The Apostle Paul incorporates either a hymn or poem (commonly referred to as the Carmen Christi) that celebrates Christ’s divine prehuman existence, subsequent physical resurrection and heavenly exaltation to reign as YHWH Incarnate over all creation, and which claims that every creature must and will eventually worship Jesus Lord:

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God (en morphe theou hyperchon), did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11 New International Version (NIV)

Agnostic/atheist NT scholar Bart D. Erhman explains that,

“Some scholars have had a real difficulty imagining that a poem existing before Paul’s letter to the Philippians – a poem whose composition must therefore date AS EARLY AS THE 40s CE – could already celebrate AN INCARNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS…” (Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee [HarperOne, First edition 2014], 7. Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies, p. 259; bold and capital emphasis mine)

Hence, within less than 10 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection the very first Christians were already worshiping Christ as the human incarnation of God!

However, there are certain scholars such as the late James D.G. Dunn, which deny that this hymn/poem actually speaks of Christ’s incarnation. They take the view that the hymn/poem is merely contrasting the human Jesus with Adam, choosing not to do what the latter in attempting to become something he was not, namely, to be God’s equal.  

There are problems with this assertion, as Ehrman himself notes. Here are his reasons for rejecting the assertion that the Carmen Christi does not speak of the prehuman existence of Christ, but rather focuses on his humanity in order to contrast him with Adam:

“I have long thought that this was an intriguing interpretation of the passage, and for many years I wished it were correct. That would help solve the problem I had in understanding Paul’s Christology. But I’m afraid I’ve never been convinced by it—even when I wanted to be—for three reasons. First, if Paul (or the author of the poem) really wanted his reader to make the connection between Jesus and Adam, he surely would have done so more explicitly. Even if he chose not to call Adam by name, or to call Jesus the second Adam, he could have made verbal allusions to the story of Adam (and Eve) more obvious. In particular, rather than saying that Christ was ‘in the form of God,’ he would have said that Christ was ‘in the image of God.’ That is the word used in Genesis, and it would have been quite simple for the author to use it here in the poem if he wanted his reader to think of Genesis.

“Second, in the Adam and Eve story in Genesis, it is not Adam who wants ‘to be like God’—it is Eve. Adam eats the fruit only when she gives it to him, and we are not told why he does so. But this means in his desire not to be equal with God, Christ would be the counter not to Adam, but to Eve. Nowhere in his writings does Paul make a connection between Christ and Eve.

“Third, and possibly most importantly, from other passages in Paul it does indeed appear that he understands Christ to have been a preexistent divine being. One example comes from a very peculiar passage in 1 Corinthians, in which Paul is talking about how the children of Israel, after they escaped from Egypt under Moses, were fed while they spent so many years in the wilderness (as recounted in the books of Exodus and Numbers in the Hebrew Bible). According to Paul, the Israelites had enough to drink because the rock that Moses struck in order miraculously to bring forth water (Num. 20:11) followed them around in the wilderness. Wherever they went, the water-providing rock went. In fact, Paul says, ‘the rock was Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:4). Just as Christ provides life to people today when they believe in him, so too he provided life to the Israelites in the wilderness. That would not have been possible, of course, unless he existed at the time. And so for Paul, Christ was a preexistent being who was occasionally manifest on earth.

“Or take another passage, one in which Paul actually does speak of Christ as a second Adam. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts Christ’s place of origin with that of Adam: ‘The first man was from the earth, and was made of dust; the second man is from heaven’ (15:47). What matters here is precisely the difference between Adam and Christ. Adam came into being in this world; Christ existed before he came into this world. He was from heaven.

“And so, the interpretation of the Philippians poem that takes it as an indication that Christ was a kind of ‘perfect Adam’ does not work, on one hand, because the passage has features that do not make sense given this interpretation. And on the other hand, this interpretation is completely unnecessary. It does not solve the problem of an Incarnational Christology–because Paul clearly says in other passages that Jesus was indeed a preexistent divine being who came into the world. That’s what this poem teaches as well.” (Ibid., pp. 261-262; bold emphasis mine)

The late renowned NT scholar Larry W. Hurtado also rejected Dunn’s interpretation, and for good reason:

To help address this question, we have to see what else Paul’s letters tell us about views on Christ’s self-abasement current in his churches. The most important (and most contested) passage is Philippians 2:6-n.⁹⁵ In particular, how are we to understand verses 6-8, which refer to Christ being “in the form of God” and having been able to demur from exploiting for his own advantage “being equal with God”? Most scholars take these verses to reflect a belief in the personal preexistence and incarnation of Christ.⁹⁶ But Dunn contends that they allude to the Genesis accounts of the creation and disobedience of Adam, and that the Philippians passage simply contrasts the self-sacrifice of the human Jesus with the hubris of Adam in reaching for divinity. That is, Philippians 2:6-8 refers solely to the actions of the earthly Jesus, and no preincarnate state is in view.⁹⁷ Because Philippians 2:6-11 is recognized as a key passage for assessing the Pauline view of Christ, and the key passage on whether Pauline Christianity held an idea of Christ’s preexistence, we should take some time to examine these verses.

It is true that, when they are suggested by scholars, we can see contrasts between Jesus’ self-humbling in verses 6-8 of this passage and the serpent’s claim that if they eat of the forbidden tree Adam (and Eve) will be “like gods” (LXX: hos theoi) in Genesis 3:1-7. But Dunn’s claim that Philippians 2:6-8 is a clear and direct allusion to the Genesis account and is thus intended to be read simply as “Adam Christology” greatly exceeds the warrants of the passage.⁹⁸ To cite a crucial matter, with a good many others Dunn asserts that en morphe theou (in the form of God) in 2:6 is simply a variant way of saying “image of God” (eikon theou), basing his assertion entirely on the partial overlap of the lexical range of meanings of the two words morphe (form, outward appearance, shape) and eikon (image, likeness, form, appearance).⁹⁹ But, as modern linguistics has demonstrated, words acquire their specific meanings and denotations when used in phrases and sentences with other words. So the question is not whether the general meanings of morphe and eikon have resemblances, but whether the specific expression en morphe theou is actually used interchangeably with eikon theou in Greek texts.¹⁰⁰

The answer is clearly negative. In the Genesis passages eikon theou is used to express the status and significance of the human creature (Gen. 1:26-27; 5:1; 9:6), and when subsequent writers wish to make allusions to this idea, they consistently use the eikon theou phrase (Wisd. of Sol. 2:23; 7:26; Sir. 17:3; and as Paul himself does in 1 Cor. 11:7; cf. also Col. 3:10). Moreover, New Testament writers consistently use eikon in statements that seem to make explicit christological appropriations of this theme (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15), and in other passages as well where the allusion/appropriation is less direct but still likely (1 Cor. 15:49; 2 Cor. 3:18). By contrast, morphe theou is never used elsewhere in any allusion to Adam. In fact, morphe theou is not used at all in the Greek Old Testament, nor, to my knowledge, in any other pre-Pauline Greek writing.

So the alleged use of en morphe theou as an allusion to Adam in Philippians 2:6 would be a singular phenomenon, and a particularly inept one as well. For allusions to work one must use, or at least adapt, at least a word or two from the alluded-to text so that readers can catch the allusion.¹⁰¹ In Philippians 2:6-8, other than ” God,” there is not a single word from the Greek of the Genesis 1:26-27 description of God’s creation of the human in “the image of God” or from the Genesis 3 temptation story.¹⁰²

The phrase “being equal with God” (to einai isa theo) is never used elsewhere in any identifiable allusion to Adam. It is used, however, in several texts, and always negatively to describe the hubris of human efforts to become or be seen as divine: e.g., a Jewish accusation against Jesus in John 5:18; the dying lament of Antiochus over his own hubris in 2 Maccabees 9:12; and Philo’s scornful reference to human vanity in Legum allegoriae 1.49.¹⁰³

In Philippians 2:6, however, “being equal with God” seems to be presented as something already held by Christ or really within Christ’s grasp, for he is pictured as refusing to exploit this status for selfish advantage.¹⁰⁴ It appears also that “being equal with God” is here equivalent or linked to “being in the form of God,” the latter presented as the basis or condition for Christ being able to make a choice about not taking personal advantage of “being equal with God.”¹⁰⁵

Furthermore, given that 2:8 explicitly refers to the earthly Jesus’ self-abasement and obedience to death on the cross, it would be somewhat redundant if 2:6-7 were simply recounting the same action. I suggest that the more plausible way to read 2:6-8 is as a narrative sequence, with Jesus’ earthly obedience in 2:8 as the apex of a set of actions of selflessness that are then answered by God’s exaltation of Jesus (2:9-11). All this means, as astonishing as it may be that the idea developed so early, that Philippians 2:6-7 should be read as describing the action of the “preincarnate” or “preexistent” Christ.

This raises the likelihood that Paul’s Corinthian readers also would have been expected to think of Jesus’ self-impoverishment in 2 Corinthians 8:9 as involving the range of actions that seem to be referred to in Philippians 2:6-8, which includes the selfless readiness of the preexistent Jesus to give himself over to costly obedience. To be sure, 2 Corinthians 8:9 is a reminder to readers of Jesus’ generosity and self-impoverishment from some prior position of advantage (“you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, being rich, for your sakes he impoverished himself”); so Paul does not explain what he expects his first readers to know already. But, with other scholars, I contend that various references in Paul’s letters indicate that among the ideas he expected his converts to be acquainted with and to appreciate was the belief that Jesus had really come from God, and that the story of Jesus’ own involvement in redemption extended back beyond his earthly existence and his crucially redemptive death and resurrection.

95. Dunn seems to have thought so as well, for he devotes nearly twice as many pages to this passage as to any of the others he addresses in his discussion of preexistence in Theology of Paul, 266-93 (discussion of Phil. 2:6-11 on 281-88). See also my other discussions of this passage: “Philippians 2:6-11,” in Prayer from Alexander to Constantine: A Critical Anthology, ed. Mark Kiley (London: Routledge, 1997), 235-39; a °d ” Jesus as Lordly Example in Philippians 2:5-11.” Among recent commentaries, see esp. Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 191-229, and G. F. Hawthorne, Philippians, WBC (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1983), 71-96.

96. E.g., Habermann, 91-157.

97. Dunn proposes, however, that the passage “set in motion the thought of Christ’s preexistence” and that the idea of the preexistent Christ making “an Adamic choice . . . in effect to become man” was “the almost inevitable corollary” (Theology of Paul, 288).

98. Indeed, it seems to me that in general Dunn attributes far too much to a supposed “Adam Christology” in Paul’s letters.

99. E.g., BAGD, s.v. eikon (222), morphe (528).

100. See also David Steenburg, ” The Case against the Synonymity of Morphe and Eikon,” JSNT34 (1988): 77-86, who shows that the two words are not simply interchangeable. My argument, however, makes use of modern linguistics principles to focus on the two Greek constructions, en morphe theou and eikon theou. On semantics, see, e.g., John Lyons, Language and Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 136-78; Moises Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1983).

101. See, e.g., Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 29-32.

102. Among the eight Old Testament allusions in Philippians identified by E. E. Ellis (Paul’s Use of the Old Testament [1957; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981], 154), there are none to Genesis.

103. Note also Philo, Somn. 2.130-31; Decal. 61; and see my discussion of John 5:18 and related references later in chap. 6.

104. On the phrase oux harpagmon hegesato, see esp. Roy W. Hoover, “The Harpagmos Enigma: A Philological Solution,” HTR 64 (1971): 95-119.

105. The structure of the Greek of Phil. 2:6 indicates this. Hos en morphe theou hyparchon is an adverbial clause giving the circumstance for the action of the main clause, oux harpagmon hegesato to einai isa theo [he did not regard being equal with God as an opportunity to be exploited]. (Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity [William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge U.K. 2003], 2. Early Pauline Christianity, pp. 120-123; bold emphasis mine)

In fact, there are scholars who take the position that the hymn/poem does contrast Jesus and Adam while arguing that it also affirms Christ’s divine preexistence and incarnation. Case in point:  

Christ	Adam
Existing in the form of God   Did not grasp equality with God   Took the form of a slave   Obedient to death	created in the image of God   tempted to be like God   enslaved to sin   death after disobedience

The parallels drawn between Christ and Adam lead some to assert that the hymn does not make any reference to a preincarnate, personal preexistence of Christ. Here is Dunn’s logic: Since the narratives of Adam and Christ are parallel and since “Adam was certainly not thought of as preexistent,” and therefore, “no implication that Christ was pre-existent may be intended.”¹⁴⁶ Similarly, Brown concludes that the phrase refers to “one whose earthly life was a manifestation of God.”¹⁴⁷ In this interpretation of the hymn, the hymn presents Christ’s narrative against the backdrop of Adam’s narrative. As human beings bearing the image of God, Adam and Christ made very different choices. Adam succumbed to the temptation to be like God (Gen 3:5), but Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (Phil 2:6). Instead of grasping for equality with God, Christ “freely embraced the outcome which Adam’s grasping and disobedience brought upon humankind. He freely embraced the lot of humankind as a slave to sin and death, which was the consequence of Adam’s grasping.”¹⁴⁸ Dunn stresses that the hymn draws these parallels between Christ and Adam in order to focus on the choices that they both made and the consequences of their choices. According to him, questions about the historicity of Adam or the preexistence of Christ are not addressed by the hymn.¹⁴⁹    

When the parallels between Christ and Adam are pressed to this point of denying any reference in the hymn to the preexistence of Christ, the narrative of the hymn is neglected and lost. The narrative in the hymn collapses when the story is retold to depict the choice of Christ as the choice of a human being who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of human beings. The hymn emphasizes the decision to become a human being by adding the phrase, and being found in appearance as a human being. If the first line – the one existing in the form of God – portrays the choice of one who is already a human being without any reference to his pre-human existence, then the subsequent lines in the narrative – becoming in the likeness of human beings and being found in appearance as a human being (2:7, 8) are strangely redundant.¹⁵⁰ What is the point of saying that a human being chose to become a human being and was found in appearance as a human being? But these repeated references to being made and found in human likeness are hugely significant if they depict the consequences of the choice of the one existing in the form of God before he became a human being.  

Our recognition of the relation between the phrases the form of God and the “image of God” and between the parallels of Adam and Christ in the hymn does not necessarily lead to a denial of any reference to the preexistence of Christ in the hymn. Wright strongly agrees with Dunn that the terms of the hymn must have their sense determined by the contrast between Christ and Adam, but then effectively argues that this contrast requires the preexistence of Christ. “The contrast between Adam and Christ works perfectly in my view: Adam, in arrogance, thought to become like God; Christ, in humility, became human.”¹⁵¹ G. B. Caird maintains that the incarnation is the main point of the Adam/Christ contrast in the hymn: “The whole balance of Philippians 2:5-11 depends on the reversal of Adam’s conduct by the incarnation: Adam being created in human form, grasped at equality with God; Christ, ‘though he was in the form of God,’ stooped to accept equality with the human race.”¹⁵² Theological reflection on the parallels between the Christ hymn and Genesis 1-3 led Ridderbos to observe that the hymn “describes Christ’s pre-human, divine mode of existence and his disposition shown in it with the features that make him known to us already in his pre-existence as the second Adam.”¹⁵³ Thus, even before his incarnation as the one existing in the form of God he was already the divine original for the creation of humanity in the image of God. Humanity is a copy of the divine original. By his incarnation, death, and exaltation, Christ opens the way for humanity to share in the glory of the original. Paul eagerly anticipated the time when the Lord Jesus Christ will “transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:21). (G. Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians (The Pillar New Testament Commentary (PNTC)) [William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co., Grand Rapids, MI 2009], pp. 140-142; bold emphasis mine)

150. I. H. Marshall, “Incarnational Christology in the New Testament,” in Christ the Lord: Studies in Christology Presented to Donald Guthrie (ed. H. H. Rowdon; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982), 6; Martin, A Hymn of Christ, xxi: “The hymn’s thought cannot start from Adam of Genesis but must go behind that Adam to Him who was the archetype of Adam. Only on this basis can the symmetry be established, and any real meaning given to the choice of Christ (in verse 6) which brought Him into the stream of humanity.”  (Ibid., p. 141)

Hence, the contextual evidence is explicit that this hymn/poem does indeed speak of Christ’s prehuman divine existence and his willingness to humble himself to become a slave by being born as a man.

THE EXALTATION OF YHWH INCARNATE

Hansen shows how the second part of the hymn/poem highlights Jesus’ being enthroned as Lord after his physical resurrection and heavenly exaltation, which will eventually result in all creation worshiping him as YHWH Incarnate:    

“The verb exalted is an unusual compound word found only here in the NT. By adding the prefix above to the verb exalt, the word designates the highest possible exaltation. TNIV conveys the meaning of the word, to ‘raise someone to the loftiest height,’²⁶¹ by adding the words to the highest place. The word exalted has a superlative, not a comparative sense: the thought is not that God exalted Christ to a higher position than he possessed before his incarnation, but that God exalted him to the highest position after his humiliation.²⁶² This superlative sense of the word hyper-exalted is confirmed by the rest of the sentence. Christ is given a name above (the preposition hyper is the prefix in the verb hyper-exalted) every name; every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth will bow to him. The word hyper-exalted stresses the incomparable transcendence and absolute majesty of Christ. The same word hyper-exalted is found in the Greek text of Psalm 97:9: ‘For you, O LORD, are the Most High over all the earth; you are exalted [hyper-exalted] far above all gods.’ As O’Brien comments on this text, ‘The point is not that Yahweh is one stage higher than other deities, but that he is a class by himself. He is truly the incomparable one.’²⁶³…

“Solid evidence, however, leads most interpreters to advocate the view that the name that God gave Jesus is the name Lord. The narrative sequence of the hymn points to the name that was given at the exaltation: at the incarnation the name Jesus was given; when God exalted Jesus he then gave him the name Lord. The name of a person can have the sense of a title that ‘is rightfully borne and encodes what a person really is.’²⁶⁷ The sense of title applies especially to the divine names that express ‘qualities and powers.’²⁶⁸ The hymn dramatically postpones the announcement of the divine name given to Jesus until the last line, which declares that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The echo this line gives of Isaiah 45:23-24 confirms that the divine name Lord is the name that is above every name:

‘Before me every knee will bow;

By me every tongue will swear.

They will say of me, “In the LORD alone are righteousness

And strength.”’

“Isaiah 41-45 stresses the uniqueness of the divine name LORD (Yahweh).²⁶⁹ ‘I am the LORD your God’ (41:13); ‘I am the LORD; that is my name’ (42:8); ‘I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior’ (43:11). ‘This is what the LORD says–Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and the last; apart from me there is no God’ (44:6); ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other’ (45:18). By quoting Isaiah 45:23 in Philippians 2:10-11, the hymn appropriates the unique divine name LORD for Jesus. The parabolic shape of the hymn can be followed by tracing the names or titles of Jesus: the one existing in the form of God goes down to the lowest place by taking the form of slave and back up to the highest place when God gives Jesus the name that is above every name so that every tongue will confess that he is Lord.

“Consideration of the context for Paul’s letter to the Philippians provides another reason for the view that the name Lord is the name that God gave Jesus. In a Roman colony, Philippians would hear the acclamation that Jesus is Lord as a shocking allusion to the declaration of the Roman imperial cult that Caesar is Lord.²⁷⁰ In the ideology of the imperial cult, Jupiter and the gods gave divine authority and divine names to Augustus Caesar. In the theology of the hymn of Christ, God gave the divine name to Jesus so that he will be the LORD acclaimed and worshipped by all. By quoting this hymn, Paul presents the exaltation of Jesus as Lord in language that reflects and subverts the Roman imperial cult.²⁷¹” (Ibid., pp. 161-163; bold emphasis mine)

“… God exalted the crucified Jesus and gave him the divine name Lord so that ALL CREATION would worship Jesus as Lord… The hymn celebrates the bowing of every knee before the exalted Lord Jesus. By bowing before the Lord Jesus to worship him, the church anticipates the bowing of ALL CREATION: every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth. In ancient cosmology these three spheres of the universe were under the control of invisible spirit-powers. An amalgam of Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish sources sets forth a list of names and formulas for use in the deliverance of those possessed by demons… The hymn of Christ puts all three realms of the universe under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. All angels and demons, all human beings, and, indeed, ALL CREATION will bow at the name of Jesus. The WHOLE UNIVERSE will openly express total submission before the Lord Jesus Christ… So the picture given by the hymn of every tongue acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord is not a picture of the universal church worshiping Jesus but of EVERY CREATURE IN ALL CREATION acknowledging that Jesus Christ is Lord. And yet, the hymn leads Christians to worship Jesus by expressing their faith that the crucified and exalted Jesus would receive universal acknowledgment from ALL CREATURES that Jesus Christ is Lord. When the church worships Jesus as Lord, they give a preview of the universal acknowledgement of his Lordship by ALL CREATION celebrated in the hymn.” (Ibid., pp. 164-165; capital emphasis mine)

“… First, God’s exaltation of the crucified servant to the highest position of absolute authority over ALL CREATION invests the name Lord with the meaning of divine sovereignty.²⁸³ The way that the hymn expands the allusion to Isaiah 45:23 (‘before me every knee shall bow, by me every tongue swear’) by adding the phrase encompassing all three realms of creation (every knee will bow, in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth) emphasizes that the sovereignty of Jesus is a divine sovereignty that surpasses ALL HUMAN AND ANGELIC SOVEREIGNTY. As Bauckham observes, ‘For Jewish monotheism sovereignty over all things was definitive of who God is. It could not be seen as delegated to a being other than God. Angels might carry out God’s will, as servants subject to his command in limited areas of his rule, but God’s universal sovereignty itself was intrinsic to the unique divine identity as sole Creator and Ruler of all.’²⁸⁴ When every knee bows in heaven and on earth and under the earth at the name of Jesus, ALL CREATION is thereby acknowledging that divine sovereignty belongs to Jesus who has been given the name that is above every name, the name Lord. The second commandment in the Decalogue explicitly prohibits bowing before anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth because the Lord God is a jealous God (Exod 20:4-5; Deut 5:8-9). Only the Lord God exercises universal sovereignty over all of creation; only to the Sovereign Creator will every knee bow (Isa 45:23). God gave Jesus divine sovereignty over ALL CREATION so that every knee in ALL OF CREATION would bow to him.” (Ibid., p. 166; capital emphasis mine)

“Second, by giving Jesus the name Lord, God DECLARED THE DIVINE IDENTITY OF JESUS. Some scholars, observing the parallels between the Christ hymn and Hellenistic myths of the descent and ascent of gods in the Greek religion, have asserted that the enthronement of Jesus as Lord is similar to the coronation of a deity in the context of Hellenistic polytheism. But the use of the language from Isaiah 45:23 demonstrates that Jewish monotheism is the background for this hymn. Hence, an understanding of the Jewish context of the name Lord is needed to appreciate the significance of that name. In the Jewish religion, the name Lord (kyrios) is actually a substitute name for the Hebrew divine name YHWH (Yahweh). Whenever Jews saw the divine name YHWH in their Hebrew text, they would not pronounce it for fear of blaspheming or taking in vain the unique divine name of God. Instead they would say a substitute name, the Hebrew name ‘adon, meaning ‘Lord,’ for the unpronounceable divine name YHWH. As a result, when the Jews translated their Hebrew scriptures into Greek, in the third century B.C. (that translation is called the Septuagint or LXX), they used the Greek name kyrios (‘Lord’) at least 6,156 times for the unique divine name YHWH. Since YHWH was the unique proper name for God, that was the name that was above every name (Phil 2:9). The Jewish prophets proclaimed God’s exclusive claim to his own unique name: ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isa 45:5-6, 18, 21). Jesus was given the name that belonged TO GOD ALONE. By bearing the name Lord, Jesus was not identified as one of many lords in the pantheon of Hellenistic gods and lords nor as merely a political rival to Caesar. The name Lord identified Jesus WITH THE ONE AND ONLY GOD OF JEWISH MONOTHEISM, THE CREATOR AND SUSTAINER OF ALL.” (Ibid., p. 167; capital emphasis mine)    

“… All that God did in exalting Jesus and giving him the name Lord to be worshipped by ALL CREATION led to the glory of God the Father because the Lordship of Jesus Christ expresses the very nature of God: God is Lord because God the Lord creates all and rules over all.

“The hymn offers no explanation of the mystery of the unity of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Jewish monotheistic belief that ‘the LORD our God, the LORD is one’ (Deut 6:4) is maintained, but in a revised form: now the one God IS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND GOD THE FATHER. The renaming of both God as God the Father and the Lord AS THE LORD JESUS CHRIST turns the ancient Jewish monotheism into a new Christological monotheism. The hymn asserts THE FULL EQUALITY OF JESUS WITH GOD (2:6) and proclaims that Jesus bears the unique proper name of God, the name Lord (2:9-11). Yet, there is no division or competition between the Lord Jesus and God the Father, for the Lord Jesus obeys the will of God the Father, and the universal worship of Jesus as Lord fulfills the will of God the Father… ‘The meaning of the word “God” includes not only Jesus, but specifically, the crucified Jesus.’ The worship of God includes the worship of Jesus, who died as a slave on the Roman cross and now sits on the highest throne as LORD OF ALL CREATION.” (Ibid., pp. 168-169; capital emphasis mine)

The foregoing citations highlight the fact that within less than 20 years of Jesus’ resurrection, Christ’s Jewish followers were already glorifying and worshiping him as YHWH God Almighty that became flesh, being the unique divine Son of God who is essentially one with the Father.

FURTHER READING

GOD, CHRIST & THE DIVINE NAME

How can Jesus be God if he is given the name Lord only at his exaltation?

Jesus said that all authority was given to him, … which means that Jesus cannot be God.

“The Form of a god”? The Translation of Morphē Theou in Philippians 2:6

Philippians 2:6 In Various English Translations

Carmen Christi: Worshiping Christ as God

Revisiting the Deity of Christ in Light of the Carmen Christi Pt. 1, Pt. 2

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