The Christ Hymn
Philippians 2:1-13
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (NRSV)
Our second reading for Sunday, September 25, 2011 (Proper 21, Year A) is lifted from the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Paul is exhorting the members of his church at Philippi to live humbly, valuing others more than themselves, and he offers Jesus as the example of ultimate humility.
The section at verses 5-11 is called the Christ Hymn, long a topic of discussion and conjecture among Bible scholars and students. As with many things scriptural, there are more questions than answers -- which makes Bible study so fascinating. We don’t know whether the Christ Hymn was already in use in the developing church -- such as something being sung at the Lord’s Supper, or whether Paul wrote it himself. If Paul wrote it, did he write it for this particular letter or was it something he had written earlier and decided to insert here because it fit so well? In particular, how did Paul mean the Philippians to take it? Did Paul mean it theologically or simply as part of his exhortation to the Philippians to be humble? And is my own conclusion about the Christ Hymn what I came in already believing and am determined to go out having proved to my own satisfaction, or is my mind open?
In the context of the letter, Paul is simply encouraging his friends at Philippi to a life of humility. Some scholars set up a credible formula that shows Paul using the Christ Hymn to contrast the obedient humility of Jesus (the “Second Adam”) with the disobedient arrogance of the “First Adam” of Genesis. Others insist that the Christ Hymn is Paul’s assertion of the eternal existence of Christ with and as God, as a couple of generations later John writes in the Prologue to his Gospel. A factor to bear in mind is that Paul was a monotheistic Jew who believed that the end of time was imminent, as evidenced in God’s raising Jesus from the dead (the first of the general resurrection); and that the only way to be saved in the judgment to come was to be under the lordship of the God of Israel, which Paul believed was open to Jew and Gentile alike through the death of the Son of God, who died for the sins of all. Paul believed that his calling was to bring Gentile pagans under the lordship of the one and only true God, the Creator of all things. Having come under the one God through the obedience of his Christ, one should then live humbly, waiting patiently for the End. Paul to Philippians is no theological treatise, but a loving letter of encouragement.
Is it anachronistic then to understand Paul and his Christ Hymn with John and his Prologue and the later Christology of the Church? After all, even with Paul as a precursor, the Church took several hundred years to fight out and settle its Orthodoxy -- which is not invalidated by finding that Paul predated and may not have shared our Christology of God the Son. In any event, may we nevertheless legitimately lift the Christ Hymn out of context and interpret Paul's words to the Philippians as God’s word to us about the Son? Certainly, this is something the Gospel writers themselves do in exploring the prophets of the Old Testament and perceiving messianic prophecy. Christ is there for the discovering.
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