From: Philippians 2:1-11
Unity and Humility
[1] So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love,
any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy,
[2] complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind. [3] Do nothing from selfishness
or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves.
[4] Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the
interests of others.
Hymn in Praise of Christ's Self-emptying
[5] Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus,
[6] who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with
God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied Himself, taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of men. [8] And being found in
human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even
death on a cross. [9] Therefore God has highly exalted Him and
bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, [10] that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on earth and under
the earth, [11] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father.
Commentary:
1-4. Verse 1 begins with a very awkwardly constructed clause, which the
New Vulgate and the RSV translate literally. It is a conditional,
rhetorical clause, rather than an affirmative statement, and its
meaning is clarified by the rest of the sentence.
St Paul is making an affectionate appeal to the Christian good sense of
the faithful; he seems to be saying: "If you want to console me in
Christ, complete my joy by paying attention to the advice I am now
going to give you" (cf. St Thomas Aquinas, "Commentary on Phil, ad
loc.").
The Apostle recommends that they should always act humbly and with an
upright intention (vv. 3-4) if they want charity to reign among them
(v. 2). In their work and social life ordinary Christians should be
upright in all their dealings. They should go about everything, even
apparently unimportant things, in a humble way, doing them for God. But
they should also remember that their behavior has an effect on others.
"Don't forget that you are also in the presence of men, and that they
expect from you, from you personally, a Christian witness. Thus, as
regards the human dimension of our job, we must work in such a way that
we will not feel ashamed when those who know us and love us see us at
our work, nor give them cause to feel embarrassed" ([St] J. Escriva,
"Friends of God", 66).
This fact that our behavior can encourage others and set a headline for
them means that we need to act very responsibly: "Let us try therefore,
brethren," St Augustine says, "not only to be good but to conduct
ourselves well in the eyes of others. Let us try to see that there is
nothing that our conscience upbraids us for, and also, bearing in mind
our weakness, do all that we can, to avoid disedifying our less mature
brother" ("Sermon 47", 14).
3-11. Verse 3 exhorts us to see others as better than ourselves. Our
Lord, although he was our superior in all respects, did not see his
divinity as something to boast about before men (v. 6). In fact, he
humbled himself and emptied himself (vv. 7-8), was not motivated by
conceit or selfishness (cf. v. 3), did not look to his own interests
(cf. v. 4), and "became obedient unto death" (v. 8), thereby carrying
out the Father's plan for man's salvation. By reflecting on his example
we shall come to see that suffering for Christ is a sign of salvation
(cf. 1:28-29): after undergoing the sufferings of his passion and
death, Christ was publicly exalted above all creation (cf. vv. 9-11).
Our Lord offers us a perfect example of humility. "The coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Scepter of God's Majesty, was in no pomp of
pride and haughtiness--as it could so well have been--but in
self-abasement [...]. You see, dear friends, what an example we have
been given. If the Lord humbled himself in this way, what ought we to
do, who through him have come under the yoke of his guidance?" (St
Clement of Rome, "Letter to the Corinthians", 13).
3-4. "'In every man,' writes St Thomas Aquinas, 'there are some
grounds for others to look on him as superior, according to the
Apostle's words, "Each of us must have the humility to think others
better men than himself" (Phil 2:3). It is in this spirit that all men
are bound to honor one another' ("Summa Theologiae", II-II, q. 103,
a. 2). Humility is the virtue that teaches us that signs of respect for
others--their good name, their good faith, their privacy--are not
external conventions, but the first expressions of charity and justice.
"Christian charity cannot confine itself to giving things or money to
the needy. It seeks, above all, to respect and understand each person
for what he is, in his intrinsic dignity as a man and child of God" ([St] J.
Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 72).
5. The Apostle's recommendation, "'Have this mind among yourselves,
which was in Christ Jesus', requires all Christians, so far as human
power allows, to reproduce in themselves the sentiments that Christ had
when he was offering himself in sacrifice--sentiments of humility, of
adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to the divine majesty. It requires
them also to become victims, as it were; cultivating a spirit of
self-denial according to the precepts of the Gospel, willingly doing
works of penance, detesting and expiating their sins. It requires us
all, in a word, to die mystically with Christ on the Cross, so that we
may say with the same Apostle: 'I have been crucified with Christ' (Gal
2:19)" (Pius XII, "Mediator Dei", 22).
6-11. In what he says about Jesus Christ, the Apostle is not simply
proposing Him as a model for us to follow. Possibly transcribing an
early liturgical hymn (and) adding some touches of his own, he
is--under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit--giving a very profound
exposition of the nature of Christ and using the most sublime truths of
faith to show the way Christian virtues should be practised.
This is one of the earliest New Testament texts to reveal the divinity
of Christ. The epistle was written around the year 62 (or perhaps
before that, around 55) and if we remember that the hymn of Philippians
2:6-11 may well have been in use prior to that date, the passage
clearly bears witness to the fact that Christians were proclaiming,
even in those very early years, that Jesus, born in Bethlehem,
crucified, died and buried, and risen from the dead, was truly both God
and man.
The hymn can be divided into three parts. The first (verses 6 and the
beginning of 7) refers to Christ's humbling Himself by becoming man.
The second (the end of verse 7 and verse 8) is the center of the whole
passage and proclaims the extreme to which His humility brought Him: as
man He obediently accepted death on the cross. The third part (verses
9-11) describes His exaltation in glory. Throughout St. Paul is
conscious of Jesus' divinity: He exists from all eternity. But he
centers his attention on His death on the cross as the supreme example
of humility. Christ's humiliation lay not in His becoming a man like
us and cloaking the glory of His divinity in His sacred humanity: it
also brought Him to lead a life of sacrifice and suffering which
reached its climax on the cross, where He was stripped of everything He
had, like a slave. However, now that He has fulfilled His mission, He
is made manifest again, clothed in all the glory that befits His divine
nature and which His human nature has merited.
The man-God, Jesus Christ, makes the cross the climax of His earthly
life; through it He enters into His glory as Lord and Messiah. The
Crucifixion puts the whole universe on the way to salvation.
Jesus Christ gives us a wonderful example of humility and obedience.
"We should learn from Jesus' attitude in these trials," Monsignor
Escriva reminds us. "During His life on earth He did not even want the
glory that belonged to Him. Though He had the right to be treated as
God, He took the form of a servant, a slave (cf. Philippians 2:6-7).
And so the Christian knows that all glory is due God and that he must
not use the sublimity and greatness of the Gospel to further his own
interests or human ambitions.
"We should learn from Jesus. His attitude in rejecting all human glory
is in perfect balance with the greatness of His unique mission as the
beloved Son of God who becomes incarnate to save men" ("Christ Is
Passing By", 62).
6-7. "Though He was in the form of God" or "subsisting in the form of
God": "form" is the external aspect of something and manifests what it
is. When referring to God, who is invisible, His "form" cannot refer
to things visible to the senses; the "form of God" is a way of
referring to Godhead. The first thing that St. Paul makes clear is
that Jesus Christ is God, and was God before the Incarnation. As the
"Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed" professes it, "the only-begotten Son
of God, born of the Father before time began, light from light, true
God from true God."
"He did not count equality with God as something to be grasped": the
Greek word translated as "equality" does not directly refer to equality
of nature but rather the equality of rights and status. Christ was God
and He could not stop being God; therefore, He had a right to be
treated as God and to appear in all His glory. However, He did not
insist on this dignity of His as if it were a treasure which He
possessed and which was legally His: it was not something He clung to
and boasted about. And so He took "the form of a servant". He could
have become man without setting His glory aside--He could have appeared
as He did, momentarily, as the Transfiguration (cf. Matthew 17:1ff);
instead He chose to be like men, in all things but sin (cf. verse 7).
By becoming man in the way He did, He was able, as Isaiah prophesied in
the Song of the Servant of Yahweh, to bear our sorrows and to be
stricken (cf. Isaiah 53:4).
"He emptied Himself", He despoiled Himself: this is literally what the
Greek verb means. But Christ did not shed His divine nature; He simply
shed its glory, its aura; if He had not done so it would have shone out
through His human nature. From all eternity He exists as God and from
the moment of the Incarnation He began to be man. His self-emptying
lay not only in the fact that the Godhead united to Himself (that is,
to the person of the Son) something which was corporeal and finite (a
human nature), but also in the fact that this nature did not itself
manifest the divine glory, as it "ought" to have done. Christ could
not cease to be God, but He could temporarily renounce the exercise of
rights that belonged to Him as God--which was what He did.
Verses 6-8 bring the Christian's mind the contrast between Jesus and
Adam. The devil tempted Adam, a mere man, to "be like God" (Genesis
3:5). By trying to indulge this evil desire (pride is a disordered
desire for self-advancement) and by committing the sin of disobeying
God (cf. Genesis 3:6), Adam drew down the gravest misfortunes upon
himself and on his whole line (present potentially in him): this is
symbolized in the Genesis passage by his expulsion from Paradise and
by the physical world's rebellion against his lordship (cf. Genesis
3:16-24). Jesus Christ, on the contrary, who enjoyed divine glory
from all eternity, "emptied Himself": He chooses the way of humility,
the opposite way to Adam's (opposite, too, to the way previously
taken by the devil). Christ's obedience thereby makes up for the
disobedience of the first man; it puts mankind in a position to more
than recover the natural and supernatural gifts with which God endowed
human nature at the Creation. And so, after focusing on the amazing
mystery of Christ's humiliation or self-emptying ("kenosis" in Greek),
this hymn goes on joyously to celebrate Christ's exaltation after
death.
Christ's attitude in becoming man is, then, a wonderful example of
humility. "What is more humble", St. Gregory of Nyssa asks, "than the
King of all creation entering into communion with our poor nature? The
King of kings and Lord of lords clothes Himself with the form of our
enslavement; the Judge of the universe comes to pay tribute to the
princes of this world; the Lord of creation is born in a cave; He who
encompasses the world cannot find room in the inn...; the pure and
incorrupt one puts on the filthiness of our nature and experiences all
our needs, experiences even death itself" ("Oratio I In
Beatitudinibus").
This self-emptying is an example of God's infinite goodness in taking
the initiative to meet man: "Fill yourselves with wonder and gratitude
at such a mystery and learn from it. All the power, all the majesty,
all the beauty, all the infinite harmony of God, all His great and
immeasurable riches. God whole and entire was hidden for our benefit
in the humanity of Christ. The Almighty appears determined to eclipse
His glory for a time, so as to make it easy for His creatures to
approach their Redeemer." ([St] J. Escriva, "Friends of God",
111).
8. Jesus Christ became man "for us men and for our salvation", we
profess in the Creed. Everything He did in the course of His life had
a salvific value; His death on the cross represents the climax of His
redemptive work for, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says, "He did not
experience death due to the fact of being born; rather, He took birth
upon Himself in order to die" ("Oratio Catechetica Magna", 32).
Our Lord's obedience to the Father's saving plan, involving as it did
death on the cross, gives us the best of all lessons in humility. For,
in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, "obedience is the sign of true
humility" ("Commentary on Phil., ad loc."). In St. Paul's time death
by crucifixion was the most demeaning form of death, for it was
inflicted only on criminals. By becoming obedient "unto death, even
death on a cross", Jesus was being humble in the extreme. He was
perfectly within His rights to manifest Himself in all His divine
glory, but He chose instead the route leading to the most ignominious
of deaths.
His obedience, moreover, was not simply a matter of submitting to the
Father's will, for, as St. Paul points out, He made Himself obedient:
His obedience was active; He made the Father's salvific plans His own.
He chose voluntarily to give Himself up to crucifixion in order to
redeem mankind. "Debasing oneself when one is forced to do so is not
humility", St. John Chrysostom explains; "humility is present when one
debases oneself without being obliged to do so" ("Hom. on Phil., ad
loc.").
Christ's self-abasement and his obedience unto death reveals His love
for us, for "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends" (John 15:13). His loving initiative merits a
loving response on our part: we should show that we desire to be one
with Him, for love "seeks union, identification with the beloved.
United to Christ, we will be drawn to imitate His life of dedication,
His unlimited love and His sacrifice unto death. Christ brings us face
to face with the ultimate choice: either we spend our life in selfish
isolation, or we devote ourselves and all our energies to the service
of others" ([St] J. Escriva, "Friends of God", 236).
9-11. "God highly exalted Him": the Greek compounds the notion of
exaltation, to indicate the immensity of His glorification. Our Lord
Himself foretold this when He said, "He who humbles himself will be
exalted" (Luke 14:11).
Christ's sacred humanity was glorified as a reward for His
humiliation. The Church's Magisterium teaches that Christ's
glorification affects his human nature only, for "in the form of God
the Son was equal to the Father, and between the Begetter and the
Only-begotten there was no difference in essence, no difference in
majesty; nor did the Word, through the mystery of incarnation, lose
anything which the Father might later return to Him as a gift" ([Pope]
St. Leo the Great, "Promisisse Me Memini", Chapter 8). Exaltation is
public manifestation of the glory which belongs to Christ's humanity by
virtue of its being joined to the divine person of the Word. This
union to the "form of a servant" (cf. verse 7) meant an immense act of
humility on the part of the Son, but it led to the exaltation of the
human nature He took on.
For the Jews the "name that is above every name" is the name of God
(Yahweh), which the Mosaic Law required to be held in particular awe.
Also, they regarded a name given to someone, especially if given by
God, as not just a way of referring to a person but as expressing
something that belonged to the very core of his personality.
Therefore, the statement that God "bestowed on Him the name which is
above every name" means that God the Father gave Christ's human nature
the capacity to manifest the glory of divinity which was His by virtue
of the hypostatic union: therefore, it is to be worshipped by the
entire universe.
St. Paul describes the glorification of Jesus Christ in terms similar
to those used by the prophet Daniel of the Son of Man: "To Him was
given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and
languages should serve His Kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed"
(Daniel 7:14). Christ's lordship extends to all created things.
Sacred Scripture usually speaks of "heaven and earth" when referring to
the entire created universe; by mentioning here the underworld it is
emphasizing that nothing escapes His dominion. Jesus Christ can here
be seen as the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy about the universal
sovereignty of Yahweh: "To Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall
swear" (Isaiah 45:23). All created things come under His sway, and men
are duty-bound to accept the basic truth of Christian teaching: "Jesus
Christ is Lord." The Greek word "Kyrios" used here by St. Paul is the
word used by the Septuagint, the early Greek version of the Old
Testament, to translate the name of God ("Yahweh"). Therefore, this
sentence means "Jesus Christ is God."
The Christ proclaimed here as having been raised on high is the man-God
who was born and died for our sake, attaining the glory of His
exaltation after undergoing the humiliation of the cross. In this also
Christ sets us an example: we cannot attain the glory of Heaven unless
we understand the supernatural value of difficulties, ill-health and
suffering: these are manifestations of Christ's cross present in our
ordinary life. "We have to die to ourselves and be born again to a new
life. Jesus Christ obeyed in this way, even unto death on a cross
(Philippians 2:18); that is why God exalted Him. If we obey God's
will, the cross will mean our own resurrection and exaltation.
Christ's life will be fulfilled step by step in our own lives. It will
be said of us that we have tried to be good children of God, who went
about doing good in spite of our weakness and personal shortcomings, no
matter how many" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 21).
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.