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When Jesus became man, Philippians 2:7 says that He 'emptied Himself'. What does this mean? Jesus is both fully God and fully man. How do these two natures f...
The Apostle Paul teaches that in Christ’s humiliation, He “emptied Himself” (Phil. 2:6–7). How should we understand this statement? From one of our Ask Ligon...
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Jan 4, 2022 · The term kenosis refers to the doctrine of Christ’s “self-emptying” in His incarnation. The word comes from the Greek of Philippians 2:7, which says that Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (ESV).
The simplest way to explain the self-emptying of Christ is that He set aside His own life as an act of total obedience to the will of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn’t cease to be God in any sense. He was always fully God, or truly God, as R.C. used to like to say. He was truly God and truly man.
- The Dilemma
- The Deity of Christ
- The Meaning of “Emptied Himself”
- “Emptied Himself” Illustrated
- Why It Matters
Does this mean that Jesus emptied himself of his deity, thus ceasing to be God during his incarnation? After all, if he was fully God, how could he also be a human at the same time? This seems like a logical contradiction. Or, perhaps the phrase means that he set aside certain divine attributes while maintaining others. In other words, he still kep...
There’s little doubt that this text proclaims Jesus as the pre-existent God of the universe. This text gives us two reasons for reaching this conclusion. First, it states that Jesus was “in the form of God.” The word for “form” in the Greek is morphe, which denotes the exact substance or nature of something. Therefore, by declaring that Jesus was “...
We now come to the most controversial part of the text. What does Paul mean when he says Jesus emptied himself? I believe he tells us in the next part of the text when he asserts, “[Jesus] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” Here, Paul indicates that the emptying of Christ doesn’t include losing any...
Let me give you an illustration to explain how adding something could look like subtraction.2Imagine that one day you decided to go to a luxury car dealership to test drive the nicest car in the showroom. The salesman gave you permission, so you took the shiny car out for a spin. As you were driving down the road on that rainy day, you noticed a fi...
Jesus adding a human nature has massive implications. After all, Paul tells us that Jesus emptied himself to become “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” If he only had a divine nature, he could not have died for our sins, because God cannot die. The reason Jesus could die was because he possessed a human nature. Thus, without hi...
The term “empty” is among the most ominous in all of the Bible. Both positive and negative things might be meant by this. It totally depends on how you perceive it whether you see emptiness as a good or bad thing. We will see 19 Bible verses on emptiness here in this article.
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46 Bible Verses about emptiness. Most Relevant Verses. Isaiah 45:18. Verse Concepts. For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the Lord, and there is none else. Habakkuk 2:14. Verse Concepts.
