2:5-11 The example of our Lord Jesus Christ is set before us. We must resemble him in his life, if we would have the benefit of his death. Notice the two natures of Christ; his Divine nature, and human nature. Who being in the form of God, partaking the Divine nature, as the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, Joh 1:1, had not thought it a robbery to be equal with God, and to receive Divine worship from men. His human nature; herein he became like us in all things except sin. Thus low, of his own will, he stooped from the glory he had with the Father before the world was. Christ's two states, of humiliation and exaltation, are noticed. Christ not only took upon him the likeness and fashion, or form of a man, but of one in a low state; not appearing in splendour. His whole life was a life of poverty and suffering. But the lowest step was his dying the death of the cross, the death of a malefactor and a slave; exposed to public hatred and scorn. The exaltation was of Christ's human nature, in union with the Divine. At the name of Jesus, not the mere sound of the word, but the authority of Jesus, all should pay solemn homage. It is to the glory of God the Father, to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; for it is his will, that all men should honour the Son as they honour the Father, Joh 5:23. Here we see such motives to self-denying love as nothing else can supply. Do we thus love and obey the Son of God?

Verse 8. - And being found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself in the Incarnation; but this was not all. The apostle has hitherto spoken of our Lord's Godhead which he had from the beginning, and of his assumption of our human nature. He now speaks of him as he appeared in the sight of men. The aorist participle, "being found (εὑρεθείς)," refers to the time of his earthly life when he appeared as a man among men. Fashion (σχῆμα), as opposed to form (μορφή), implies the outward and transitory. In outward appearance he was as a man; he was more, for he was God. He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death; translate, as R.V., obedient. The participle implies that the supreme act of self-humiliation consisted in the Lord's voluntary submission to death. the obedience of his perfect life extended even unto death. "He taketh away [literally, 'beareth,' αἴρει] the sin of the world;" "The wages of sin is death;" therefore he suffered death for the sin which, himself sinless, he vouchsafed to bear. Here we may remark in passing that this connection of death with sin must have made death all the more awful to our sinless Lord. Even the death of the cross. No ordinary death, but of all forms of death the most torturing, the most full of shame - a death reserved by the Romans for slaves, a death accursed in the eyes of the Jews (Deuteronomy 21:23).

And being found in fashion as a man,.... Not that he had only the show and appearance of a man, but he was really a man; for "as" here, denotes not merely the likeness of a thing, but the thing itself, as in Matthew 14:5, here, answers to the Hebrew f2, which is sometimes by the Jews (k) said to be , and signifies likeness, and sometimes , and designs truth and reality; which is the sense in which the particle is to be taken here: though he was seen and looked upon as a mere man, and therefore charged with blasphemy when he asserted himself to be the Son of God, he was more than a man; and yet found and known by men in common to be no more than a man, than just such a man as other men are; and so far is true, that his scheme, his habit, his fashion, his form, were like that of other men; though he was not begotten as man, but conceived in an extraordinary manner by the power of the Holy Ghost, yet he lay nine months in his mother's womb, as the human foetus ordinarily does; he was born as children are, was wrapped in swaddling bands when born, as an infant is; grew in stature by degrees, as men do; the shape and size of his body were like other men's, and he was subject to the same infirmities, as hunger, thirst, weariness, pain, grief, sorrow, and death itself, as follows:

he humbled himself: by becoming man, and by various outward actions in his life; as subjection to his parents, working at the trade of a carpenter, conversing with the meanest of men, washing his disciples' feet, &c. and the whole of his deportment both to God and man, his compliance with his Father's will, though disagreeable to flesh and blood, his behaviour towards his enemies, and his forbearance of his disciples, showed him to be of a meek and humble spirit; he humbled himself both to God and man:

and became obedient unto death, or "until death"; for he was obedient from the cradle to the cross, to God, to men, to his earthly parents, and to magistrates; he was obedient to the ceremonial law, to circumcision, the passover, &c. to the moral law, to all the precepts of it, which he punctually fulfilled; and to the penalty of it, death, which he voluntarily and cheerfully bore, in the room and stead of his people:

even the death of the cross; which was both painful and shameful; it was an accursed one, and showed that he bore the curse of the law, and was made a curse for us: this was a punishment usually inflicted on servants, and is called a servile punishment (l); and such was the form which he took, when he was found in fashion as a man: this is now the great instance of humility the apostle gives, as a pattern of it to the saints, and it is a matchless and unparalleled one,

(k) Vid. Kimchi in Joshua 3.4. (l) Lipsins de Cruce, l. 1. c. 12.

8. being found in fashion as a man—being already, by His "emptying Himself," in the form of a servant, or likeness of man (Ro 8:3), "He humbled Himself (still further by) becoming obedient even unto death (not as English Version, 'He humbled Himself and became,'&c.; the Greek has no 'and,' and has the participle, not the verb), and that the death of the cross." "Fashion" expresses that He had the outward guise, speech, and look. In Php 2:7, in the Greek, the emphasis is on Himself (which stands before the Greek verb), "He emptied Himself," His divine self, viewed in respect to what He had heretofore been; in Php 2:8 the emphasis is on "humbled" (which stands before the Greek "Himself"); He not only "emptied Himself" of His previous "form of God," but submitted to positive HUMILIATION. He "became obedient," namely, to God, as His "servant" (Ro 5:19; Heb 5:8). Therefore "God" is said to "exalt" Him (Php 2:9), even as it was God to whom He became voluntarily "obedient." "Even unto death" expresses the climax of His obedience (Joh 10:18).

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