By Kayode Crown

Philippians 2:6

who, though he existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be grasped,

ANNOUNCEMENT 1: Please check the new weekly segment following the bible commentary: From Addiction to Freedom by Favour Oyinloye. Or you can scroll immediately to it, I won't mind.

ANNOUNCEMENT 2: Going forward, beginning from Sept 1, I will add a segment to my thrice weekly newsletter. I call it weekly chant. You will get to hear the Weekly Chant (not music, because I am just repeating one or two phrases). The weekly chants are words and melodies I am hearing in my spirit.

The humility of Jesus is being described here, specifically the fact that he became man.

He was made little lower than angels for a little while (Hebrews 2:7). His death on the cross represents infinite humility.
He came from equality with God (something he never lost, Philippians 2:6-8) to full identification with the judgment of death on man as the lamb of God (John 1:29) who shed his blood on the cross.
He was not concerned about His own interests but the interests of others, and said, “No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13).”
He chose to give Himself up for us to be free. For example, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when people came to him with the sword, he said they should let the people go and only touch him (John 18:8-9). This is an echo of the words of God in the land of Egypt, the words He sent Moses to declare to Pharaoh, Let my people go (Exodus 5:1). He took the sword (judgement/death) placed in front of the Garden of Eden so that we can access the tree of life (Genesis 3:24). He swallowed death so that we can enter life.
So they came to Jesus with the full wrath of the Roman empire, with the army, a band of soldiers, and took Him to go to His trial. He went through the trial, declared guilty of made up lies, so that we would acquitted, and adjudged guiltless of our true crimes and but walk free because he took on the judgment of God for us (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
In Christ, who was condemned, we come from condemnation to acceptance (2 Corinthians 5:21).
We do not follow the broad way of the law (as a means of righteousness) that leads to destruction, but the narrow way of faith that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14). It is narrow because it is counterintuitive, and you can only find it if God finds you (John 6:44). Glory to His name.
The law is no longer a tool for condemnation for us, rather, instead of seeing Jesus as bearing the curse of the law; as it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Galatians 3:13). Whatever happened to Jesus happened maximally on our behalf, even His fulfillment of the law.
That is what John meant by we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14), in contrast to the fact that the law came through Moses. Through his incarnation, he became the revelation of God’s grace and truth to us. He did not live for Himself; He lived for us. He did not die for Himself; He died for us so that we can walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).
The point is, there would not be a gospel without the humility of Jesus. He came as the example of who a man should be, walking in obedience to God, and the selfless giving of himself under God.

That is not what we saw in the Garden of Eden. What we saw was Adam’s taking for himself of the fruit. And through his disobedience, death came into the world (Romans 5:12).

That was a Man reaching for what he should not reach for, literally grasping (with his hands) what he should not, grasping something that he supposed would make him be like God. Contrast that with Jesus who was God and being God was not something to be grasped according to the focus verse. Adam's disobedience deprived his progenitors of something. Jesus' death bestowed the believers with something he deprived himself of.

Remember that in that passage in Genesis 3, God said man has become like him, knowing good and evil, but since he is not fully God, he is corrupted by it, and the result was judgment of God and being chased out of the presence of God, cut off from the tree of life, cut off from the life of God.

But, for the work of restoration, we see Jesus, who was legitimately God, leaving His high place to take our place. And he willingly chose not to know some things, for example, the day and the hour of his return, at least during the time the disciples were asking him about his return (Mark 13:32).
But what we saw with Adam was that they wanted to know what they should not know and attempted to put themselves as God.
But Jesus, who was God, decided to leave the privilege of knowing everything, the privilege of deciding things for himself, and put upon himself the form of a servant, a subordinate.

So when people see the words of Jesus, His subordination to the Father, they query why then do we say Jesus was equal to the Father, and one with him; they question the concept of the Trinity.

But let them see this passage, that it was all in the plan, it was all for a period of time, it was all for a purpose, it was to give us the picture of the second Adam, who know all things, but chose to divulge himself of his all knowing nature (in obedience to God), and contract that with the first Adam who did not know all things was sought to grasped it, grasped and eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (in disobedience to God).

It’s a great mystery all right, in which the creator was killed by his creature, in which the immortal one died to taste death for everyone (Hebrews 2:9).

There is a contract between the first Adam, the one who was not God, was trying to be God, and the second Adam, the one who was God, choosing not to know everything for a brief period, for a full identification with humanity- the God-man, Jesus. Glory to his name.