Imitating Christ’s Humility

2If 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,
⁶ who, though he was in the form of God,    did not regard equality with God    as something to be exploited,
⁷ but emptied himself,    taking the form of a slave,    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
⁸   he humbled himself    and became obedient to the point of death—    even death on a cross.
⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him    and gave him the name    that is above every name,
¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus    every knee should bend,    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue should confess    that Jesus Christ is Lord,    to the glory of God the Father.

Paul’s lovely encouragement to genuinely communal living is supplemented by what most scholars take as an early Christian hymn, perhaps from the near East. If so, it is a very really example of how the story of Jesus was being encapsulated in brief and striking ways, for the purpose of worship and perhaps, instruction of new converts.In a mediterranean culture where the dominant form of religiosity, seen in mystery cults and in the deification of Roman Emperors was a narrative of the human soul rising to be united with the divine, this is an astonishing counter-cultural utterance wherein Messiah Jesus reveals the true pattern of divinity:

1. He begins as divine

2. Does not snatch at equality with God (unlike Adam, who did.)

3. Empties himself (Gk kenosis) of divinity

4. Takes the form of a slave (a member of a conquered people) as a human being

5. Humbles himself in obedience to God’s will

6. Is killed by crucifixion (the death Romans kept for slaves and rebels)

– so far this depicts the downward mobility of Jesus Messiah. He does this so that he can make God available to the lowest and most sinful.

7. On account of all this, God has raised him to new life and given him his own name (the name of God!)

8. So that all people and cosmic powers may ultimately acknowledge his divinity.

This story undermines the arrogance of powerful nations, traders, emperors, religious leaders and the Adam in everyone. Given that we live in a obseessively upwardly mobile culture, in which material advancement and power over others are openly advocated as the meaning of life, the Christ-hymn has as much relevance to our culture as it did to that of the Philippians. This is what Divinity does: empties itself for those it loves and raises those who have lived in humility to share its life. The splendour of Divinity is the beauty of its self-surrender. Those who desire splendid living should pay close attention.