There is a whole lot more that could be said about the Christ-poem in Philippians 2.   You could literally write an entire book on just this passage.  In fact, people *have* written books on just this passage.   The most important one, a classic in the field, is by Ralph Martin, A Hymn of Christ (which in earlier editions was called Carmen Christi) (which is a Latin phrase that, unsurprisingly, means A Hymn of Christ  🙂 ).  This passage has had more ink spilled over it by scholars over the last century than almost any other in the entire Bible (with the exception of John 1:1-18).   In any event, to make sense of what I want to say here, it would help, if you haven’t done so, to read the other posts I’ve made on it.

Here I just want to mention briefly an interpretation that is sometimes floated for the passage which takes it in a very different way indeed, as not being about incarnation at all.  In this alternative interpretation, the passage is not about a pre-existent divine being who becomes human and then is exalted to an even higher state.  In this other interpretation the passage instead means to refer to the human Jesus from beginning to end (though he is exalted at the end).  The poem, in this interpretation, is about how Jesus is a second Adam, who reversed the very bad consequences of the sin of the first Adam.

Wanna see how *that* works, and why I don’t agree with it?  If you were a blog member, you could keep reading.  Join now and see what you’ve been missing.  There’s only a small membership fee, and all of it goes to charity.