The whole strange conception of birth as being the voluntary act of the Person born, and as being the most stupendous instance of condescension in the world's history, necessarily reposes on the clear conviction that He had a prior existence so lofty that it was an all but infinite descent to become man. Hence Paul begins with the most emphatic assertion that he who bore the name of Jesus lived a divine life before He was born. He uses a very strong word which is given in the margin of the Revised Version, and might well have been in its text. Being originally' as the word accurately means, carries our thoughts back not only to a state which preceded Bethlehem and the cradle, but to that same timeless eternity from which the prologue of the Gospel of John partially draws the veil when it says, In the beginning was the Word,' and to which Jesus Himself more obscurely pointed when He said, Before Abraham was I am.'
Equally emphatic in another direction is Paul's next expression, In the form of God,' for form' means much more than shape.' I would point out the careful selection in this passage of three words to express three ideas which are often by hasty thought regarded as identical, We read of the form of God' (Phil. 2:6),' the likeness of men' (Phil. 2:7), and' in fashion as a man.' Careful investigation of these two words form' and' fashion' has established a broad distinction between them, the former being more fixed, the latter referring to that which is accidental and outward, which may be fleeting and unsubstantial. The possession of the form involves participation in the essence also. Here it implies no corporeal idea as if God had a material form, but it implies also much more than a mere apparent resemblance. He who is in the form of God possesses the essential divine attributes. Only God can be in the form of God': man is made in the likeness of God, but man is not in the form of God.' Light is thrown on this lofty phrase by its antithesis with the succeeding expression in the next verse, the form of a servant,' and as that is immediately explained to refer to Christ's assumption of human nature, there is no room for candid doubt that being originally in the form of God' is a deliberately asserted claim of the divinity of Christ in His pre-existent state.
As we have already pointed out, Paul soars here to the same lofty height to which the prologue of John's Gospel rises, and he echoes our Lord's own words about the glory which I had with Thee before the foundation of the world.' Our thoughts are carried back before creatures were, and we become dimly aware of an eternal distinction in the divine nature which only perfects its eternal oneness. Such an eternal participation in the divine nature before all creation and before time is the necessary pro-supposition of the worth of Christ's life as the pattern of humility and self-sacrifice. That pro-supposition gives all its meaning, its pathos, and its power, to His gentleness, and love, and death. The facts are different in their significance, and different in their power to bless and gladden, to purge and sway the soul, according as we contemplate them with or without the background of His pre-existent divinity. The view which regards Him as simply a man, like all the rest of us, beginning to be when He was born, takes away from His example its mightiest constraining force. Only when we with all our hearts believe that the Word became flesh,' do we discern the overwhelming depths of condescension manifested in the Birth. If it was not the incarnation of God, it has no claim on the hearts of men.
