NT Text: Philippians 2:6-8
OT Source(s):
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Typology (Providential Type, Backward-Looking) + Contrast
Significance: Paul's declaration that Christ existed "in the form of God" (en morphē theou) and did not consider "equality with God something to be grasped" (harpagmon) creates a deliberate Adam Christology by echoing Genesis 1:26-27. Adam was made in the "image" (tselem) and "likeness" (demut) of God but, tempted by the serpent's promise "you will be like God" (Gen 3:5), grasped at equality with God. Christ, who genuinely possessed divine status, refused to exploit it and instead "emptied himself" — the precise opposite of Adam's grasping. The contrast is theologically decisive: where the first Adam seized upward and fell, the last Adam descended voluntarily and was exalted (Phil 2:9-11). Paul's hymn thus presents Christ as the anti-Adam who reverses the primal human sin of self-exaltation. The morphē theou language resonates with the tselem elohim of Genesis, suggesting that Christ is the true image-bearer who fulfills the human vocation that Adam abandoned. This Adam-Christ typology runs through Paul's theology (cf. Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:22, 45-49) and here grounds the ethical exhortation to humility in the Philippian congregation.