Philippians 2:5-8

(5-8) From a practical introduction, in the familiar exhortation to follow the example of our Lord, St. Paul passes on to what is, perhaps, the most complete and formal statement in all his Epistles of the doctrine of His “great humility.” In this he marks out, first, the Incarnation, in which, “being in the form of God, He took on Him the form of a servant,” assuming a sinless but finite humanity; and next, the Passion, which was made needful by the sins of men, and in which His human nature was humiliated to the shame and agony of the cross. Inseparable in themselves, these two great acts of His self-sacrificing love must be distinguished. Ancient speculation delighted to suggest that the first might have been, even if humanity had remained sinless, while the second was added because of the fall and its consequences. Such speculations are, indeed, thoroughly precarious and unsubstantial — for we cannot ask what might have been in a different dispensation from our own; and, moreover, we read of our Lord as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8; see also 1 Peter 1:19) — but they at least point to a true distinction. As “the Word of God” manifested in the Incarnation, our Lord is the treasure of all humanity as such; as the Saviour through death, He is the especial treasure of us as sinners.