What it Means to Be God by WESLEY HILL for Christianity Today
GNN Note – It seems not all churches perform the candle lighting ceremony of Advent. The church we are visiting right now does not. It is odd to me that we not celebrate this ceremony during this time of year. / END
An Advent reading for December 19.
Read Philippians 2:5–11.
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One common way of understanding the beautiful hymn of praise to Jesus Christ in Philippians 2:5–11 is that it shows us an utterly incomprehensible paradox: The mighty Son of God, who, together with his Father, brought creation into being, subsequently deigned to become a lowly human being—the equivalent of a powerful monarch being reduced to a scuttling beetle.
This way of reading Philippians 2 emphasizes the mismatch between the Son’s pre-incarnate glory and the humiliation he underwent during his earthly life. The little word though in most English translations has been the vital clue for this interpretation: “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (vv. 6–7, NRSV throughout, emphasis added). Despite sharing equality with God the Father, nevertheless Jesus the Son chose to give up that status for us.
That’s a plausible interpretation of Paul’s words, certainly. But the original language is ambiguous, and it’s possible to translate it differently, leaving out the contrastive connector though. Paul might easily have meant something subtly different: because he was in the form of God, therefore Jesus emptied himself.
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