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The pre-incarnate Word was God and therefore equality with God was not something
which the Word had any need to seize or usurp. But this very expression to "seize or
usurp" seems to imply a contrast, and this has been seen by many expositors, some of
whom contrast the Lord with Adam who grasped at the knowledge of good and evil, and
others with Satan, who as Lucifer, attempted to seize divine honours.
With the former view, I Cor. 15: 47 is brought in with its teaching of Christ as the
second Man and last Adam. Even here we must take care not to exceed what has been
written, for some have done this, picturing the pre-incarnate Christ as little more than a
heavenly man who descended to the earth. This view is apparently quite widely held
among evangelical scholars. We will examine both these views in our next study, and we
shall find that, if any contrast is intended by the Apostle, it is more likely to be with Satan
and his ambitious pride rather than with Adam.
No.41.
The Epistle to the Philippians (8).
pp. 96 - 100
In our last study of the profound passage in Philippians 2: 5-11, we saw that, in His
pre-incarnate state, the Lord Jesus had no need to seize "equality with God", and
suggested there may be a contrast here with either Adam or Satan. Quite a number of
expositors have taken the former view, which is that Adam fell for Satan's temptation
recorded in Gen. 3: 5 "Ye shall be as God", thus grasping at Deity which he certainly
did not possess.
However, this is surely a misunderstanding of Gen. 3:
To begin with these
interpreters only partially quote verse 5, and thereby miss the full meaning. The whole
verse reads:
"For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and
ye shall be as gods (or God), knowing good and evil."
What Adam was grasping at was the knowledge of good and evil, not the position of
God Himself. To believe the latter is to read into the verse what is not there. Adam's sin
was bad enough without adding to it. There is always a right time for knowledge and in
Adam's case God saw that this had not yet come. Doubtless as he developed, at some
future time this knowledge would have been imparted, but knowledge without adequate
moral and spiritual development is fatal, and looking on the world scene today, this
should be obvious. When will some of our modern educationalists learn this? Man is
acquiring knowledge which he is not fit to have, and in almost every case this is being
twisted to wrong ends.
That the "knowledge of good and evil" can be a good thing Heb. 5: 14 testifies, "but
strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age (i.e. mature), even those who by reason