Jesus Emptied Himself

When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7b–11

Paul points to Jesus as the perfect illustration of selflessness. Read Philippians 2 very carefully, preferably out loud.

Jesus “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Though Jesus deserved all the respect, all the worship, all the adoration, all the fear due Him as God, He let it all go. He released His grip on all of it.

Further, “He emptied Himself.” While retaining every aspect of His deity, Jesus relinquished the independent use of His divine attributes during His earthly sojourn. Before the Son became a flesh-and-blood man, He had absolute autonomy as God, being coequal, coeternal, and coexistent with the Father.

When He became a man, He voluntarily gave up the independent use of His divine attributes; and while on this earth, He submitted to the Father. He waited on the Father for His will, for His timing. He followed the Father’s guidance as to where He would go and what He would do and what He would say and when He would do those things. He relinquished the voluntary use of His divine prerogatives. He gave up what was rightfully His for the sake of others—including you and me.

Moreover, He took “the form of a bondservant” and was made “in the likeness of men.” He did this so that He could suffer “a cross-kind of death” (the Greek sentence suggests such a rendering). The excruciating, humiliating anguish of a common criminal became His kind of death. And in death He personified surrender.

The Son of Man gave up His will for the Father’s. As a result, the Father glorified Him.

Is it any wonder, then, that the author of Hebrews encourages us to fix our eyes on Jesus, to focus our gaze on Him, to study Christ? Focusing intently on Christ naturally results in a lifestyle of increasingly greater selflessness.