Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Philippians · About this commentary
Have This Mind
Philippians 2:5-6
5 Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, · WEB
The highest statement about Christ in Paul's letters is introduced to settle a disagreement between church members.
Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus. The verb is phronein again, and the sentence is a hinge: everything before it is instruction about getting along, and everything after it is Christology.
The placement is the most striking thing about the hymn. What follows is the fullest account of the descent and exaltation of Christ that Paul ever wrote, and it is deployed as the remedy for a congregation that cannot agree — eventually named as two women Philippians 4:2.
Then the first line: who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.
Form is morphē G3444, and it denotes the outward expression of what something actually is rather than a shape imposed on it. The clause is a statement of what he was, not of what he resembled.
And the thing not grasped is harpagmos G725, a word found nowhere else in Scripture, built on the verb for seizing or snatching. Equality with God is not described as something he lacked and declined to seize, but as something already his that he refused to clutch.
settled What this mark means