2:5 this mind. As followers of Christ, we should try to think as He would think, walk as He walked (I John 2:6) and love as He loved (John 13:34). With renewed minds (Romans 12:2), we can and should have “the mind of Christ” (I Corinthians 2:16).

2:6 form of God. Jesus Christ was God from eternity (John 1:1-3), the Creator of all things.

2:6 not robbery. He was not fearful of losing His deity when He exchanged the outward form of God for the outward form of man; that is, He did not have to cling to His deity as a robber would his plunder. He could not cease being God. The word for “robbery” is used only this one time in the New Testament.

2:7 no reputation. That is, He “emptied Himself.” The Greek word is kenoo, and this self-emptying of Christ has been called the “kenosis” doctrine. Certain liberals have suggested that He became human in the sense that He was fallible, possibly even sinful, but such thinking is wrong and dangerous. He not only “came down from heaven,” He was still “in heaven” (John 3:13). He was not sent down from heaven in sinful flesh, but only in “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3). He was “made in the likeness of men” with a miraculously created human body that inherited nothing whatever of Adam’s sinful nature. Even though He exchanged the outward form of God for that of a human slave, He never stopped being “very God of very God,” as the old creed expressed it.

2:8 humbled himself. He not only stooped from the glory of heaven’s throne to become a true human being, yet sinless, but He also became like a bondservant and finally like a guilty criminal, condemned to die, even(!) to die in what has been said to be the most excruciatingly painful death conceivable, that of crucifixion. His obedience all through His life culminated in this ultimate act of obedience (note Hebrews 5:8), and it was all for us!

2:9 highly exalted him. Following His death and triumphant visit to Hades (“the things under the earth”—see notes on I Peter 3:19-20), He rose from the dead, ascended to heaven and assumed “all power in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18).

2:9 a name. Literally, “the name.”