[2.] The form of God is opposed to the form of a servant; and that form of a servant is called the “fashion of a man,” verse 8, — that fashion wherein he was found when he gave himself to death, wherein as a man he poured out his blood and died. Μορφὴν δούλου λαβὼν, (he “took the form of a servant”), is expounded in the next words, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος, — an expression used to set out his incarnation, Rom. viii. 3. God sent him ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας· in taking true flesh, he was in the “likeness of sinful flesh.” Now, in thus doing, it is said ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσε, — “he humbled, emptied himself, made himself of no reputation.” In the very taking of flesh, there was a condescension, a debasing of the person of the Son of God; it could not be without it. If God humbled himself to “behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth,” Ps. cxiii. 6, then certainly it was an inconceivable condescension and abasement, not only to behold, but take upon him (into personal union) our nature with himself. And though nothing could possibly be taken off from the essential glory of the Deity, yet that person appearing in the fashion of a man, and form of a servant, the glory of it, as to the manifestation, was eclipsed; and he appeared Isa. liii. 2. quite another thing than what indeed he was, and had been from eternity. Hence he prays that his Father would “glorify him with the glory he had with him before the world was,” John xvii. 5, as to the manifestation of it. And so, though the divine nature was not abased, the person was.