JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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Thus Christ, as a lawful and true representative of the Father, triumphed in the power of
the Father, opening the way not only to salvation from sin and death, but to the rights and
privileges of the kingdom of heaven for all who follow Him.
As a true representative of the human race and as a wholly obedient Son of God the
Father, Jesus never acted independently during His earthly ministry. Everything He did He
drew from His Father's power (Jn 5:19-20; 14:10-12), wisdom (7:16; 8:26-28,40), and in perfect
harmony with His Father's will (Mk 14:35-39; Jn 6:38; 8:29; Heb 10:5-9). In this voluntary
limitation of dependence, He lived (as His followers must live) by faith (Mt 3:14-15; Heb 2:9-
18; 3:1-2), died in faith (5:7-9; Col 1:18-23; Php 2:8-11), and rose again by faith (Mt 16:21; Eph
1:17-23).
Just as no one can rightfully conclude that Jesus became less than man because He chose
to become man's servant (Mk 10:45), so no one should conclude that Jesus was less than God
because He subjected Himself to the Father while on earth.
The point of the passage is that Jesus did not treat His equality with God as an excuse for
self-assertion or self-aggrandizement. Rather He treated it as an occasion for renouncing every
right and advantage that was possessed by Him and saw it as an opportunity for selfimpoverishment
and undeserved self-sacrifice.
Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance, interpret this passage to mean that Christ, because He
was ever aware that He was not "almighty God," had a "form" of God in the sense that He was a
spirit creature before He became a man, but that He would never dare even to think that He could
"seize" the status of being a member of a Godhead from God the Father. Instead, Jesus humbly
surrendered His life to be a ransom sacrifice—"a Lamb without blemish"—a perfect sacrifice—
on our behalf.
This interpretation is clearly contradicted by the context of the passage. The overriding
theme of Philippians 2:1-11 is humility. Paul admonishes the Christians at Philippi to be humble
toward each other, even to the point of acting as though their brothers and sisters were better
than themselves. After all, argues Paul, consider the supreme example of humility in the person
and work of Jesus Christ.
The point is that Jesus, although He was exactly equal to the Father as to His divine
nature, humbled Himself to the Father's will. In the same way, although He was exactly equal to
any other person as to His human nature, He humbled Himself to all humanity by enduring the
cross on our behalf. It is not humility to submit to one to whom you are intrinsically inferior.
That would be mere acknowledgement of fact. True humility comes from a voluntary
submission which is based on intrinsic equality. A good translation that would clearly point this
out would be: