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' (verse 6), 'the _likeness_ of men' (verse 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 pre-supposition of the worth of Christ's life as the pattern
of humility and self-sacrifice. That pre-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.