"Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Philippians 2:6-8. Paul writes these words to a congregation at Philippi that is quietly fracturing over pride and rivalry — "let nothing be done through strife or vainglory," he pleads just two verses earlier — and instead of handing them a rulebook for humility, he hands them a hymn about how far down God Himself was willing to go.
The phrase "thought it not robbery" translates a single, difficult Greek word, *harpagmos*, built on the verb *harpazo*, "to seize, to snatch, to carry off by force." In everyday Greek usage the word described something clutched and held onto — a prize gripped in a closed fist, refused to let go of. So Paul is not merely saying Christ committed no theft. He is saying that although Christ already possessed true equality with God — he existed, the text says, "in the form of God" (*morphe theou*), sharing the very form and glory of deity — he did not treat that equality as a thing to grip and defend. And then comes the word that gives this whole passage its name: "made himself of no reputation" translates *ekenosen*, "he emptied himself," the verb *kenoo*. Not that deity was subtracted, but that its outward glory and prerogatives were voluntarily set aside, exchanged for that same word, *morphe*, now attached to a servant — "took upon him the form (*morphe*) of a servant." The form of God became the form of a slave, by choice, without letting go of who He was.
Behind this hymn stands an older story Paul's readers would have known by heart. In Eden, the serpent's whole temptation was an offer to seize equality with God: "ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5), and the woman saw the fruit was "to be desired to make one wise," and she took it — grasping at a godlikeness that was not hers, by force and by deception. Every child of Adam since has inherited that same reflex: reaching, gripping, defending a status we fear losing. Christ, the second Adam, stands at the identical fork in the road — equality with God actually His, by right, not stolen — and does the one thing Adam could not do. He does not grasp. He opens His hand.
This is why the passage begins with "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). The cross was not an emergency measure bolted onto a plan; it was *harpagmos* refused all the way down, glory laid aside all the way down to "the death of the cross." And it rewrites what humility actually costs us. We cling so tightly — to being right, to credit, to control, to being seen — because we are quietly afraid that if we open our hand, we will lose ourselves. Christ shows that a hand secure in who it is can open all the way, and lose nothing that matters.
Reflect: What are you gripping today the way Adam gripped the fruit — a title, a reputation, the last word in an argument? What would it look like to hold it the way Christ held equality with God: fully His, and yet not something to be seized?