Philippians - Verse-by-Verse Biblical Exegesis

KW Philp. 2:6 Who has always been and at present continues to subsist in that mode of being in
which He gives outward expression of His essential nature, that of absolute deity, which
expression comes from and is truly representative of His inner being [that of absolute deity], and
who did not after weighing the facts, consider it a treasure to be clutched and retained at all
hazards, this being on an equality with deity [in the expression of the divine essence],
KJV Philippians 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
TRANSLATION HIGHLIGHTS
Verses 6-11 are a soteriological hymn about Jesus Christ. He existed in eternity past (Historical
Present tense) as eternal God, sharing divine essence and divine attributes (Gk: morphe) with the
Father and the Holy Spirit. In spite of being eternal God with divine essence (Concessive Participle),
He did not consider His equalities with the other two members of the Trinity to be a type of treasure
or booty to seize and tenaciously hold onto with both hands. He has always possessed divine
attributes, so there was never a reason for Him to grab them as if they might be taken from Him. The
participle could also be translated as Causal: “because He pre-existed” He does not have to be
concerned about holding onto His deity. As the doctrine of the hypostatic union affirms, He did not
lose His deity when He took the form of man in His humanity. His deity and humanity co-existed in
His unique Person.
REVELANT OPINIONS
This greed is in contrast to the pride of Lucifer at his fall when he pronounced his seven "I Wills," in
Isaiah 14:13. (F.W. Beare) Omnipotent God Himself is the pattern of humility as a virtue. (R.B.
Thieme, Jr.) Tradition and redaction criticism show us that Paul is citing a hymn that he himself has
not composed in Philippians 2:6-11. He does so in order to base the ethical imperatives he is
presenting to the community on the indicative of salvation ... The Christ praised in the hymn would
take only an illusory path from the divine to the human sphere and thence to the sphere of death, in
such a way that He is not in himself affected by this descent at all … Phil. 2:6-11 dedicates an entire
strophe (the first) to Christ’s heavenly preexistence and interprets the subjugation of the angelic
powers and the human world as a heavenly enthronement. (W. Stenger)
It is inconceivable that the essential personality of God may express itself in a mode apprehensible
by the perception of pure spiritual intelligences; but the mode itself is neither apprehensible nor
conceivable by human minds. This mode of expression, this setting of the divine essence, is not
identical with the essence itself, but is identified with it, as its natural and appropriate expression,
answering to it in every particular. It is the perfect expression of a perfect essence. It is not
something imposed from without, but something which proceeds from the very depth of the perfect
being, and into which that being unfolds, as light from fire. To say, then, that Christ was in the form
of God, is to say that He existed as essentially one with God. The expression of deity through human
nature thus has its background in the expression of deity as deity in the eternal ages of God’s being.
Whatever the mode of this expression, it marked the being of Christ in the eternity before creation.
This form, not being identical with the divine essence, but dependent upon it, and necessarily