He Emptied Himself

The Jesus Way – Philippians 2:5–11

The Jesus Way · Movement 3 · From Power to Servanthood

The Shape of the Whole Life

Every life takes a shape.

You can see it in the way an old photograph reveals patterns that weren’t visible at the time. The career arc. The relationships sustained or abandoned. The places where ambition was honored and the places where it bent toward something more interesting. By the time a person reaches the later chapters of their life, the shape of the whole becomes legible.

Most lives, at least the ones our culture celebrates, take the shape of an upward climb. You start at the bottom. You acquire skills, status, resources, and recognition. You ascend. The peak comes somewhere in middle age, when you’ve assembled enough markers of success to be considered someone who’s arrived. And then, with luck, you spend the remaining decades enjoying the view from the top.

The shape of Jesus’s life looks completely different. His arc moves in the other direction. He starts at the top, in a position of glory beyond anything we can imagine, and he descends. He keeps descending. He goes lower than anyone thought was possible. And then, at the very bottom, something extraordinary happens. The whole arc reverses itself, and what looked like a tragedy becomes the most consequential life ever lived.

There’s a passage in the New Testament that traces this shape with breathtaking precision. It’s the closest thing we have to an aerial photograph of the entire life of Christ. Paul probably didn’t write it; he quoted it. It was likely an early Christian hymn, sung in worship gatherings before Paul ever set it down on parchment. And it captures, in a few short lines, the pattern that every follower of Jesus is invited to live.

If you want to know what the Jesus Way looks like, this is where you go.

The Hymn

Here’s the passage, from Philippians 2:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Paul opens with a sentence that should stop us in our tracks: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”

He’s about to describe the cosmic descent of the eternal Son of God, and his framing makes clear that this passage is meant to be inhabited, lived from the inside. The pattern Paul describes is what Christ did, and it’s what Christ is asking us to do. The same mind. The same downward movement. The same willingness to release whatever might be grasped for the sake of another.

The Word That Holds the Mystery

The Greek word at the center of this passage is kenosis. It comes from the verb kenoo, which means to empty, to pour out, to make void. Paul writes that Christ ekenosen heauton, emptied himself.

Theologians have argued for centuries about exactly what this means. Did Christ empty himself of divinity? Of certain divine attributes? Of the use of his power? The debates are intricate, and I won’t try to settle them here. What matters for our purposes is the action's basic shape. Christ had something. Something rightfully his. Something he could have held onto with full justification. And he poured it out. He chose the empty hands over the full ones.

Notice the strange phrase that comes just before: he “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” The Greek word is harpagmon, which carries the sense of something seized, grasped, clutched, held tight. Christ possessed equality with God. He could’ve clutched it. He could’ve treated his divine status as a possession to be guarded. And he did the opposite. He held it loosely. He opened his hands. He let go of what was his.

And then the descent began.

Seven Steps Downward

Scholars often note that the hymn traces seven distinct downward steps in Christ's movement from glory to crucifixion. Let me walk you through them.

Step one: He was in the form of God. This is the starting point. Christ existed in the morphe, the essential form, of God. He shared in the divine glory. He occupied the highest possible position in the universe.

Step two: He didn’t exploit equality with God. He could’ve treated his status as something to be clutched. He didn’t. He held his glory with an open hand.

Step three: He emptied himself. Kenosis. He poured out what was rightfully his. He chose the empty position over the full one.

Step four: He took the form of a slave. The Greek word for slave is doulos, the lowest social position in the Roman world. Christ didn’t just take human form. He took the form of a human at the bottom of the social pyramid.

Step five: He was born in human likeness. The eternal Son entered the limitations of human flesh. He took on a body that could be hungry, tired, sick, and ultimately dead.

Step six: He humbled himself and became obedient. Not just human, but submissive. He chose to live under the authority of the Father, doing only what he saw the Father doing, saying only what he heard the Father saying.

Step seven: He was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. The hymn doesn’t soften this. Crucifixion was the most degrading form of execution the ancient world had devised. It was reserved for slaves, rebels, and the lowest classes. Christ descended all the way to that. He took the deepest, most shameful death the human imagination had ever produced.

Read those seven steps together, and you can see the trajectory. The hymn is mapping a fall. From glory to slave-form to flesh to obedience to death to the most humiliating death conceivable. Each step is a further descent. Each step is another release of what could’ve been grasped.

And right at the bottom of the seventh step, the direction reverses.

Therefore

“Therefore, God also highly exalted him.”

The word therefore is one of the most important words in the entire hymn. It tells us that the exaltation isn’t a separate event tacked onto the end of the descent. The exaltation flows from the descent. Because Christ went down, God lifted him up. Because Christ emptied himself, God filled him with glory. Because Christ became obedient to death, God gave him the name above every name.

This is the deepest pattern in the universe, as the gospel reveals it. The way up is down. The path to glory runs through self-emptying. The exaltation comes after the descent, and it comes precisely because of the descent.

And the exaltation in the hymn is total. Every knee bows. Every tongue confesses. In heaven, on earth, under the earth, the whole created order acknowledges what God has done. Christ now occupies the highest place in the cosmos. He has the name above every name. And he holds that place because he was willing to take the lowest place first.

Paul wants the Philippians to see this pattern and recognize that it’s the same pattern they’re invited into. “Let the same mind be in you.” The same posture. The same willingness to descend. The same trust that the Father will exalt in due time the one who has been willing to be lowly.

The Shape of Discipleship

Here’s where this passage becomes uncomfortable in the most beautiful way. Paul isn’t presenting kenosis as a theological curiosity about the inner life of the Trinity. He’s presenting it as the template for the Christian life.

Every disciple of Jesus is being shaped, slowly and often painfully, into the same downward arc. We begin our lives clutching things. Our self-image. Our reputation. Our preferences. Our agendas. Our certainties. Our roles. Our wounds. We hold them tightly because they’re ours and we believe we need them to be who we are.

And the Jesus Way is the long, patient process of opening those hands. One finger at a time, one possession at a time, one identity-marker at a time, we let things go. We pour ourselves out. We empty ourselves of the false self so the true self can emerge.

Kenosis is freedom, not self-erasure. The things we clutch are the things that limit us. The grip we keep on our reputation keeps us from speaking the truth. The grip we keep on our preferences keeps us from receiving the gift of someone else’s presence. The grip we keep on our wounds keeps us from forgiving. Every clenched fist is a place where the Spirit can’t move. Kenosis is the slow loosening of every grip, until what’s left is a life that can be filled with God.

This is what the saints have always understood. The great spiritual masters of every tradition speak about detachment, surrender, and dispossession. They describe a life that has been hollowed out, in the best sense, so that God can dwell in it. The life that has been emptied is the life that becomes most fully alive. The pattern of Christ becomes the pattern of every soul that says yes to him.

What Self-Emptying Looks Like in Daily Life

I want to bring this passage down to ground level, because the hymn can feel so cosmic that it floats free of our actual Tuesday afternoons.

What does kenosis look like in your marriage? It looks like the willingness to release the need to be right. The willingness to listen longer than you speak. The willingness to apologize first, before the other person has acknowledged their share of the fault. Every healthy marriage is built on a thousand acts of mutual self-emptying.

What does kenosis look like in your parenting? It looks like the willingness to let go of the child you imagined for the sake of the child you have. The willingness to surrender your dreams for them in favor of their dreams for themselves. The willingness to absorb their adolescent contempt without retaliating, to keep showing up when they push you away, to forgive the unforgivable thing they said in anger and never bring it up again. Parenting is one of the most relentless schools of kenosis. The child fills their lungs with the air of your sacrifice.

What does kenosis look like at work? It looks like sharing credit when you could’ve hoarded it. Mentoring a colleague who may one day surpass you. Advocating for the person in the room with the least power, even when no one is watching. Refusing the promotion that would give you status but cost your integrity. Doing your work with excellence whether anyone notices. The workplace can be a temple of ego, or a hidden training ground for the Christ-shaped life.

What does kenosis look like in ministry? Here it gets sharpest. Ministry, of all places, is where kenosis is most needed and most resisted. Religious leaders face constant temptations to perform, to accumulate followers, to wield spiritual authority for personal benefit. The kenotic minister, by contrast, is the one who decreases so that Christ might increase. They point past themselves. They equip others to do the work. They’re willing to be forgotten. The temptation to grasp ministerial status is one of the most enduring spiritual diseases. The kenotic posture is its cure.

And what does kenosis look like in friendship? It looks like making space for someone else’s flourishing without keeping score. Celebrating their joy without resentment. Sitting with their grief without rushing to fix it. Letting the friendship be uneven, because friendship rarely runs at the same intensity from both sides at the same moment. Friendship is built on the patient self-giving of two people who both refuse to make the relationship about themselves.

The Cost and the Freedom

I want to be honest about what kenosis costs. It doesn’t feel good in the moment. The release of something you’ve been clutching feels like a loss, because in one sense it is. You’re letting go of something real. Your hand was wrapped around it. Now your hand is empty. There’s a phantom sense of the missing thing, and sometimes the absence aches.

Christ’s kenosis culminated in a cross. Real wood. Real nails. Real death. The pattern Paul describes doesn’t culminate in painless transcendence. It ends in suffering, and only after the suffering does the exaltation arrive. Anyone who tells you the Christian life of self-emptying is going to make you feel constantly peaceful is selling you a version of the gospel that’s been edited for marketing.

But here’s the strange thing. The cost is real, and so is the freedom. People who have genuinely learned to live the kenotic life carry a lightness that’s unmistakable. They’re less anxious because they have less to defend. They’re less reactive because they’ve given up the need to win. They’re less afraid of loss because they’ve already let go of so much that there’s less left to lose. They have a peace that flows from open hands.

And they often experience a strange exaltation. Not the kind they were seeking when they were still grasping, but a different kind. A deeper kind. The kind that arrives, like the resurrection itself, on the other side of the death. Their influence grows even as they try to disappear. Their joy multiplies even as they pour themselves out. Their lives become full in the same proportion as they become empty. The pattern of the hymn replays itself in miniature: the descent leads to a therefore, and the therefore is glorious.

The Arc Through Movement 3

This is the closing post of Movement 3, the journey from power to servanthood. Let me trace the arc one final time before we move on.

We began with James and John asking for thrones, and Jesus redefining greatness around servanthood. We moved to the upper room, where Jesus tied a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet. We watched him in the wilderness, refusing the three offers of power, control, and spectacle. And now, with the Philippian hymn, we’ve been given the whole pattern in one breathtaking trajectory: from glory, through self-emptying, into the lowest possible position, and on through to the exaltation that flows from the descent.

Movement 3 is the heartbeat of the Jesus Way. Without it, the other movements drift into ethics without an anchor. Servanthood is what makes the rest of the Way coherent. It’s the posture that holds everything else together.

And it’s the posture that, if we take it seriously, will slowly and joyfully unmake us. The old self, with all its grasping and clutching, will die. And a new self will emerge, one that bears the unmistakable shape of the one whose mind we’ve let dwell in us.

A Meditation on Descent and Exaltation

I want to close with a meditation, an invitation to sit with the shape of this hymn until it begins to reshape you.

Find a comfortable place. Take a few slow breaths. Read the hymn aloud, slowly, the whole passage from Philippians 2:5–11.

Now, in your mind’s eye, picture the descent. See Christ in the form of God, surrounded by glory, holding equality with God in open hands. Watch him release it. Watch him take the form of a slave. Watch him become flesh, become hungry, become weary, become misunderstood, become accused, become condemned, become abandoned. Watch him on the cross, breathing his last, the seventh step of the descent.

Stay there for a moment. Don’t rush past Friday afternoon to get to Sunday morning. Let the descent be real.

And then, when you’re ready, picture the therefore. The Father reaching down into the deepest place Christ has gone. The breath returning to the body. The stone rolling away. The risen Christ, ascending now, but bearing the wounds of his descent forever. See him receive the name above every name. See heaven and earth and the depths below bend the knee. See every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And then, if you can, see yourself in the picture. Picture the things you’re clutching right now. Name them. The reputation. The preference. The need to be seen. The wound you’ve been carrying. The role you’ve been performing. The grudge you’ve been protecting. See yourself with all of it gathered in your hands.

And then, with whatever willingness you can find in this moment, open your hands. Empty them. Pour yourself out. Speak the prayer of the kenotic life: “Lord Jesus, let the same mind be in me that was in you. Empty me, that I might be filled. Bring me low, that I might rise in your time, in your way, by your grace.”

Stay in the silence. Let the pattern settle into you. And then, when you’re ready, return to your day, carrying within you the shape of a life that’s being slowly conformed to Christ’s.

A Practice for the Week

This week, I’m inviting you to practice a small daily kenosis.

Each day, choose one specific thing to release.

On Monday, release your need to be right in one conversation. Let the other person have the last word, even if you’re certain you could win the exchange.

On Tuesday, release a piece of credit you could’ve claimed. Hand it to someone else. Let their name go first.

On Wednesday, release a small comfort. Skip the morning coffee. Take the longer walk. Sit with the discomfort. Notice what happens in you when a comfort is released.

On Thursday, release a grudge. Pick one specific resentment you’ve been holding and consciously let it go. Pray for the person if you can. You’re not denying the wrong. You’re releasing your grip on it.

On Friday, release a slice of your time. Give an hour you’d planned to spend on yourself to someone who needs your attention.

On Saturday, release a need to be seen. Do something good and tell no one. Let it stay between you and God.

On Sunday, sit in stillness and notice what has changed. Where do your hands feel emptier? Where do you feel lighter? Where is the freedom that comes from the open hand beginning to take shape in your life?

A Question for Reflection

Here’s the question to carry with you this week:

What are you clutching that Christ is inviting you to pour out, and what might be filled in you when your hands finally open?

I’d love to hear what surfaces for you. Which step of the descent struck you most deeply? Where in your daily life is kenosis being asked of you? And if you practiced the daily release this week, what did you discover?

Share your reflections in the comments or pass this along to someone who might be ready to hear the invitation.

Next week, we begin Movement 4: From Judgment to Grace. We’ll start with the woman caught in adultery and explore what it looks like to refuse the stone that’s already in your hand. I hope you’ll join me for the next stretch of the journey.

Grace and peace to you on the journey.

New Book

Graham Joseph Hill. Ten Movements of the Jesus Way: Shifting from Worldly Self-Interest to Radical Discipleship. InterVarsity Press, July 2026. Preorder here: https://www.ivpress.com/ten-movements-of-the-jesus-way

About This Series

This post is part of The Jesus Way, a weekly blog series exploring the ten movements that shape a life of following Jesus. Each movement traces a path the Gospels invite us to walk: from the patterns the world rewards toward the life Jesus actually lived and taught.

The series builds toward the release of my book, The Ten Movements of the Jesus Way, coming from InterVarsity Press on 28 July 2026. If you’d like to follow the full journey, you can subscribe to receive each new post as it’s published.

Preorder “The Ten Movements of the Jesus Way” here: https://a.co/d/004aPGwi

Image Credit: Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash