Philippians 2:6

Philippians 2:6, in plain English

Jesus existed in complete equality with God—He had everything, absolute power and glory—yet He didn't clutch it, didn't insist on holding onto what was His.

Why it's here

This is profound theology written simply. In the Greek world where Philippians was read, people understood glory and honor as things you fight to protect. Paul is saying Jesus did the opposite.

Who's speaking

Paul, quoting or referencing an early Christian hymn

Where it sits in the story

This is the heart of who Jesus is—fully divine, fully God, yet willing to surrender His rights. It's the foundation for understanding the incarnation and why Jesus came in human form.

The scholarly reading

Christ, though existing in God's very form and possessing rightful equality with the Father, did not treat that equality as a prize to be jealously guarded or exploited.

Language and setting

The hymn employs morphē (form, essential nature) twice—once of God, once of a servant—suggesting not mere appearance but ontological reality. The phrase harpagmon hegesato (grasped/counted as plunder) echoes Adam's grasping for divine knowledge in Genesis 3. Early Christians saw in Christ the reversal of Adam's sin—obedience instead of grasping.

Voice

Paul, quoting or paraphrasing pre-Pauline hymnic material

Significance

This presents Christ as the eschatological Adam (cf. Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15), the new humanity that undoes the fall's trajectory. His non-grasping stands in radical contrast to human sin's fundamental movement—the prideful seizure of what isn't rightfully ours.

4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus:

6Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross.

Read all of Philippians 2 — The most important hymn in the New Testament. Christ emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, and went all the way to death.