How can the Son be co-eternal when Paul says the Son is the firstborn of the creatures? And how can a creature be of the same substance as the Father?
In fact, the Son specifically states "the Father is greater than I." And Paul specifically states that "the head of Christ is God."
This suggests more than just economic subordination. Of course, John was trying to "bridge" all this for obvious reason, given the context under which this Gospel was written and interpolated.
That Jesus was a real man none of His disciples doubted. But sometimes it came home to them with special force that there was something extraordinary about Him: “Who then is this?” they asked, when He stilled the tempest with a word (Mark 4:41). The incarnation of Christ (John 1:14, “the Word became flesh”) implies His deity and humanity alike. It is no mere truism that John voices when he insists that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,” and makes this confession the crucial test of truth (1 John 4:2, “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God”). He means, rather, that one Who had His being eternally within the unity of the Godhead became man at a point in time, without relinquishing His oneness with God. And by the word “flesh,” he does not mean a physical body only, but a complete human personality.
Paul speaks of God as “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”) where “likeness” does not suggest that His manhood was less than real, but that His human nature was like our sinful nature except that His nature was unstained by sin. Again, in the early Christian confession (1Timothy 3:16, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory”) the “mystery of our religion” (that is, Christ himself, the “mystery of God,” as He is called in Col. 2:2) is said to have been “manifested in the flesh.” The writer to the Hebrews says of the Son of God, through Whom the world were made, (Heb. 1:2, “Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds”) that since those whom He came to deliver (Heb. 2:14 “are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same”) in order that He might accomplish his saving purpose through death, which He could not otherwise have undergone.
The Bible certainly does not elaborate a doctrine of kenosis, but it does set forth the data with which serious biblical theologians have developed the doctrine of the divine “self-emptying. “ Basic elements of the scriptural evidence are:
1. The divine relationship or unity between Father and Son.
The Bible clearly says that Jesus is fully God. Paul writes of Jesus in Colossians 2:9, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” In addition, when Jesus’ contemporaries called him “Lord;’ they were employing a term that was used over six thousand times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to God or “the Lord.” Therefore, when the angels announced Jesus’ birth by saying, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11), they were saying that the Lord God himself was born.
When asked if he had seen Abraham, Jesus responded by saying, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:57—58). Those who heard him say this “picked up stones to throw at him” (John 8:59), which is what any self-respecting religious leader would have done if someone claimed to be God. They understood that Jesus was claiming the same title God claimed for himself in Exodus 3:14—”I AM WHO I AM.”
In Revelation 22:13, Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” This is very similar to what God the Father said at the beginning of the same book: “I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8).
The prophet Isaiah affirms Jesus as the king who reigns forever—a role only God could fill: “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (Isa. 9:7). That is why Paul said that Jesus is worthy of worship: “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9—11). Jesus’ divinity is the reason God the Father says, “Let all God’s angels worship him” (Heb. 1:6).
Jesus was fully God. “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19). If Jesus wasn’t fully God, he could not have borne the full penalty for sin for the whole world. And if he didn’t bear the full penalty of sin for the world as a sinless man, there would be no valid payment for anyone’s sins, and nobody could be saved.
John 1:1-18
John 10:30, “I and my Father are one.”
Heb. 1:1-4, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
2. Closely connected with this explicit claim of unity with God is the expression of limitations upon this relationship.
John 5:19, “Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
John 5:30, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
Matt. 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
3. Also, there are specific statements of Jesus in regard to limitations upon His knowledge and pre-incarnate glory. John 17:5, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
4. The emphasis of New Testament writers upon the real humanity of Jesus can be seen in the account of;
His temptations,’ (Matt. 4:1-11),
His growth and development in wisdom and stature, (Luke 2:52), “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
and His learning by the suffering which He endured. (Heb. 4:15), “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 5:7-8), “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;”
5. The most important passage of all, the one which actually contains the term which carries the central idea of the doctrine of kenosis is Philippians 2:5-11, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This is further amplified by the Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
Paul is not talking about what the Son gave up, but what He gained; not the royal status He forsook, but the role of the Servant which He chose. This is certainly the point of emphasis Paul is making to the Philippians; they are to have the mind of the Servant of God; they are to be filled with humility rather than lording it over one another. It is clear that the context emphasizes the change of form, not the change of content, of the Divine Being. He did not give up deity, but He gained humanity. There was no attrition of the divine nature in the incarnation; His life incarnate, containing the fullness of the Godhead bodily, was offered for man’s redemption.
The doctrine of kenosis emphasizes the divine initiative; it proclaims a salvation which comes from above rather than from below, from God rather than man. It emphasizes the free, voluntary act of the pre-incarnate Son in choosing the path of humiliation. Not of necessity, but out of the sovereign choice of love, He gave up heaven’s glory for the way of the cross. It emphasizes Christ’s conscious restraint in the use of divine powers during the days of His flesh. As the Gospels testify, Jesus had powers upon which He could have called to deliver Himself, but He refused to use them. This voluntary element is of supreme importance in our understanding of the person of Christ. Without it, Christ would become the helpless victim of the incarnation, once the original decision was made; and the significant, repeated, voluntary submission of Christ to suffering and death would be destroyed. The kenosis doctrine preserved the doctrine of the real humanity of Christ. The basic motivation behind most kenotic interpretations is clearly to provide a pattern of thought in which one must take seriously the actual lowliness, condescension, and humiliation of Christ.