Philippians 2: Made Himself of No Reputation
Short answer: The old translation made Himself of no reputation renders a Greek verb in Philippians 2:7 that means Christ emptied Himself, pouring out His rightful glory by taking the form of a servant. Philippians 2:5-11 opens with a command: "Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). The supply of Scripture for this study ends mid-sentence there, but the verses that follow are among the best known in the New Testament. He did not consider equality with God something to grasp, but humbled Himself, became obedient to the point of death, and was therefore highly exalted. The phrase does not mean He stopped being God; it means He refused to use His divine rights for His own advantage. He laid aside the display of majesty, not the possession of deity, and He did it for our salvation.
What the Phrase Made Himself of No Reputation Actually Translates
The wording made Himself of no reputation comes from an older English translation of Philippians 2:7 and has shaped how generations of Christians have read this passage. The underlying Greek verb means to empty or pour out. It is the same family of language used for pouring out a container until nothing remains. Paul applies it to Christ in the most striking way possible: the eternal Son deliberately chose not to hold on to the visible honor, prerogative, and display that belonged to Him as God. He did not cease to be who He was, but He set aside the advantages of that position. The old phrase captures the practical force of that self-emptying, even if the modern wording makes the same point more directly.
Anyone who has read the Gospels has seen the result. He was born into a working family in an occupied province. He grew up in a town people mocked. He had no palace, no army, no formal training in the schools of His day. He was rejected by His hometown, misunderstood by His closest friends, and executed between criminals. The old translation, made Himself of no reputation, sums up that entire descent in a phrase. It is not merely that He received no reputation from others; He voluntarily set aside the reputation that was rightly His. Nobody took it from Him. He gave it up.
This is why the passage does not function as a moral fable about a good man. It is a statement about the eternal Son entering human history. In John's account, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). That verse establishes what He had before He came. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. It is the same person of whom Paul writes. The descent of Philippians 2 is not the story of a man who achieved divinity by humility; it is the story of God who took humanity and humbled Himself voluntarily.
Hold the two texts together and the phrase made Himself of no reputation becomes plain. The eternal Word, who was God and was with God, entered His own creation and was not recognized by it. He had every right to display glory at every step, yet He lived ordinary years in an ordinary place and worked with His hands. The old phrase does not describe a loss of identity. It describes a chosen self-limitation for the sake of others, undertaken by the one person in the universe who had the most to give up. That is the mind the passage commands us to adopt.
How the Text Moves from Mind to Servant to Cross
Philippians 2 opens its instruction with a command that is easy to rush past: "Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). The sentence is a hinge. Everything before it urged the Philippians toward humility, unity, and considering others more important than themselves. The verses that follow supply the model. Then the passage tracks a descent in stages: He did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, He emptied Himself, He took the form of a servant, and He was found in human likeness. Each line moves lower than the last, and not one of them reverses direction until the cross is behind us.
The word Paul uses for the attitude He took is the word for a servant or slave, and it is the same word Jesus used for Himself in Mark 10:45: "For the Son of Man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). That verse is the clearest commentary on Philippians 2 in the Gospels. Jesus did not describe His mission as receiving honor. He described it as service and as a ransom, a payment given for the release of others. The descent of the incarnation is not an accident of history. It is the shape of His mission from the start.
The passage then adds obedience: He became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Death by crucifixion was the most degrading form of execution in the Roman world, reserved for slaves and rebels. Paul mentions it deliberately. The one who did not cling to equality with God accepted a death that society regarded as beneath contempt. The descent does not stop at becoming a servant; it ends at the lowest possible place. That is why the phrase made Himself of no reputation is not an exaggeration. It is a literal summary of how far He went.
The turning point comes after that. The passage says that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The pattern is descent, then exaltation. It is worth noticing that the exaltation is God's doing, not Christ's. He did not climb; He was raised. And the end of the whole movement is the glory of God the Father, not the glory of the servant. That is the mind the passage asks us to have, and it is the exact opposite of the instinct to promote ourselves.
He Was Rich, Yet for Your Sakes He Became Poor
If the old phrase made Himself of no reputation sounds harsh, Paul says something similar in different words elsewhere. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). This verse is one of the clearest statements in the New Testament of the exchange at the heart of the gospel. The whole sentence is supplied here, and it is worth letting all of it stand. He was rich; He became poor; the purpose was not for His own benefit but for ours. The self-emptying of Philippians and the poverty of 2 Corinthians 8 are describing the same willing movement of grace.
It is important to see that the passage defines this as grace, not as tragedy. Grace means undeserved favor given freely. Paul does not present the incarnation as a loss that Christ was forced to endure, but as a gift He chose to give. The measure of the gift is the distance traveled: from rich to poor, from glory to a cross. The measure of the benefit is likewise stated: that you through his poverty might become rich. Every blessing the believer receives, from forgiveness to adoption to resurrection, is traced here to the poverty Christ accepted. The old phrase, made Himself of no reputation, and Paul's phrase, he became poor, are the same fact stated twice, each in the vocabulary of its context.
That should settle a question people often ask about this doctrine. The point is not that divinity can be discarded like clothing. The point is that the Son deliberately gave up the use, the display, and the privileges of His glory for a season, in order to accomplish something we could not accomplish for ourselves. He remained who He was. What He set aside was the exercise of what He had, and He did it in order to save those who had nothing. Read this way, the phrase is not a puzzle about Jesus; it is a window into the heart of God.
Practically, this shapes our giving, our serving, and our daily posture in ways Paul explicitly draws out in the surrounding chapters. He goes on from 2 Corinthians 8:9 to urge generosity in imitation of that grace. He does the same in Philippians, following the hymn with the command to work out salvation as God works in them. But we should be honest: many faithful believers and churches disagree about how exactly to hold together Christ's divine nature and His human experience in the days of His humiliation. Theologians have argued this for centuries, and the church has refused to settle it in every detail. What Scripture plainly says is that He humbled Himself and that we are called to live that way.
The Servant Rejected, Despised, and Without Beauty
The old testament picture of the servant gives the same impression. "For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him" (Isaiah 53:2). The servant does not arrive with visible splendor. He appears like a shoot in poor soil, easy to miss. This is the same restraint Paul describes when he says Christ emptied Himself. There was nothing about His appearance that compelled attention. People who looked at Him saw an ordinary man from a common background, and nothing in His circumstances announced who He was.
The next verse is even more pointed. He was despised and rejected, a man of suffering, acquainted with grief, one from whom people hid their faces. The passage does not soften this. Being made of no reputation, in the sense of the old translation, means precisely that people did not esteem Him as they should. He was treated with contempt long before He was executed. This is an important correction to the assumption that faithfulness always looks impressive in the moment. In the life of the servant, obscurity and rejection were not signs that something had gone wrong. They were the path itself.
What Isaiah supplies is the emotional and social dimension of the descent. Philippians tells us that He took the form of a servant and was obedient to death. Isaiah tells us how that looked from the outside: no beauty, no majesty, grief, rejection, and a face others turned away from. Put them side by side and the phrase made Himself of no reputation gains its full weight. It was not an abstract decision. It was lived out year after year in ordinary obscurity and then in public shame. The servant who had every right to glory chose to be overlooked.
And the passage holds out hope in the middle of that darkness. Isaiah says the servant is a root out of dry ground, which means life where none was expected. The same is true of the passage's effect on us. Those who follow Him find that His rejection becomes their welcome. Those who have nothing attractive to offer Him are the very people He came for. The old phrase does not merely describe His condition; it describes the doorway through which we enter. He went low so that the lowly could be raised. Anyone who feels unimpressive, unnoticed, or unworthy has this passage as a refuge.
Why This Doctrine Is Not Emptying Jesus of His Deity
One of the most common errors with the phrase made Himself of no reputation is to read it as if He stopped being God. That reading has sometimes been used to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, or to describe Jesus as a mere man who was later adopted by God. Scripture does not support that. The same Paul who wrote Philippians opens his letter by calling Jesus Christ Lord, and the hymn ends with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Whatever He gave up, He did not give up His identity as the one who bears the divine name.
A second error is the opposite one: to say He only appeared to be human, that His body was a kind of costume and His suffering was a display with no real pain. The New Testament resists that too. Hebrews 2:14 says, "Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). He partook of the same flesh and blood, in the same way. The passage goes on to say He was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin, and that He is able to help those who are tempted. His humiliation was real, not a performance.
What, then, did He set aside? The best answer Scripture gives is that He set aside the independent use of His divine rights and the visible manifestation of His glory. He did not stop being all-powerful or all-knowing in His nature, but He lived His earthly life in dependence on the Father and the Spirit, ministering as a servant. He accepted hunger, fatigue, grief, and death. He did not use His power to escape the cross, even though He could have called for deliverance. The phrase is best understood as a description of the manner in which He lived, not of a change in what He was.
Christians should be honest that the precise relation between His full deity and His human experience is a place where godly teachers have differed. Some emphasize that He chose not to use certain divine attributes during His earthly life. Others stress that they were present but voluntarily concealed. What the church has always confessed together is that He is fully God and fully human in one person, and that His self-lowering was voluntary, real, and for our salvation. Those who would press beyond that have moved past what Scripture plainly teaches. The old phrase is a devotional summary of a mystery, not an explanation that removes the mystery.
How to Follow a Lord Who Emptied Himself
The command of Philippians 2:5 is not merely to admire Christ but to have His mind. Paul is writing to a congregation that had quarreling and self-seeking in it, and the hymn is his cure. The application is direct. If the eternal Son did not use His position for His own advantage, then we have no business using whatever position we have, in church, in family, or at work, for ours. The old phrase, applied to us, means being willing to be overlooked. It means doing good work without needing to be seen doing it. It means not insisting on the respect we think our status is owed.
This shows up in specific, unglamorous places. It might mean letting someone else take the credit for something you did. It might mean serving in a role no one notices. It might mean staying in a hard, unpublicized calling for years without recognition. It might mean listening to someone who cannot offer you anything in return. The mind of Christ is not a mood; it is a set of choices repeated when no one is watching. The old translation made Himself of no reputation is helpful here precisely because it names the thing we most fear losing. We fear losing our reputation, and He gave His away.
But there is a warning attached to this teaching that we should not miss. Humility as a technique for gaining influence is not humility. If we lower ourselves in order to be noticed and exalted, we have not taken the mind of Christ; we have only used His example as a strategy. The passage does say God exalted Him, but it does not tell us to exalt ourselves in expectation of the same. Peter made the point plainly when he told believers to humble themselves under God's hand and to cast their anxiety on Him, trusting Him to lift them up in due time. If we serve in order to be served, we are still serving ourselves.
What this passage offers us is rest. The pressure to make a name for ourselves is removed, because our name is not the point and never was. The one who had the highest name emptied Himself and was given a name above every name by the Father. That means we do not have to promote ourselves, defend our honor, or cling to our rights. We can serve, and leave the exaltation with God. This is not a small freedom. It is freedom from the endless, exhausting work of managing a reputation. The old phrase, made Himself of no reputation, is the pattern, and it is also the promise of rest for everyone who follows Him.
What the Whole Scripture Says About the Humility of Christ
The New Testament tells the story of Christ's humility in several places and from several angles, and each one fills out the picture of the passage we have studied. In 2 Corinthians 8:9, Paul grounds generosity in the fact that Christ became poor for our sakes. In Hebrews 2:14-18, the writer explains why the Son partook of flesh and blood and was tempted, so that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest and help those who are tempted. In Isaiah 53:2-3, the servant is despised and rejected before He is exalted. In Mark 10:45, Jesus Himself describes His mission as service and ransom. These passages are not independent anecdotes; they are the same reality, and reading them together guards us against a one-sided or sentimental view.
When we bring them together, we see that the humility of Christ is not merely an example for us; it is the ground of our salvation. He became poor so that we might become rich. He partook of flesh and blood so that through death He might destroy the one who held the power of death. He was despised so that the despised could be welcomed. The self-emptying was not primarily a lesson about good manners. It was the means by which God rescued a ruined world. That is why the hymn moves from descent to exaltation and ends with the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. The humble path led to the throne, and the throne belongs to the one who walked the humble path.
This also means the old phrase should never be used to suggest that Jesus was somehow less than God or that His worth was diminished. The New Testament consistently treats the event by which He became of no reputation as an act of unspeakable grace and as the basis for His exaltation. His humility was voluntary, and His exaltation was given by the Father. He did not trade one attribute for another; He added a servant's life to an eternal identity and did not let go of either. The humility is not a subtraction from His greatness; it is the highest display of it.
For the believer, then, the practical direction is clear and the comfort is deep. We are called to the same mind, not because we can save anyone by our sacrifice but because we have been saved by His. The self-emptying of Christ frees us from the tyranny of reputation and gives us a pattern for love. It also gives us a hope: the one who humbled Himself was exalted, and He promised that those who humble themselves will be lifted up. The phrase made Himself of no reputation is, in the end, an invitation. It is an invitation to stop clutching our dignity, and to follow the Lord who gave His away for us, trusting the Father to do for us what He did for His Son.
Biblical fidelity check
Two things must be said plainly about what Philippians 2:5-11 does and does not establish. It does establish that the eternal Son voluntarily took the form of a servant, lived in humility, and was obedient to death, and that God highly exalted Him. It does not establish that He stopped being God, nor does it give us a detailed metaphysical account of how deity and humanity relate in His one person. The text is doxological and ethical before it is systematic. It tells us what He did and what it means for us, and it does so in worshipful terms. We are safe to say exactly what it says and no more.
A common misreading treats the phrase as if it meant Jesus ceased to be divine during His earthly life, or as if the miracle was that a man became God through humility. Both are wrong because they contradict what the same passage and its context affirm. The one who emptied Himself is the one who receives the name above every name and is confessed as Lord to the glory of God the Father. And the same letter opens by calling Him Lord. He was not promoted to deity; He was revealed as Lord. Faithful Christians differ about how precisely to describe the relation of His two natures in His earthly life, and we should allow that room, but we should not use that difference to deny the plain witness of Scripture that He is fully God and fully human.
Other passages that speak to Philippians 2:5-11
Several other studies on this site helpfully supplement what we have seen here. For the theme of unity that frames this passage in Paul's letters, see What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the calling and faithfulness of God that undergirds our service, see What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. For the wider context of Paul's opening appeals in that letter, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. And for how the same apostle handles warnings, freedom, and the needs of others in a later letter, see 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom. Read together, these passages trace the same pastoral concern Paul shows in Philippians: the mind of Christ must shape the life of His people.
Frequently asked questions
What does made Himself of no reputation mean in Philippians 2?
It renders the Greek verb that means to empty or pour out. Christ did not cling to the display, privileges, and honor that were rightly His as the eternal Son. He chose instead to take the form of a servant and to live in obscurity and then in public shame. The phrase does not say He ceased to be God; it says He voluntarily set aside the use and the visible display of His glory for our sake. The same passage goes on to say that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name.
Did Jesus stop being God when He humbled Himself?
No. The New Testament consistently presents the one who humbled Himself as the same person who is confessed as Lord. The same passage that describes His self-emptying ends with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. He remained fully God and became fully human. What He set aside was the independent use of His rights and the visible manifestation of His glory, not His divine identity. The precise relation of His two natures is a mystery Christians have long discussed, and faithful teachers have differed about some details.
How do I practically have this mind in my own life?
Start with the unglamorous places. Refuse to use whatever position you have for your own advantage. Serve where no one notices. Let another person receive the credit that could have been yours. Listen to people who cannot repay you. These are not grand gestures; they are the ordinary shape of the mind of Christ. Do not serve in order to be praised for serving, because that is not humility but a strategy. Trust God with your reputation and leave the exaltation to Him, since the passage shows that the one who humbled Himself was lifted up by the Father.
