Greetings again betsy123,
I do not have the time (or patience) to address this subject of Philippians 2 in all its detail, partly because I am not 100% familiar with explaining every term. Also your response is difficult to respond to because of its many parts.
Philippians 2 is but one of many!
Of course it has many parts! They are inter-connected. They all come from various angles!
They all reinforce each other! Because it's the TRUTH!
That Jesus is also Yahweh, isn't false teaching. The Scriptures will, of course, prove that!
I will state only a few aspects.. I cannot accept that Jesus was two different beings or that he had two minds.
Jesus was a human, the Son of God before and during his ministry and he grew in wisdom from a child Luke 2:40,52. The status "the Son of God" describes both his humanity and his Divine attributes or potential which he inherited and developed. He is definitely not God (fully God the Son) AND Son of God (human) as you describe.
Whether you want to accept it or not, does not make any difference.
The validity of truth doesn't hang on what we choose to accept, or not.
John 10
27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
That You May Believe
30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;
31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
It is important to equally believe both:
Jesus is Yahweh (in human form), and Jesus is the Son of God (the human Messiah)!
We do know partly why it is important to believe both.
Because if you don't believe Jesus is Yahweh too, you get into conflict with the Bible (several conflicts have been given) - that you take away the credibility of Jesus and the Scriptures!
I was commenting on the NIV “very nature of a servant”. The contrast is with NIV “very nature of God” which is suggesting that Jesus was in heaven with Divine nature, or that is the impression that this biased NIV translation gives me. How would you explain “very nature of God”?
Corrections: It doesn't include the term "of."
It says, ....in very nature God!
Philippians 2
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6
Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=philippians 2&version=NIV
And if you check the footnote below - that small letter "a" - it explains, "in the form of."
Then why did they alter it to give such a biased newer translation?
I don't know the reason why they altered that - but I'm not using NIV alone.
I also gave NKJ.
Anyway - you criticised me for giving NIV version, so I ask you now -
why do you use the NIV 1984 edition?
If you don't think NIV to be credible - why do you still cling to its discarded version?
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps, they changed it because they want it
to be more accurate?
Jesus was made a little lower than the Angels Psalm 8:5-6,
You mean this?
Psalm 8
3
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
4
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit[c] him?
5
For You have made him a little lower than [d]the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
That doesn't refer to Christ! That refers to mankind (Adam)!
The "son of man" (small s), refers to a human (which is a son of a human).
Didn't God visit, interacted, and was mindful of the people after Adam?
The rest of these lines ring a bell?
6
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
7
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
8
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.
an allusion to and summary of Genesis 1:26-27.
You mean this?
Genesis 1
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over [a]all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Why didn't you include line 28?
It's part of it!
It provides the whole context that God was referring to humans!
Your argument is dead wrong!
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
And, if you think "him" refers to Jesus......what on earth are you saying now about Jesus?
You saying....He's both male and female?
What kind of Bible are you using?
The contrast is between Jesus as a human when growing and making decisions, and with what Adam and Eve did in grasping equality. The whole of Philippians 2 has nothing to do with any supposed “incarnation”.
I'm not going to get into compartmentalizing and separately debating each like as if how you understand it makes it so.
After your big-time fiasco with Psalm 8, surely you don't expect me to even consider any of that, do you?
...anyway....
I've explained it to you near the end of post #377.
I even pointed out to you how this part.....
8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
.......had opened up another angle to support the point that Jesus is God Himself.
isn't that wild?
The Scriptures dumping all these evidences on you?
This evidence is something new to me too - I became aware of it only when
I read it and posted it above.
OPEN YOUR EYES.
If Jesus had to "become obedient" when He became human......that implies Jesus wasn't obedient before that!
Assuming He isn't Yahweh Himself, why wasn't He obedient to Yahweh before that?
You know why Jesus became obedient when He became man?
Because, prior to that, there was no one else to be obedient to!
He and Yahweh are One!
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