrines in Christology, the doctrine of kenosis. What did Christ empty Himself of? The Lutheran tradition, following the witness of the Confessions, has been careful here. Christ did not empty Himself of His divinity. He could not. Divinity is not a coat that can be taken off and put on. What He did was to set aside the full and unrestricted use of His divine prerogatives, taking upon Himself the limitations of a human life, taking, in the Greek phrase, the form of a slave. This is the teaching of the Formula of Concord, which cites Philippians 2:7 (FC Ep VIII; SD VIII); Lutheran theology calls it the state of humiliation, rejecting both the idea that He gave up His divinity and the idea that His humanity was only apparent.
Note the parallel. He existed in the form of God. He took on the form of a slave. The same word, morphē: substantial reality, essential character. He did not appear to be a slave while remaining secretly above servitude. He really was a slave. He really was born as a man. The incarnation was not a divine costume drama. The Son of God genuinely entered into the condition of a slave, with all the limitations that the human condition carried: fatigue, hunger, thirst, sorrow, temptation, the need to learn obedience through what He suffered.
And He did this by looking like other men. Older translations render the participle being born, and the verb behind it (genomenos) is the ordinary word for coming into being. He came in through a womb, like the rest of us. He grew, like the rest of us. He had a body that could be hurt, like the rest of us. The fullness of God dwelt bodily in a body that could be tired at evening and beaten in a courtyard and pierced on a cross.
And by sharing in human nature, the hymn continues. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross! The descent continues. Having taken the form of a slave, He humbled Himself further, obedient to death. And not just any death. Even death on a cross. The Greek word stauros carried a load of horror in the ancient world that we, who wear crosses as jewelry, have to work to recover. Crucifixion was the death reserved for slaves and the worst criminals. It was designed for maximum shame and maximum pain. Cicero said that the very word cross should be kept far not only from a Roman citizen’s body but from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears (Cicero, Pro Rabirio 16). And it was this death that the One who existed in the form of God chose.
The descent is staggering. From the form of God, to the form of a slave, to obedience to death, to the shameful death of the cross. There is no further down to go. Christ has gone to the bottom of every human condition, including the very bottom of human shame and suffering. He has emptied Himself all the way to the cross.
Luther’s insight, in the Heidelberg Disputation (theses 19–20), was that God’s “visible” things are seen only “through suffering and the cross.” The God who is hidden in suffering is revealed precisely there: not on a throne but on a cross, not in glory but in obedience to death. The theology of the cross has its scriptural home here, in this hymn. We do not look for God in places of human strength. We look for God where He has shown Himself: in the form of a slave, in obedience to death, on a cross.
Every Knee Will Bow
Then the hymn turns. The descent has reached its bottom; now the ascent begins. As a result God highly exalted him, the hymn says, and gave him the name that is above every name.
The words as a result matter (older translations say therefore). The exaltation follows from the humiliation. It is not a separate movement, unconnected to what came before. It is the divine response to the obedience that went all the way to the cross. Because He humbled Himself, God highly exalted Him. The cross is the path to the crown.
The verb highly exalted (hyperupsōsen) is a compound word, an emphatic intensification. It means super-exalted, exalted above everything. And the gift God gives Him is the name that is above every name. What name is this? Many in the Lutheran tradition have read it as the divine name itself: the name Lord, the Greek translation of the unspeakable name of God in the Old Testament. The name Lord, when used of Jesus in the New Testament, is not merely a polite title. It is the divine name applied to the crucified Son. The One who emptied Himself to the cross is now called by the name that is above every name, the name God Himself bore from eternity. The exaltation does not make Jesus God; He always was. It is the incarnate Son, according to His human nature, openly receiving and using the majesty that was His from His conception (FC SD VIII).
And what is the universal response? At the name of Jesus, the hymn declares, every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Three realms are named. In heaven: the angels and the saints already gathered there. On earth: every human being, living or yet to live. Under the earth: the dead, the demons, every power that has ever set itself against God. All of them, every one, will bow at the name of Jesus.
Paul is alluding to Isaiah 45. There the LORD declares: Surely every knee will bow to me, every tongue will solemnly affirm. The God of Israel says, every knee will bow to me. And here Paul applies the prophecy to Jesus. The knees that will bow before the LORD of Israel are the knees that will bow before Jesus, because Jesus is the LORD. The hymn does not flinch at making this identification. The man who hung on the cross is the God before whom every knee bows.
And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The confession is universal. Every tongue. And the content of the confession is the great Christian confession itself: Jesus Christ is Lord, Kyrios Iēsous Christos. This was the earliest Christian creed, very likely the baptismal confession of the first century (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3), the confession that distinguished Christians from their neighbors in Caesar’s empire, where the only Lord recognized by the state was Caesar himself. The Christians said: there is only one Lord, and His name is Jesus. They said it knowing the cost. They said it because Jesus is Lord whether the rest of the world is willing to confess it or not.
And the confession is to the glory of God the Father. The end of the hymn turns back to the beginning. The exaltation of the Son is not at the expense of the Father’s glory but for it. The Father is glorified when the Son is exalted; the Son is exalted to glorify the Father. The Trinitarian harmony of the gospel runs through this hymn. The Son humbled Himself in obedience to the Father; the Father highly exalted the Son; the Spirit is the One in whom believers receive the confession that Jesus is Lord; and the whole movement is to the glory of God the Father.
This is the mind Paul wants the Philippians to have among themselves. Not because they will be required to die on crosses for one another, though some of them might. The mind of Christ is the mind that does not grasp, that does not stand on its rights, that empties itself for the sake of others, that obeys to the end, that trusts the Father to exalt at the right time and in the right way. This is what Paul is calling the Philippians to. And it is what Paul is calling us to.
The connection between humility and exaltation is not magical. It is the pattern of the gospel itself. The one who is willing to be the servant of all is, by the same gospel that called him to that service, on his way to being raised with Christ. We do not seize at our own exaltation. We let it go. We empty ourselves for the brother and the sister beside us. And we trust that the same God who exalted His Son will, in His good time, exalt every member of His Son’s body, when the day of Christ has come.
Gathering the Threads
Philippians 1:27–2:11 is, in a sense, the heart of this letter. The exhortation to live worthy of the gospel and to be of one mind in humility is grounded in the most stunning passage of Christology in all of Paul. The ethic of the church is the ethic of the Christ Hymn. The mind we are to have toward one another is the mind that Christ first had toward us.
Several Lutheran themes have come into sharp focus. The two states of Christ, the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation, are given their classic biblical formulation in this passage. The Formula of Concord’s article on the person of Christ draws on this hymn (FC SD VIII). The Son of God who was in the form of God did not cease to be in the form of God when He took the form of a slave; both forms are real, both forms are His, and the wonder of the gospel is that the same Person who is true God is also true Man, humiliated to the cross and exalted to the throne.
The theology of the cross is also fully present. The path to the throne ran through the cross. There is no other path. God’s way of dealing with the world has been, from before the foundation of the world, to come down to it, to empty Himself for it, to be obedient to it even to the point of death, and only then to be exalted over it. Every theology that wants exaltation without humiliation, glory without the cross, has missed the gospel.
What later theologians call the indicative grounding the imperative is at work in this passage. Paul does not exhort the Philippians to humility and then leave them to manufacture humility on their own. He grounds the call in the work of Christ. You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had: the attitude is anchored in Christ Himself, and on one reading of the Greek it is already theirs in Christ Jesus. The mind is theirs already, because Christ is theirs already. They have only to live what they already are.
And the doctrine of vocation peers through the seams of the passage (AC XVI). Each Christian is to look not only to his own interests but to the interests of others. Each Christian, in his vocation, is placed for the good of his neighbors. Each Christian’s daily life is the place where the mind of Christ is to take visible shape, not in dramatic acts but in the small, daily counting of others more important than oneself.
Above all, this passage teaches us the name of the One in whose service we live. He is the One who existed in the form of God and emptied Himself. He is the One who took the form of a slave and was obedient to the cross. He is the One whom God highly exalted, before whom every knee will bow and whom every tongue will confess. He is Jesus Christ, our Lord, to the glory of God the Father. To live worthy of the gospel is to live worthy of Him.
For Discussion
The Christ Hymn at the center of this session is one of the most exalted passages in the New Testament, and Paul places it in the middle of an exhortation about how Christians should treat one another. The questions below invite you to let the hymn shape both your worship of Christ and your life among His people.
Paul tells the Philippians that suffering for Christ has been granted to them, that it is, in his vocabulary, a grace and a gift. How does that reframe the way you think about the difficulties you have experienced for your faith, large or small? Where have you been tempted to see Christian suffering as a sign that something is wrong rather than as a sign of grace?
Paul commands the Philippians to treat one another as more important than themselves. The verb (hēgeomai) means to count or regard: not to feel it, but to count it, to make a deliberate accounting. In what concrete relationships in your life is this counting most difficult for you, and what would change in those relationships if you actually did it?
The Christ Hymn moves through a descent, from the form of God to the form of a slave to death on a cross. What does it mean that the God who saves us is a God who came all the way down to this place? How does the descent of Christ change your image of what God is like?
Christ emptied himself. The Lutheran tradition has been careful to say He did not empty Himself of His divinity but of the full and unrestricted use of His divine prerogatives. Why does this distinction matter for our understanding of who Jesus is and what He accomplished on the cross?
The hymn ends with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord. This will be a universal acknowledgment, whether willing or unwilling. What difference does it make to confess Him as Lord now, in this life, while the confession is still a free act of faith? How does that confession shape your daily life and your relationships with those who do not yet share it?
Paul places the Christ Hymn in the middle of an exhortation about getting along with one another. What does it tell us about the gospel that the apostle’s deepest teaching about who Christ is appears as the ground of an ethical appeal? How does this connection, the highest Christology grounding the most practical ethic, shape the way you read other parts of the New Testament?
Looking Ahead
In Session 4 we move into Philippians 2:12–30, where Paul takes the implications of the Christ Hymn into the daily life of the Philippian church. He will call them to continue working out their salvation with awe and reverence (traditionally rendered fear and trembling), on the ground that it is God who is bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort for His good pleasure. He will commend Timothy as a son who has served the gospel with his father, and Epaphroditus as a brother who came close to death for the sake of the work of Christ. That passage shows what it looks like when the mind of Christ takes shape in concrete Christian lives.
Read Philippians 2:12–30 before our next session.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, who though You existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Yourself, taking on the form of a slave; who became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross: grant to us, Your people, the mind that was Yours. Teach us to treat others as more important than ourselves. Teach us to look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of those You have placed beside us. Free us from selfish ambition and from empty glory. And bring us, at last, with every knee that will bow before You and every tongue that will confess You Lord, into the praise of Your name and the joy of Your Father. Amen.