Christ Emptied Himself

Today I wish to look briefly at Philippians 2:5-11 with an eye towards its Christological focus.

The focus of this very important passage is the attitude of Christ Jesus, its manifestation, and its result.  It begins “Have this attitude … which was … in Christ Jesus.”  The passage also expresses the preexistence of Christ (v 6) as He existed in the “form” of God which must have been Spirit (John 4:24).  Christ’s attitude was one of submission to the Divine plan which included His empting Himself.  The question becomes of what did He empty Himself of?  From our text “emptied Himself” (v 7) from the Greek ‘Kenoo’ meaning, “to make empty” and is a description of the process of God’s incarnation also known as Kenosis.  

Some maintain that God, when becoming a man, divested Himself of some of His attributes.  That is, God subtracting some qualities of deity to become a man.  The Kenosis they espouse then jeopardizes the true incarnation because it puts in doubt the full indwelling of God among men in the person of Jesus.  However, God’s immutability negates the very possibility of change meaning that if God removed any of His attributes He would in turn cease to be God.

Therefore and contrariwise, He is fully God and fully man.  He is God with “all the rights and privileges” this entails.  He was fully man with all of the human limitations of a body of flesh…Yet with out sin or a sin nature.  As to ‘Kenoo’ His “empting Himself,” it was of His position with the Father that He empted Himself of, for He left Heaven, to humble Himself by taking on the likeness of sinful flesh and subjugated Himself to God the Father and to sinful man.  

As such, He exemplifies to us a model of submission to higher authority and for that God the Father has exalted Him (v 9) Kurios – “supreme in authority” LORD (v 11).  This process created, as one esteemed scholar states, Two natures, Two wills, Two minds, and Two modes of presence.  As Ryrie notes though, the “empting” process was necessitated that He may add humanity which is the overriding theme of the passage and not of what He emptied Himself of.  

Hypostatic Union

Within the nature of Christ one must address the nature of the relationship between Jesus the man and Christ "the" God.  This brings us to a term not often heard call the Hypostatic Union which being defined is:

Hypostatic (adj), from hypostasis (n) meaning the essence or reality of something.  Therefore hypostatic describes the type of union which exists between Christ Jesus’ deity and His humanity at its very core.  It is not accurate to describe this in a plural sense i.e. Christ and Jesus occupying one body rather it is a perfect union between the attributes of His deity and His humanity so that the “two” are one in essence, and yet they remain two in nature. 

The orthodox view is that though the incarnation of Christ, the two natures (human and divine), were inseparably united in such a way that there was no mixture or loss of their separate identity and without loss or transfer of any property of attribute of one nature to the other. Which basically states that Christ was/is 100% God and 100% human without the nature of one mixing with the other.  

So that Jesus in stating (John 17:5), “O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”  appears to be requesting His divine nature restored to its previous place of infinite glory.  Be careful though since Jesus is not using the word restored in the most usual sense.  “Restored” is the past tense of “restore” meaning “to give something back.”  Yet He is using it in the sense of “to return to a previous condition.”  It is believed that he is speaking of a return to position not a return of possession; as the writer of Hebrews states “who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,” (Heb 1:3).