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Protestant Apologetics

Philippians 2:7

NT Letters
Philippians 2:7
7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness.
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JW Usage

The Watchtower reads as describing the moment Michael the Archangel relinquished his pre-human spirit existence and was transferred into Mary's womb to become the human Jesus. "Emptied himself" is taken as a literal cessation of his prior form, with Michael's spirit-life given up entirely to assume human nature. After his resurrection, on the JW reading, Jesus returned to being Michael as a spirit creature again. The "form of a slave" is read as ordinary human existence rather than as voluntary humiliation by a divine person.

Protestant Usage

Read as a single Christological hymn. Verse 6 explicitly says Christ existed "in God's form" and that "equality with God" was already his — he did not have to grasp it. Then v. 7 says he "emptied himself" by taking the form of a slave. The kenosis is the Son's voluntary humbling, not the cessation of Michael as a creature. Pair with ("the glory I had with you before the world existed" — pre-existence in shared divine glory), (Christ is "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his very being"), and ("in him all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily"). Christ became truly human — the "last Adam" of — without ceasing to be the Son. Two natures, one person; this is the Incarnation framework.