What we see
here [in Phil 2:6-11] and elsewhere in Paul’s letters is a pattern to the
Messiah’s life of descent from the celestial realm to the terrestrial realm,
from a pneumatic existence to a flesh-and-blood existence, from a divine
existence as to an existence as an enslaved man. This Messiah descended so far,
humbled himself so much, that he even suffered death on a Roman cross, the most
ignoble way to die in the Roman world. Paul no doubt intended readers to
contrast this depiction of the Messiah with Adam and Eve, who takes forbidden
fruit because they believe it will make them equal to gods/God (Gen. 3:5). He
might also have expected readers to contrast the Messiah’s model here to gods
who grasp instead of serve, whether the sons of God in Genesis 6 (and related tales)
or stories of various Greco-Roman deities. As a result of the Messiah’s
willingness to bey and humble himself, the Jewish God raised him from the dead
and exalted him back to the celestial realm, above all other names, where he
again exists as pneuma (see 2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 15:45) and will be confessed
by all powers, celestial, terrestrial, and subterranean (Phil. 2:10).
Paul
concludes by claiming that the Messiah Jesus is Lord (kyrios).
David Litwa notes that Paul tells a brief story about Jesus in these words from
Philippians 2:6-11: “in the brief compass of this passage, Jesus is both hominified
and deified. He could be hominified because, historically speaking, some
Christians as early as the 40s CE identified Jesus with a preexistent divine
being endowed with God’s form and glory (Phil. 2:6). In the hymn, Jesus is also
deified by being exalted, worshipped, and receiving ‘the name above
every name’—all of which are honors properly belonging to Yahweh (here called ‘the
father’).” (Litwa, Jesus Deus, 5-6).
If one were
to reconstruct a life of Jesus just from Paul’s letters, one would have the
following outline: the Messiah or son of God preexisted his birth, was born of
a Jewish woman, and belonged to the tribe of Judah. He then was crucified and
died, but the Jewish God raised him from the dead and established him over all
other powers and names. Not once does Pual mention any deeds of power Jesus
does, which the later Gospels emphasize. Just once does Pual maybe refer
to a legal position of Jesus: his position that people should not seek
divorces, and if they do, they definitely should not remarry (1 Cor. 7:10-11). At
other places scholars have detected possible evidence that Paul knew other
things Jesus taught, (7) but it is illuminating that Paul never feels the need
to say, “As Jesus commanded.” Paul dwells briefly on the enfleshment of the
preexisting Messiah, but his focus is on the death of the Messiah and his
victorious resurrection and exaltation. This is where the Messiah’s
significance lies for Paul. (Matthew Thiessen, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s
Herald to the Gentiles [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 115-17)
