God’s Word for You

Philippians 2:5-6 by nature God

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, March 10, 2026

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, though he is by nature God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped,

Paul could have put any human being’s name into this sentence and we would only nod and say, “Of course not.” “Abraham did not regard equality with God something to be grasped,” “Moses did not…,” “King David did not…,” “the Virgin Mary did not…,” “the Apostle Peter did not…,” “Martin Luther did not…,” “Pastor Smith did not….” Of course not! Those are all human beings, stained by sin and error, condemned under the Law of Moses. The sentence is an exercise in identifying the universality of original and inherited sin.

But hold on a minute. None of them are the subject. “He” is. He is the hos (ὃς), the “he,” of the whole passage, and “he” is Christ Jesus. This is the Son of God (Mark 15:39), the only begotten Son of the Father (John 1:14), the second Person of the holy Trinity (2 Corinthians 13:14).

He is the one who is “by nature God.” Paul very carefully uses a present tense participle, “is” (ὑπάρχων), instead of the past tense that we would expect based on the tense of the sentence. Paul is talking about something that Christ did not do in the past, but he is also talking about Christ and who he is, not just who he was. So we get “He is by nature God” (present tense, and durative, which means that he is and always is by nature God), and “he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped” (aorist tense expressing a fact in past time). He is, but he did not.

I have translated “by nature” (μορϕῇ), but “form” is the root meaning of morphe, but also inadequate. Christ is God by essence (οὐσία), and “nature” is more often physis (ϕύσις, 1 Corinthians 11:14). But a modern reader will probably be led to thinking that “the form of God” means the shape, outline, or physical characteristics of God. This is why I have translated as I have.

But now we come to the meaning. What can it mean, that Christ Jesus, who is God by nature and by form and by essense, did not consider equality with the Father something to be grasped or seized?

Two possibilities:

1, That the Son of God, who in eternity was and is God by nature, nevertheless divested himself of the form of God when he became incarnate as a human being.

2, That the Son of God willingly and humbly set himself below the Father and the Holy Spirit. He chose to use his full powers as God less than he could have.

The first possibility cannot be correct. It would mean that Christ left his divine nature, or a part of it, behind when he became incarnate as a human being. Not one attribute of God can be removed from God without destroying him as God. It leaves Jesus as a mere man, Jesus the son of Joseph, and not Jesus the Son of God.

Christ, truly and fully God, took on a humble attitude. This is the point of verse 5, which seems to get lost by those who try to explain verse 6. Christ, being humble, did not consider being equal to God the Father something to be waved around like a prize. What he did was to take up humanity into his deity, and then humbly to live a life as a human being.

So let’s be careful about how we speak. Christ’s incarnation was not a part of his state of humiliation, but it was simply his incarnation, that act by which he took up the human (from Mary) into the divine (himself).

But, we ask, does all of this matter very much to the Christian in the pew, the mom rocking her baby to sleep, the dad listening to a church podcast on his way home from work? This is what matters: behind most if not all of the objections to Christ being truly God by nature is the objection by many Reformed churches (Evangalicals and others) that Christ could be really and truly present in the Lord’s Supper. If he set aside his divinity to become man, then none of his miracles were performed by Christ, but by the Father. Therefore Christ could not just give away his own body and blood in the sacrament, and the sacrament would be no sacrament at all but only a memorial of sorts. But Christ by his very nature is God (Philippians 2:6). It is his blood that purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7). Peace with God is found through the blood of Christ shed on the cross (Colossians 1:20).

All religions worship God in some way, but only Christians worship Christ the Son of God as truly God and man. The Father has entrusted all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), and has given to the Son divine honor. “Father,” Jesus prayed, “glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (John 17:5). Our Jesus, who rescued us from all sin, is truly the Son of God. It is his humble attitude that Paul is holding up for our comparison here. May God grant that I have introduced this doctrine properly, so that there can be no confusion about it. We will pick things up here next time.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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