What Does Philippians 2:7 Mean?

(7) **But made himself . . .**—This verse needs more exact translation. It should be, *But emptied* (or, *stripped*)* Himself of His glory by having taken on* *Him* *the form of a slave and having been made* (or, *born*)* in likeness of men.* The “glory” is the “glory which He had with the Father before the world was” (John 17:5; comp. Philippians 1:14), clearly corresponding to the *Shechinah* of the Divine Presence. Of this He stripped Himself in the Incarnation, taking on Him the “form (or, *nature*) of a servant” of God. He resumed it for a moment in the Transfiguration; He was crowned with it anew at the Ascension. **Made in the likeness of man.**—This clause, at first sight, seems to weaken the previous clause, for it does not distinctly express our Lord’s true humanity. But we note that the phrase is “the likeness of men,” *i.e., *of men in general, men as they actually are. Hence the key to the meaning is to be found in such passages as Romans 8:3, God sent His own Son in “the likeness of sinful flesh;” or Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15, “It behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren,” “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” It would have been an infinite humiliation to have assumed humanity, even in unique and visible glory; but our Lord went beyond this, by deigning to seem like other men in all things, one only of the multitude, and that, too, in a station, which confused Him with the commoner types of mankind. The truth of His humanity is expressed in the phrase “form of a servant;” its unique and ideal character is glanced at when it is said to have worn only the “likeness of men.”