Philippians 2:6
Philippians 2:66Who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
The NWT renders the verse "who, although he was existing in God's form, gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God." JWs read this as denying any pre-incarnate equality: Jesus was in a glorious angelic "form" but never even contemplated reaching for equality with Jehovah, which was never his to have. The Watchtower uses the verse to flatten the kenosis hymn into a story about a loyal creature who refused promotion.
Paul's hymn explicitly grants the equality the NWT tries to deny. "In the form of God" (en morphē theou hyparchōn) uses morphē — the outward expression of an inward reality — to assert that Jesus shared the divine essence. The contested phrase ouch harpagmon hēgēsato to einai isa theō is properly read as Murray Harris, Wright, and Hawthorne render it: he did not regard equality with God as something to be selfishly clung to. The grammar treats equality as a present possession that was not exploited, not a prize to be reached for. Verses 7-11 only make sense on the Trinitarian reading: he "emptied himself" (ekenōsen), "took the form of a servant" (morphēn doulou — same morphē, indicating a real assumption of human nature, not a costume), was found in human likeness, and was then exalted with "the name above every name" before whom "every knee will bend" and "every tongue confess" — language Paul takes directly from where Jehovah swears the same homage will be given to him alone. The exaltation is not a promotion of a creature but a restoration of the glory the Son had alongside the Father before the world (cf. ).
The KIT interlinear glosses the Greek literally as "form of god… snatching… equal things to God." The NWT smooth column restructures the clause into "gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God" — recasting the hymn so that equality is something Jesus declined to grasp at, rather than something he already had and chose not to exploit. The NWT's reading is grammatically defensible only if you import a creature-Christology that the Greek does not require. No major translation reads the verse the NWT's way; ESV, NIV, NASB, KJV, NRSV, CSB and NET all preserve "did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped" — equality already possessed.