Because of this also God highly exalted Him and gave Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus “every knee should bow,” of heavenly ones, and earthly ones, and ones under the earth, and “every tongue should confess” that Jesus Christ is “Lord,” to the glory of God the Father. [LITV]Phil 2:9-11
Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [NLT]Phil 2:9-11
Yet it was because of this that God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name which is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [TLB]Phil 2:9-11
The Second Greek Sentence Interlinearised
διὸ καὶ ὁ Θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσε καὶ ἐχαρίσατο αὐτῷ ὄνομα τὸ ὑπὲρ πᾶν ὄνομα, ἵνα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι ᾿Ιησοῦ πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ ἐπουρανίων καὶ ἐπιγείων καὶ καταχθονίων, καὶ πᾶσα γλῶσσα ἐξομολογήσηται ὅτι Κύριος ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς εἰς δόξαν Θεοῦ πατρός.
wherefore also the God him {highly exalted} and gave {to him} name the above every name, {so that} in the name {of Jesus} every knee {should bend} {of heavenly beings} and {of earthly beings} and {of under the earth beings} and every tongue {should acknowledge} that LORD Jesus Christ to glory {of God} Father.
Philippians 2:9-11 Laid Out in Related Propositions
Wherefore also God highly exalted him,
and gave unto him the name
which is above every name;
that in the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
of beings in heaven and
beings on earth and
beings under the earth,
and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is LORD,
to the glory of God
the Father.
It was because Christ Jesus
- . . . though in essence God
- . . . didn’t cling to His equality with God
- . . . emptied himself
- . . . took the form of a servant
- . . . allowed himself to come in human form
- . . . in a man’s body
- . . . humbled himself
- . . . being obedient to the point of death
- . . . even the humiliating death of a criminal
διὸ καὶ
and so, because of this, because of that obedience, consequently, for which cause, for this reason, therefore, this is why, through which thing, wherefore, yet it was because of this
It was because of the layers of actions that Christ took for you and me that God raised him. We know from the rest of Scripture that God works in paradoxes. The way up is the way down. If you want to be the greatest then you need to lower yourself to become the servant of all. Jesus did just that for you and for me and for all human beings who have ever and will ever live on this planet. Though God, Jesus gave up everything when He came in flesh and blood in the form of a human man and took our punishment. He emptied Himself and humbled Himself. The result of the humbling outlined above through all layers of Paul’s cascade of verbs is that Christ has been given the absolute highest exaltation.
So therefore God highly exalted Him
[ὑπερύψωσε] comes from the root verb [ὑπερύψoω] which means to raise someone to a high position. The verb is a compound of two wordsὑπερ – over, above, beyond, more than, exceedingly more, much higher, even more so, exceedingly so
ύψoω – to lift up to a high place or position, to be exalted to a high place, hidden in the word is the sense of the comparison between heaven and earth.
ύψoω – is also used for the serpent lifted on the pole and Christ lifted up on the cross. The comparison is inescapable that the highest place one can be lifted on earth palls into insignificance to the high places of heaven.
Yet the compound of these two Greek words carries the sense of the ultimate exaltation in the case of Christ’s post resurrection exaltation. Yes, included in the raising up is the resurrection and the ascension but far and above that is the degree of exaltation afforded Christ Jesus in the fact that God has given to Him the highest exaltation possible in the Universe – in all of earth and heaven. You could put all of those words above together in a string and still it would be inadequate to describe the nature of the complete exaltation given to Christ Jesus by God. There is no other name in all of creation that is higher than Jesus name. To the same degree to which He humbled Himself to that degree also has He been exalted. So it does not only include the resurrection and the ascension but also includes His state of transcendent glory (what does that even mean). Again like before, I am lost for the adequate words to describe the nature of the EXALTATION. The Glory granted Him transcends, goes beyond anything ever imagined in all of Creation.
He is now sitting
clothed in Glory
at the right hand of God
the position of power and authority in the Godhead
holding the Lordship over the living and the dead
reigning in radiant Glory
That comes somewhere close to describing the nature of the exaltation of the Christ, Jesus. Jesus has been lifted up a place far higher, beyond all imagination, far exceeding in height than any position you can imagine in the universe. That High and More on a par with or a mirror imagine of the reverse of the depths He was willing to descend to as a result of the previous string of verbs.
Theologians have run wild on the debate over this verb [ὑπερύψσoω]. They debate as to whether:
- Jesus was exalted to a position higher tham that which He had in His pre-incarnate state.
- Jesus’ exaltation is not to be contrasted with His pre-incarnate state.
- Jesus’ exaltation goes back to the [etapein] “humiliation”
- or goes back to the [eken] “the emptying”
- Is the present position higher than the [en morphē theou] (in the form of God)?
- Has the far more and beyond lifted Him to a place higher than being in the form of God?
I am not going to bore you with the intricacies of the debate. All I will say is Do these theologians have nothing more to do than to pontificate on things higher than we humans have a right to know or the means of finding out? I suggest they don’t give up their day job because I don’t think the value they contribute from their theological postering is worth paying for. Neither am I going to explain all about the fact that the verb [ὑπερύψωσε] is a 3rd person singular aorist form of the root verb [ὑπερύψσoω]. Suffice to say at a particular point in time God exalted Christ Jesus to an unimaginably highest position there ever could be conceived.
In the next Gem I will tackle the next verb and then get on to the stuff that really matters.
The Babe has become the BOSS.
Ian Vail
The Infant became the Infinite.
Ian Vail
Let the enormity of what God did in Christ capture your heart and change you from the inside out.
Ian Vail
A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.
If Moses could only see the afterglow of God’s glory and if that afterglow was enough to make the Israelites hide their face from the intensity, what does that say about the Glory of God?
If I had a million brains I could not fully process all the ways God is working around me right now for my good and His glory.