Made of No Reputation: What Philippians 2:7 Says

Philippians 2:7 says that Christ "made himself of no reputation" (Philippians 2:7), and a great deal has been read into those words that is not in them. The verse says nothing about attributes laid aside, power set down, or knowledge given up. It names one act. This article argues that the act is declining honor and giving the credit to the Father, that the limits the Gospels show in Him belong to the manhood He took, and that the mind Paul commands in verse 5 is a mind a believer can have. It reads the verse as written and defines its words from the King James itself. It then takes up Mark 13:32, sets out what others teach about the verse, answers the claim that He laid aside the independent exercise of His attributes, and sets out what Michael Hammond, Justin Johnson and Paul Sadler say, before returning to the passage itself.

The passage, word for word

"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:5-8 KJV)

Read the verbs. He was in the form of God, and counted equality with God no robbery. He made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of a servant. He was made in the likeness of men. He was found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death.

Notice the joining word. Verse 7 says and, not by: He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. The first is an act of its own, and two more follow it. The section called "And, not by" shows what that word does. What that first act was must be learned from the word itself and from what Christ said and did.

Notice whose act each verb is. Christ "made himself of no reputation", "took upon him the form of a servant", "humbled himself" and "became obedient". Those are things He did. But He "was made in the likeness of men" and was "found in fashion as a man", and those are things done to Him. The verse sets what He did and what was done to Him side by side, and joins them with and. The order is His taking first and the likeness after it. He took the form of a servant, and then He was made in the likeness of men, so what was done to Him followed what He took upon Him and was not forced upon Him. The section on the mind believers are told to have takes this up.

Notice also what the passage does not contain. The words emptied, laid aside, gave up, attributes, exercise, power and knowledge are not in these verses. A teaching that the Son laid aside the exercise of His divine attributes may be argued, if at all, from other places. It cannot be read off this passage, because the passage does not say it.

He was God, and the passage begins there

Verse 6 comes first, and it states who He was. He was "in the form of God", and He "thought it not robbery to be equal with God" (Philippians 2:6). In the King James, robbery is taking what is not one's own. It is set beside oppression: "have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully" (Ezekiel 22:29). It yields plunder: "full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not" (Nahum 3:1). The word occurs seven times. Four of the six uses outside Philippians 2:6 set it beside oppression, violence or plunder (Psalm 62:10; Ezekiel 22:29; Amos 3:10; Nahum 3:1), and the other two, Proverbs 21:7 and Isaiah 61:8, name it as wicked and hated. To think it not robbery to be equal with God is to say the equality was rightfully His. He did not seize it.

Only God is equal with God. The LORD asks, "To whom will ye liken me, and make me equal" (Isaiah 46:5). John records why the Jews sought the more to kill Christ: because, in the verse's words, He "not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18). John opens his Gospel with the same fact: "the Word was God" (John 1:1).

So verse 6 states His deity, and verse 7 begins with But. The word sets what He did against who He was. It does not say that He ceased to be who He was. Paul uses the same word the same way of himself in the next chapter. He has listed what he had, and then writes, "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ" (Philippians 3:7). The But does not say that the gain ceased to be his. It sets what he had against what he did with it. So here: who He was, and then what He did.

What reputation means

Reputation is a plain word, and it occurs five times in the King James. A little folly spoils "him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour" (Ecclesiastes 10:1). Gamaliel "had in reputation among all the people" (Acts 5:34). Paul went privately to "them which were of reputation" (Galatians 2:2), of whom he says in the same chapter that they "seemed to be somewhat" (Galatians 2:6). The Philippians are told to receive Epaphroditus and to "hold such in reputation" (Philippians 2:29). The fifth is Philippians 2:7. The related word reputed occurs twice, and again it is the view of others: "reputed vile in your sight" (Job 18:3), and "reputed as nothing" (Daniel 4:35).

In every one of these, reputation is the regard in which a person is held by others. No use of the word is about what a person is able to do. The only place anyone makes his own reputation nothing is Philippians 2:7.

Men's regard for Him shows in the record. The people who saw Him saw an ordinary man: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3). Isaiah had said of Him, "we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:3).

The context says what is at stake. Paul writes earlier in the same passage: "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves" (Philippians 2:3). He adds "Look not every man on his own things" (Philippians 2:4), and then holds up Christ as the pattern in verse 5. The pattern is lowliness. It is the refusal to seek esteem. Paul gives the Body this commandment as its own, and Thou Shalt Know Hereafter: What Peter Would Learn from the Foot Washing shows why the Body takes its lesson in humility from Paul.

Justin Johnson defines reputation as regard too, in his article God's Reputation: "A reputation concerns how others see you." He writes there that when God was manifest in the flesh he made himself of no reputation, and that "He did not remove, empty, or lay aside any of his attributes as God." In his Philippians 2 teaching he says, "Humanity is a low reputation," and "He didn't subtract anything. He added humanity, which to God is a step down in reputation," so that "He wasn't any worse, but it made him look that way." Johnson and this article agree on the word itself: reputation is how He looked and how He was held, and it is not what He was.

And, not by

Verse 7 names three things in a row. He "made himself of no reputation", He "took upon him the form of a servant", and He "was made in the likeness of men". They are joined with and. The verse does not say that He made himself of no reputation by taking the form of a servant, or by being made in the likeness of men.

In the King James and between acts names acts that follow one another. It does not make a later act the means of an earlier one. "he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them" (Luke 24:30) names four things He did, and no one reads that He blessed it by breaking it. The King James has the word by for a means: "by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place" (Hebrews 9:12). Philippians 2:7 does not use it.

So each clause stands on its own. The first, "made himself of no reputation", has a verb of its own, and the act is His. The second is His act too: He "took upon him the form of a servant". It follows the first and demonstrates it, and the humbling of verse 8, "he humbled himself", is in line with both. The third is different. He "was made in the likeness of men", and that was done to Him. The section on the mind believers are told to have takes this up.

Taking humanity was a step down, and Johnson says so: Christ "added humanity, which to God is a step down in reputation." The verse says so as well, for He "humbled himself" (Philippians 2:8), and Hebrews says He was "made a little lower than the angels" (Hebrews 2:9). Johnson also agrees that the act was willing. In God's Reputation he writes, "God made himself of no reputation for the sake of sinners." The point of the grammar is only where the verse puts the act. Had it said by, the lowering of His reputation would be the result of becoming a man. Because it says and, the lowering is something He did, and the taking of the servant's form shows it.

Johnson is not where this article's reading came from. It was derived from the text: the verse's own and, the five places the King James uses the word, and Christ's own words in the Gospels about not seeking honor of His own and crediting the Father, which the next section sets out. Johnson's definition of the word is cited because it agrees, not because it supplied the reading.

The act, as Christ's own words show it

Philippians 2:7 names the act and leaves it there. Christ's words in the Gospel of John show what an act of that kind looked like, and they show it repeatedly. They were spoken in the days of His earthly ministry, and that ministry was to Israel: "Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision" (Romans 15:8). We take them only for what they show of His own conduct. What He asks of the Body comes from Paul, in the section on the mind believers are told to have.

He declined honor: "I receive not honour from men" (John 5:41), and "I seek not mine own glory" (John 8:50), and "If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me" (John 8:54).

He gave the credit to the Father: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do" (John 5:19), and "I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak" (John 12:49), and "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). At the tomb of Lazarus He prays aloud and gives His reason for speaking: "I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 11:42). He had no need of the words for Himself. He spoke them so that the people would believe the Father had sent Him. He declined to be made king, when He "departed again into a mountain himself alone" (John 6:15), and He "charged them that they should not make him known" (Matthew 12:16).

This does not hand a power to another God, for the Father and the Son are one God: "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30); "he that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9); and "The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4). When the Son gives the credit to the Father, the Father who dwells in Him does the works. The honor due the Son stands, for the Father has committed all judgment to the Son "that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father" (John 5:22-23). He did not lose the honor that is His. He declined to seek it. The section called "He never acted independently" takes up the unity of the Father and the Son.

We claim no more than the text gives. The word means regard, and Christ's own words show Him declining honor and crediting the Father. That is the reading the words and the context support.

Form, likeness, and fashion

"But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:7-8 KJV)

Three words in these verses belong together: the form of a servant, the likeness of men, the fashion of a man. In the King James, form is shape, appearance or pattern, as in "that form of doctrine which was delivered you" (Romans 6:17). Of the Servant of the LORD it is written "he hath no form nor comeliness" (Isaiah 53:2). Likeness is resemblance, as when God sent His Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3). Fashion is outward manner, as when "the fashion of his countenance was altered" (Luke 9:29) on the mount, the same Lord with a changed appearance.

Paul puts form and power in one sentence about men: "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof" (2 Timothy 3:5). In the King James form occurs 24 times, likeness 34 and fashion 13. Outside Philippians 2 they describe shape, resemblance or manner, and none of those uses is a loss of power. Nothing in Philippians 2 gives the words a different sense.

The mind believers are told to have

Paul gives the passage as a command: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). A command to believers can only ask what a believer is able to do, so it tests every reading of "made himself of no reputation". Could a believer have that mind and do that thing? Paul says he already has it: "But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16). Ye Which Are Spiritual — Paul's Word Names a Source, Not a Feeling treats Philippians 2:5 the same way, as a command about what the believer already has.

The verbs sort themselves by voice, as the first section noted. Four are Christ's own acts: He "made himself of no reputation", "took upon him the form of a servant", "humbled himself", and "became obedient unto death" (Philippians 2:7-8). Two are not. He "was made in the likeness of men", and He was "found in fashion as a man" (Philippians 2:7-8). Those were done to Him and for Him: "a body hast thou prepared me" (Hebrews 10:5), and God sent forth His Son, "made of a woman" (Galatians 4:4). They followed His own taking of the servant's form, and they were not forced upon Him, for when He comes into the world He says, "Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God" (Hebrews 10:7). A believer does not make himself a man. He is one, and he is found as one. Johnson reads found the same way: "for the first time God was found as a man (Phil 2:8)."

What Paul asks of the believer is the four. A believer can take the form of a servant: Paul writes, "yet have I made myself servant unto all" (1 Corinthians 9:19), and tells the brethren, "by love serve one another" (Galatians 5:13). Can a believer give regard to others instead of seeking it for himself? Paul asks him to: "in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves" (Philippians 2:3) and, of Epaphroditus, "hold such in reputation" (Philippians 2:29). And a believer can decline the honor of men, as Paul did: "Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others" (1 Thessalonians 2:6).

Two things follow for the reading. A thing done to Him cannot be the means by which He did something Himself. "Made himself of no reputation" is His act, and "was made in the likeness of men" is not, which is a second reason, beside the joining word and (see "And, not by"), to read the first as an act of its own and not as the result of taking humanity. And a reading that makes the verse a laying aside of attributes, or of the exercise of them, asks of the believer what he cannot do, because he has none to lay aside. The believer is not asked to be in the form of God or equal with God. Those stand in the verse as what Christ was. He is asked to have the mind that declined honor and humbled itself.

What belongs to His manhood

"Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:6-8 KJV)

Deity is kept in verse 6, and manhood is added in verses 7 and 8. The Word "was made flesh" (John 1:14). He was "made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3), and "took part of the same" flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14). He took it on. He did not trade His deity for it.

Two things have to be held together. The LORD says, "I change not" (Malachi 3:6), and of Christ it is written, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8). Yet it is also written that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52), and that "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered" (Hebrews 5:8). He "suffered being tempted" (Hebrews 2:18), and He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). If Jesus increased in wisdom, something changed, and God does not change.

Look at the two small words in Hebrews 5:8, though and yet. Though grants a fact, and yet sets what follows against what that fact would lead us to expect. The King James uses the pair the same way of Christ elsewhere: "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor" (2 Corinthians 8:9). Riches would lead us to expect no poverty, and yet He became poor. So here, "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience". A Son is not the one we would expect to have to learn, and yet He learned. The verse puts the learning on the other side of the contrast from His Sonship, and the other side is His manhood. Growth, learning and being tempted belong to the manhood.

Justin Johnson says the same. Of Luke 2:52 he says in his Philippians 2 teaching, "How could he increase in stature and wisdom? Well, as a man is how he did that. God doesn't need to do that." Of Hebrews 5:8 he asks in his Hebrews study, "Did he learn as a man? Yes. Did he need to learn as God? No." In another Hebrews lesson he ties Hebrews 5:8 to Philippians 2:8 and says the obedience in view is His death: "God doesn't die," and when He put on human flesh and suffered death, "he was learning obedience unto death." His article Jesus, the God-Child is written against those who deny that the child had His deity attributes, and of Luke 2:40 it says, "It wasn't that he gained wisdom. He was already filled with it." That sentence does not say as God, but read with the rest of his teaching it is said of Him as God, who does not gain wisdom, and the same article closes by saying that over the next three decades "this God child would grow to be the God man in the divine wisdom that he had all along (Luke 2:52, John 17:5)." The increase in Luke 2:52 is the manhood's.

The King James also names the one Person by the nature in which a thing happened: "the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28), and "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16). That verse is taken up in Do You Believe Jesus Is the Son of God? What a Yes Does Not Tell You, and Preserved, Not Re-Inspired: Why We Hold the King James shows what the modern text does to the word God in it.

Neither the Son, but the Father

"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." (Mark 13:32 KJV)

This is a verse brought against everything above, and it has to be answered from the text. The verse says the Son. It does not say the Son of man, and the same Gospel uses that title where it means to. In this same discourse He says of His coming, "then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory" (Mark 13:26). At the supper, "the Son of man is betrayed" (Mark 14:21). In verse 32 the title chosen is the Son. The same word, knoweth, is used of man, of the angels, and of the Son.

If the Son is God, He cannot lack knowledge. God "knoweth all things" (1 John 3:20), and "his understanding is infinite" (Psalm 147:5). Of Christ it is written that "he knew all men" (John 2:24), and that "In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). So Mark 13:32 cannot mean that the Son was without the knowledge. It has to be understood as something He says, and what He says is in keeping with the act of Philippians 2:7.

Scripture uses know of the Lord Himself in the sense of taking account of, and not of lacking information. God says to Abraham, "now I know that thou fearest God" (Genesis 22:12). Christ will say to some, "I never knew you" (Matthew 7:23), and it is the One who knows all things who says it. The Father and the Son are spoken of in this way: "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son" (Matthew 11:27). And the Son says only what the Father gives Him to say, as we saw in John 12:49, while the times and seasons are those "which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1:7). Asked about the day, the Son, who made himself of no reputation, gives it to the Father.

A reader may object that one word, knoweth, governs man, the angels and the Son, and that for men and angels it means plain ignorance. That is so, and the verse does not itself say that the word carries a different sense for the Son. The sense is argued from how the King James uses the word, from the title the verse chooses, and from the Son's own words about speaking only what the Father gave Him. It is an inference, as every other answer to this verse is.

Justin Johnson of Grace Ambassadors gives eight reasons, in his article Mark 13:32 and the Deity of Christ, that the verse does not diminish the deity of Christ. Three of them bear on this reading.

His second is that Jesus is both God and man: "Mark 13:32 speaks to what men did not know, it does not abrogate the omniscience of God." In his Acts study he says that "he as the Son of Man was not given. He did not know the time or the day or the hour," and then asks, "Did Jesus know as God? Most certainly."

His sixth is that the verse uses the titles Son and Father, which "draws attention to the differences in responsibilities among persons in the Godhead, not a diminishing of the nature of the Godhead in Christ." His seventh is that Jesus often speaks of what is "given him" to do and say, and that "Mark 13:32 is another one of these expressions of Jesus doing the Father's will." Speaking of Mark 13:32 and Acts 1:7 together in the Acts study, he says, "It's a Trinitarian statement. It's not that Jesus isn't God," and "It's not that Jesus didn't know. It's that it wasn't for the disciples to know."

On each of these Johnson holds that the Son knew as God. This article follows the sixth and seventh, and what Johnson says with them in the Acts study, because the verse says the Son, and because the same Son declined honor and gave the credit to the Father in His words and works.

What the passage does not teach

Some in the grace movement teach that in becoming man the Son laid aside the exercise of His divine attributes, and some add a limit of His knowledge. They teach it as men who hold His deity. Charles Baker writes in A Dispensational Theology that Christ "divested Himself of the form of God and of the independent exercise of His divine attributes. He did not divest Himself of His divine Person." Paul Sadler of the Berean Bible Society writes in Ephesians that "Our Lord emptied Himself of the outward manifestation of His attributes and glory. He laid them aside for the great work of redemption that was set before Him," and in the same book, "Jesus Christ is God—He is co-equal and co-eternal." In the Berean Searchlight for May 2007 he writes, "He did not empty Himself of His Deity," and also that "having a limited knowledge of things" is "another facet of being human." Of Mark 13:32 he says that Christ's dependency on the Father "allowed Him to even taste of what it was like to have an incomplete knowledge of things," and adds, "at any given moment He could have called upon His Deity, but He chose not always to do so." Richard Jordan of Grace School of the Bible, in a sermon printed in Terence McLean's History of Dispensational Thought and Why It Matters, says that Christ "voluntarily, of His own free will, laid aside the free and independent exercise of all of His attributes as God," and adds, "He is God," and that "you cannot change His essence and His being." Of Mark 13:32 he says that Christ "laid aside that independent exercise of what He knew. And chose to know only what the Father told Him."

Justin Johnson judges this teaching severely. In his article Heresies About the Incarnation he says it teaches that "in order to become a man, Jesus had to limit/diminish/empty/lay aside/subtract or in some way change his deity attributes," and he calls it "a prevalent liberal heresy that is making inroads into more conservative Christian groups, and even in grace circles today." In his Philippians 2 teaching he names Paul Sadler and Richard Jordan among those who teach that Christ emptied Himself or laid aside the exercise of His deity attributes, and says it needs to be corrected because it is "a major heresy." He adds that it could be a major heresy at the worst, and that "at the very best, that's just ignorance."

Each of the three, Baker, Jordan and Sadler, claims something Philippians 2:5-8 does not say. Baker says He divested Himself of the form of God, but the passage says He was "in the form of God" (Philippians 2:6) and nowhere says He put it off. He says too that He divested Himself of the independent exercise of His attributes. Jordan says He laid aside the exercise of all His attributes, omniscience included, and chose to know only what the Father told Him. Sadler says He had an incomplete knowledge and chose not always to call upon His Deity. None of that is in the passage. The words attributes, exercise, laid aside and knowledge are not in those verses. The words it does use, reputation, form, likeness and fashion, describe regard, appearance or manner in every other use in the King James, as the counts above show. And these claims have to answer John 2:24-25, which says that He knew all men and "knew what was in man" (John 2:25).

He never acted independently

Baker and Jordan speak of the independent exercise of His attributes. The phrase is theirs. The word independent does not occur in the King James at all, and what the King James has, where the Son speaks of Himself, is of himself: "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do" (John 5:19); "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30); "I do nothing of myself" (John 8:28); and "the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). These were spoken to Israel in the days of His flesh, and we take them for what they say of the Son and of the Godhead.

The question is whether any of the Godhead ever acts apart from the others, and the passages below, which say how the three work, show them working together. The Spirit is spoken of in the same terms as the Son: "he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak" (John 16:13). The Father is shown acting with the Son and through Him. He "sheweth him all things that himself doeth" (John 5:20), "hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22), and, as He has life in Himself, "so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself" (John 5:26).

Paul says the same of the three together. "God sent forth his Son" (Galatians 4:4), and "God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts" (Galatians 4:6). "Through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (Ephesians 2:18). And "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). Hebrews puts all three in one act: Christ "through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God" (Hebrews 9:14).

Scripture says less of the time before the flesh, and what it says points the same way. "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26) is plural and is one saying, and of the Son it is written, "All things were made by him" (John 1:3). Through all of it there is one God: "The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deuteronomy 6:4). There are not three gods, each with a will and a power of his own to use apart from the others. Johnson says in Why Jesus Does Nothing of Himself that Jesus "has no independence from the Father," and of the three persons, "None of them can do anything of themselves." The next section gives more of what he says.

So the Son in the days of His flesh did not lay aside an independent exercise, because there was none to lay aside. The Father, the Son and the Spirit do not act of themselves apart from one another, and the verses in which the Son says so do not describe a power or an attribute that He set down. If the claim is that He once had an independent exercise, Philippians 2:7 does not say so, and that is a premise Scripture would have to supply.

What Hammond, Johnson and Sadler say

Michael Hammond of Out of Tradition Into Truth puts Philippians 2:7 in terms of restraint. He writes that "When Christ became a man, He did not cease to be God," that He "never laid aside His divine essence or power," and that He "did not empty Himself of deity; He emptied Himself of outward display. He restrained His rights and privileges as God to live as a servant." Of John 5:19 he writes that the statement "does not mean He lacked power; it reveals His willing restraint and dependence as the perfect Servant." In Christ Became Flesh he quotes Philippians 2:6-8 and writes, "His taking of flesh was voluntary humility, not loss of deity." In his Facebook posts he writes that "No reputation" speaks of "humility and voluntary submission," and that Christ "veiled His glory, not His deity." He objects to the phrase "emptied Himself" when it means a loss of attributes, but of those who "simply mean that Christ humbled Himself, took servant form, and came without outward earthly reputation," he says "the thought can be corrected by using the Bible's own wording."

Justin Johnson of Grace Ambassadors reads John 5:19 as a statement of the Godhead's unity. In his article on John 5:19 he writes, "Everything Jesus did was something God did. This is the point Jesus makes when he says he does nothing of himself, because his will and actions are inseparable from that of the Father in perfect union in the Godhead," and "Rather than communicating the humility of Christ, these passages explain his deity."

Hammond and Johnson agree that Christ did not cease to be God, that He lacked no power, and that His humbling and obedience were His as man. Hammond writes, "He humbled Himself to live as man," and "As man, He demonstrated complete obedience, dependence, and communion with the Father." Johnson's lines on Hebrews 5:8 are given above. Hammond and Johnson put the emphasis differently on John 5:19: Hammond reads the Servant's willing dependence, and Johnson reads the unity of the Godhead and says that these passages explain His deity and do not communicate His humility. This article holds both to be true of John 5:19. In its own sentence, the Son does "what he seeth the Father do" and "what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (John 5:19). The Son does what the Father does, which is the unity Johnson reads, and He credits the Father with it, which is the Servant's part Hammond reads and is the act of Philippians 2:7, declining honor and giving the credit. That is one will at work, and it is not a lack of power.

Hammond and Johnson use the word veil differently. In his Philippians 2 teaching Johnson says of Christ, "All that he did was put on humanity, veiled his deity, so that when we saw him, the reputation that he was giving was of a lowly man." In the same passage he says, "He didn't lay aside his deity attributes. He didn't stop exercising his deity attributes." Hammond says in his Facebook post on kenosis, "He veiled His glory, not His deity." Each says that the deity was not lost, and each uses veil for what men saw. As far as these statements go, the difference is in where the word is put.

Hammond's wording and Sadler's are near. Sadler writes that Christ "emptied Himself of the outward manifestation of His attributes and glory" and that He "veiled His divine attributes and glory." Hammond writes that He "emptied Himself of outward display" and "veiled His glory, not His deity." Each says that the deity was not lost. They part on knowledge. Sadler writes of "an incomplete knowledge of things" and cites Mark 13:32 for it, while Hammond says that to hold that Christ "did not know the mystery" because "He had emptied Himself" "creates a serious doctrinal problem," and he describes the teaching as one in which Christ "did not possess divine knowledge." So it is not the outward manifestation or the display that divides them. It is knowledge. On the use of His deity they are nearer. Sadler says He chose "not always" to call upon it, and Hammond says He "restrained His rights and privileges as God," though he also says the miracles were "not performed by borrowed power but by His own divine authority."

Take the passage as it is written

Read the passage again as it is written. Christ Jesus was in the form of God and equal with God, and the equality was rightfully His. He made himself of no reputation, declining honor and giving the credit to the Father. He took upon Him the form of a servant, and He was made in the likeness of men. He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death.

Nothing in those verses says that He set down an attribute, a power or a knowledge. The hunger, the growth, the learning, the temptation and the death that the Gospels record belong to the manhood He took. Mark 13:32 cannot mean that the Son was without the knowledge. And the Scriptures show the Father, the Son and the Spirit working together and not apart, so there was no independent exercise for the Son to lay aside.

The passage does not end at the cross.

"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11 KJV)

The One who declined honor is given the name above every name, and it is God who gives it, to the glory of God the Father.

And what He asks of us is stated in the same place: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). That is a mind a believer can have, because it takes the servant's place and does not seek honor for itself. Add nothing to the verse and take nothing from it, and follow the mind that was in Him.