Jesus - Being in the Form of God

Philippians 2:5-8

5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Paul spent the first part of chapter two encouraging us to be concerned about the needs of others. We are to be concerned more for their needs then our own even. But how is that possible? It flies in the face of our human nature. Can we humans really do that? Yes! It is possible by having the mind of Christ.

Paul is encourages us to adopt the mind of Christ in verse 8. From the context of this passage, it would seem that the particular attitude of Christ that Paul wants us to adopt is the attitude of humility. You can see this in verse 8. But how did Christ demonstrate a humble attitude?

As the second person of the triune Godhead from eternity past, He condescended first to be born a human. Even in His birth, He wasn’t born as a king in a Caesar’s palace, but He was born into poverty as a baby in Bethlehem, born in a stable, to live a life of poverty on earth without anywhere to lay his head, and to die on the cross to provide redemption for you and I. And He did it all out of His great love for us.

If Jesus could do that, and we have His mind, why should we have this much trouble treating other people like we should? Why should we have trouble esteeming others better than ourselves and looking out for their interests? We just need to follow the example of Jesus.

As Paul Rees writes:

“Don’t forget,” cries Paul, “That in all this wide universe and in all the dim reaches of history there has never been such a demonstration of self-effacing humility as when the Son of God in sheer grace descended to this errant planet! Remember that never – that never in a million eons – would he have done it if He were the kind of deity that looks ‘only to His own interests’ and closes His eyes to the interests of others.”

Amen! Jesus was willing to give up living in the opulence of heaven, basking in the glory and adoration of myriads of angels who flooded His presence with adoring praise, existing as the second person in the Triune Godhead, all to become a man – AMAZING! He was born into a peasant family to be despised, and misunderstood, to be abused, rejected, cursed, and crucified. That is the ultimate in humility. And He humbled Himself willingly. And He did it fully aware of the outcome without any grumbling and complaining, but with sheer joy.

Hebrews 12:2 says:

“Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

What an example for us to follow. And this is exactly what Paul has asked us to do. If you are a believer, Christ lives in you. So you can do this if you let Christ live in and through you.

Let’s look more closely at His example: First Paul starts with Christ’s condition in heaven before he came, and he forcefully conveys that Christ was God: Philippians 2:6 affirms Christ’s deity, “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.”

Now, some people try to say, “Oh, look, Jesus just had the form of God. He wasn’t really God. He just tried to look like God.”

Don’t be ridiculous! This has nothing to do with the shape, size or composition of God, nor of Christ trying to take on the form of something that He was not. Jesus wasn’t just sort of like God, He was God. If you have the form of a worm, you’re a worm. If you have the form of a man, you’re a man. If you have the form of God, you are God.

The word translated as “being,” or “existed,” in the New American Standard version, denotes the continuance of a previous state or existence. It stresses the essence of a person’s nature. It talks about that which is absolutely unalterable, inalienable, and unchangeable.

William Barclay writes that this verb refers to “that part of a [person] which, in any circumstance, remains the same.” Jesus, being in the form of God, is a constant, because Jesus was always God and always will be God.

The word “form” is morphe in Greek, as in metamorphosis – The changing of forms as in a butterfly. But whether the butterfly is an egg, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, or a butterfly, the thing is always a butterfly. It always has the same existence – the same DNA. The Greek word, morphe, refers to the essential form that never altars. Jesus is, always has been, and always will be God whether in His exalted state in heaven or His humble state as a man.

That’s the same truth that John wrote about in His Gospel. John 1:1-2 states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

And who was the Word? John 1:14 answers the question, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Bible affirms it - Jesus is God.

That’s why Paul was stressing the deity of Christ in verse 6, and why Jesus was fully aware of His deity. Philippians 2:6 asserts He “did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.”

Do you understand the meaning of this? If I tried to pretend to be something I wasn’t, like a king, a doctor, a lawyer, or something, that would be robbery. It would be trying to take something that wasn’t mine. Jesus didn’t have to “consider it robbery to be equal with God,” because He was God. You can’t steal what you own.

The New American Standard puts a different slant on this, and one that is almost harder to understand because it seems to be saying the opposite of what it should say. It translates this as, “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” You might think that means that He didn’t dare try to grasp equality with God - that it would be too far out of His reach. But that’s wrong. This isn’t talking about grabbing something you don’t have, it is talking about letting go of something you do have. The word refers to clinging tightly to something.

The idea is, Jesus didn’t think that hanging on to that equality was something that He had to cling tightly to. He didn’t have to hang on to His position. There wasn’t any danger of His losing His place if he went on this mission to earth. There was no danger that He might not do a good enough job, or that there was a somebody waiting in the wings to take His place, like Michael or Gabriel just waiting their chance. Being equal with God was totally, irrevocably His because He was God. He always was and always will be. He didn’t have to go to school to become the Son of God, and he wasn’t promoted up from a lesser position. He was totally, irrevocably God.

That freedom allowed Him to participate in the incarnation giving up the prerogatives of heaven to come to earth because, face it, there is only one way for God to go, and that is down. But Jesus didn’t have to worry about that because He knew He was going back up.