of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke"

(Isa. 6: 1-4).

In neither case did these prophets see someone who was just an exalted man. What

they saw in a measure was the pre-incarnate Christ and His overwhelming glory. With

this accords Dan. 7: 11-14. Daniel likewise saw One like a son of man (R.V.), but the

prophet is careful not to say that he saw a man, but One Who had a human appearance

which is quite a different thing.

When we come to I Cor. 15: 45-47 we must take care not to read into it what is not

there. Scripture is very clear that Christ took upon Himself manhood at Bethlehem and

not before. He Who, as the Word, was God (John 1: 1) in due times became flesh (1: 14)

and so became the Second Man and Last Adam (I Cor. 15: 45, 47). He was not "flesh"

before His Nativity and those who describe Him as the Primal Man in glory before His

incarnation are exceeding the revelation of Scripture, and to bring any of these utterly

inadequate ideas into the context of Philippians we are studying is disastrous to its

Proceeding with our consideration of this passage, we read in the R.V.:

It is to be noted that the A.V. "made Himself of no reputation" is literally rendered

"emptied Himself".  The Greek is kenoo, hence the term kenosis and the utterly

unscriptural "kenotic" doctrine that Christ here gave up His Godhead and became just a

human being. If this were true then Divine redemption collapses, for a man cannot

redeemed men (Psa. 49: 7, 8). God alone can be Man's Saviour. "I, even I, am the

Lord: and beside Me there is no Saviour" (Isa. 43: 11) and never do we read in

Scripture that God has delegated this supreme work to anyone else.

What does kenoo mean? Volumes have been written on this. The verb is generally

used in a bad sense.  The adjective means, "empty-handed", "vain", "useless".

Charles H. Welch points out that the LXX uses kenoo twice as the equivalent of the

Hebrew amal "to become weak". This helps us considerably, for the testimony of

Scripture is that the Lord Jesus became "poor" and "weak" on our behalf as part of His

great stooping down to our desperate need (II Cor. 8: 9).  F. W. Beare says that the

English equivalent is He "beggared Himself", "became poor as a beggar", and this was

really true for He had no home (Matt. 8: 20), or enough money even to pay His tax

(Matt. 17: 27); He Who, before His birth, had all the wealth which accompanied His

Another important point which helps us understand the real meaning of "emptying

Himself" is to note that, instead of the conjunctive "ands" between the two clauses as

A.V. ("and took upon Him . . . . . and was made . . . . .") which are not in the Greek, the

R.V. rightly renders the Greek aorist participles as, "taking the form of a servant, being