Creation Will Worship YHWH Jesus
The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Chapter 26: Jesus as “Lord” in Paul, Part 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, pp. 488-493.
In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library. All emphasis will be mine.
“EVERY TONGUE CONFESS THAT JESUS CHRIST IS LORD” (PHILIPPIANS 2:9–11)
In Paul’s famous passage in Philippians about Christ’s humiliation and exaltation (Phil. 2:6–11), about which we have commented in previous chapters, he concludes with stirring words about Christ’s place in the cosmos:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:9–11)
Two factors in the immediate context of this very sentence make it clear that “Lord” here stands for the divine name, YHWH. First, Paul states categorically that Jesus has “the name that is above every name” (v. 9). In a Jewish context, that name would of course be YHWH, and the immediately following affirmation that Jesus is “Lord” (kyrios) confirms that to be the name. Second, Paul’s statement that “every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess” alludes to Isaiah 45:23, a statement about YHWH (see Table 15, which gives literal translations of both texts).
Table 15. Confessing Jesus as “Lord” in Philippians 2
| Isaiah 45:23 LXX | Philippians 2:10–11 |
| to me every knee shall bow (kampsei pan gony), and every tongue shall confess . . . (kai exomologēsetai pasa glōssa) | that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow (pan gony kampsē), in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess . . . (kai pasa glōssa exomologēsētai) |
Even James Dunn, while reluctant to attribute belief in the deity of Christ to Paul, acknowledges the point:
No one who knew their scriptures could fail to recognize the allusion to Isa. 45.23. . . . What is astonishing, however, is that these words are spoken by God, and in one of the most unyielding monotheistic passages in the whole Bible. . . . At the very least we have to recognize that the Philippian hymn (2.6–11) envisaged acclamation and reverence before Christ which, according to Isaiah, God claimed for himself alone. On any count that is an astonishing transfer for any Jew to make or appropriate.6
If one reads the Isaiah passage only in an English translation, one might miss just how clear the allusion is in Greek. Specifically, English versions typically have the clause “every tongue shall swear” in Isaiah 45:23, whereas Paul’s words are translated “every tongue shall confess.” On the basis of this verbal difference alone, the Watchtower as far back as 1960 argued that Philippians 2:10 “is not an allusion to Isaiah 45:23 such as would require Jesus to be identified with Jehovah.”7 However, as shown in Table 15, the Greek word is a form of the same verb, exomologeō (“confess”), in both the Septuagint version of Isaiah 45:23 and in Philippians 2:10.
Another objection to understanding Philippians 2:10 to be applying the words of Isaiah 45:23 to Jesus focuses on the phrase usually translated here “at the name of Jesus.” Unitarian writer Andrew Perry comments that the Greek phrase used here, en tō onomati, everywhere else in the New Testament means “in the name of.” On this basis, Perry proposes (against what he admits is “the consensus of commentators”) that Paul meant that in Jesus’ name everyone would bow not to Jesus but to God the Father.8 This argument overlooks the use of the phrase en tō onomati with the verb exomologeō (“confess”). Philippians 2:10 is the only such text in the New Testament, but the combination occurs in the Septuagint, where “the name” belongs to the one whom people “confess.” So, for example, we read, “In your name [en tō onomati sou] we shall acknowledge [exomologēsometha] forever” (Ps. 43:9 NETS [44:8]; see also 2 Sam. 22:50; 1 Chron. 16:8). The Septuagint also uses en tō onomati with other verbs of honor to mean that the worshipers are honoring God’s own name (e.g., Pss. 62:5 [63:4]; 88:13, 17 [89:12, 16]; 104:3 [105:3]). Thus, whether we translate the phrase “in the name of ” or “at the name of ” in Philippians 2:10, the one who has this name (Jesus) is the one “confessed.”
The convergence of the expression “the name that is above every name,” the allusion to Isaiah 45:23, and the affirmation that Jesus is kyrios thus convinces most biblical scholars that in Philippians 2:9–11 the confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord” affirms that Jesus has the divine name YHWH. Those who deny that Paul meant to identify Jesus as Yahweh offer three further objections that we will address here.
First, Paul says that God “highly exalted” (hyperypsōsen) Jesus (Phil. 2:9). Many critics of orthodox Christology infer from this statement that God elevated Jesus to a position higher than he had ever had previously. That is, they construe the “highly” (hyper-) part of the Greek verb to express a comparison between the position Christ now has with the highest position he had before this exaltation.9 However, Joseph Hellerman has commented that compounds with hyper– are elative rather than comparative in force. “The point is not that Christ has been exalted ‘above’ a position previously held, e.g., his preincarnate state. Rather, God has exalted him ‘to the highest possible degree.’”10
That this is the correct way of interpreting the verb is confirmed by its usage in the Septuagint, where it expresses the honor due to the Lord God: “Because you are the Lord, the Most High over all the earth, you are highly exalted [hyperypsōthēs] exceedingly above all the gods” (Ps. 96:9 LXX [97:9], lit. trans.]. Obviously, the Psalm is not saying that the Lord has now attained a higher status than he had previously, but that he is far greater than anyone or anything else, even beings wrongly worshiped as gods. This is one of only two occurrences of the verb hyperypsoō in the Greek translation of the canonical Old Testament books,11 the other coming in an ironic comment about the wicked man exalting himself and then being condemned by God (Ps. 36:35 LXX [37:35]).
The rare use of hyperypsoō in Philippians 2:9 (its only use in the New Testament) suggests that Paul may in fact have been alluding to Psalm 96:9 LXX. This possibility is confirmed by Paul’s use of the phrase “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10b). In particular, the phrase “in heaven” indicates that even the most powerful beings, including those considered “gods” by others, will bow before Jesus Christ. Thus, there is a significant thematic connection between Philippians 2:9 and Psalm 96:9 LXX, in addition to their use of the rare verb hyperypsoō. Far from undermining the view that Paul was identifying Jesus as Yahweh, his use of hyperypsoō adds further confirmation for this conclusion.
A second objection to concluding that Philippians 2:9–11 identifies Jesus as Yahweh is that Paul says God “gave” or “bestowed on” Jesus this “name” when he “highly exalted him” (v. 9). If Jesus really is Jehovah, the eternal YHWH, how could God the Father have given him that name after his resurrection?12 We have seen this objection before in connection with other passages and even other names or titles. Thus, Peter’s statement at Pentecost, “God has made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), sounds to modern readers as meaning that Jesus was not already Lord or Christ until his resurrection, even though Luke makes it clear that Jesus was both Lord and Christ even as a baby (Luke 1:43; 2:11). Paul says that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God in power . . . by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4), even though Paul viewed Jesus as the divine Son whom God sent as a man (Rom. 8:3; Gal. 4:4). Paul’s statement here in Philippians 2:9 likewise should not be construed to contradict his teaching elsewhere that Jesus was already “the Lord of glory” when he was crucified (1 Cor. 2:8).
We should read all such statements about God granting Jesus a “name” at his resurrection and ascension as honor language—as expressing the honor that God showed to his Son before the whole world. By coming incognito as a human being and dying the most degrading death possible, Jesus had voluntarily abased or humbled himself in an extreme fashion. He therefore put himself in a position of dependence on the Father to reverse that humiliation by a correspondingly extreme exaltation. Recall that the Septuagint used the verb translated “highly exalted” for God to express not a change in his rightful status but the honor that is rightfully his as the Creator of all (Ps. 96:9 LXX). Likewise, in Philippians 2:9–10 Paul is saying that God “highly exalted” Jesus by “giving” him the name that was rightfully his. In Roman society, a man’s status was elevated in proportion to the status of the man officially recognizing or honoring him. Paul therefore speaks in honor language that would be meaningful in the Roman society that dominated the culture in Philippi:
The concern is reflected in inscriptions from Philippi, where several individuals specifically cite the emperor as the one who bestowed an honorific title or office upon them, in order to emphasize the legitimacy of the claim. . . . Status was a public commodity in the Roman world, and a grant of honor had to be publicly recognized to count for anything. . . . The utterly unexpected status reversal of Jesus comes at the hands of the most exalted Being in the universe.13
A somewhat different but complementary perspective may be helpful here. As we have emphasized at various junctures in this book, Jesus did not go around during his mortal life saying things like “I am God” or “I am Yahweh,” nor did anyone recognize him as such at the time. (The first report of someone calling Jesus “God” is that of Thomas in John 20:28, coming after Jesus’ death and resurrection.) When God raised Jesus from the dead and had him ascend to heaven to rule alongside him over all creation, something very new had in fact happened. Now it was not simply the preexistent divine Son who was in that exalted position, but the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. The act of giving Jesus Christ “the name above every name” was appropriate as a way of affirming that this person, who was fully and genuinely human, was indeed the Lord. Unitarians are partly right here: What was new was that it was the man Jesus Christ who ascended to rule alongside God the Father over all creation. What Unitarians miss (actually, what they vehemently deny) is that this man Jesus Christ is the eternal Son incarnate.
Finally, those who deny that Philippians 2:9–11 teaches the deity of Christ routinely argue that Paul precludes this understanding by saying that the confession of Jesus as Lord is “to the glory of God the Father” (v. 11). Dunn, for example, comments,
“This means that the acclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord involved no heavenly coup or takeover, no replacement of God by Christ.”14
It would be difficult to invent a more egregious straw man position; literally no one thinks Paul was proclaiming that Christ had committed a “heavenly coup” or that he had “replaced” God. Dunn goes on to conclude,
“The universal lordship of Jesus Christ has been determined and effected by God, but the supreme glory is God’s.”15
This sort of “yes, but” reading of the text ends up contradicting what Paul actually says. It would be incoherent to affirm that Jesus is exalted to the highest possible position (v. 9a), that he has the name above every name (v. 9b), and that all creation is to worship him (vv. 10–11a), but at the same time to regard him as worthy of less glory than the Father.
It will be helpful to sum up what we have found that Paul teaches about Christ in this passage.16 Paul urged the Philippians to seek others’ interests and honor above their own, even though they were all in fact equal (Phil. 2:1–4). He then presented Christ as the ultimate example. Although Christ was in fact equal to God (the Father), he sought the Father’s interests at the cost of humbling himself by becoming a man and dying the dishonorable death of the cross (2:5–8). Because Christ had humbled himself in this extreme way, God exalted Christ with correspondingly lavish honors, so that all creation would accord the highest possible divine honor to this person the world thought was no more than a man (2:9–11a). Giving Jesus this honor does not detract from the honor due to the Father. Rather, Paul insists, when we confess Jesus to have the highest name and worship him as “Lord,” we do so “to the glory of God the Father” (2:11b). This is why Christianity is Christ-centered without neglecting the glory due to the Father.
Philippians 2 provides a fascinating glimpse of the attitudes of the Father and the Son as two divine persons toward one another. Each one seeks to honor and glorify the other rather than himself, and in so doing paradoxically receives all the more honor. We see the same pattern regarding all three divine persons in John 13–17 (see John 13:31–32; 14:13; 15:8; 16:13–14; 17:1–5, 10). All non-Trinitarian theologies miss this crucial truth.
6. Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 251; similarly, Dunn, Jesus according to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 133.
7. “Questions from Readers,” Watchtower, May 15, 1960, 319.
8. Andrew Perry, “Philippians 2:5–11—Revisited,” unpub. paper, Academia.edu, n.d. (2019), [22].
9. E.g., Paul A. Holloway, Philippians: A Commentary, ed. Adela Yarbro Collins, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 126, though he considers this point “secondary” to other reasons for the same conclusion.
10. Hellerman, Philippians, 119, citing Gordon Fee.
11. It is also used thirty-five times in reference to God in Prayer of Azariah 29–66 (Dan. 3:52–88 LXX).
12. E.g., Dixon, “An Arian View: Jesus, the Life-Given Son of God,” in Son of God: Three Views, by Irons, Dixon, and Smith, 81; Thomas E. Gaston, Dynamic Monarchianism: The Earliest Christology? (Monee, IL: by the author, 2021), 225.
13. Hellerman, Philippians, 119, see also 120–21. Litwa points out that the idea of the divine name being bestowed on someone, though not familiar in Judaism, would have been recognizable to the Roman Philippians with regard to the emperor; see Litwa, Iesus Deus, 210.
14. Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 251; very similarly, Chandler, The God of Jesus, 467.
15. Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 252; similarly, Chandler, The God of Jesus, 341.
16. See pp. 213–21 for our exegetical discussion of Philippians 2:1–8.
17. On Jesus as “Lord” in 1 Corinthians, see Fee, Pauline Christology, 88–94, 120–42.
Further Reading
Carmen Christi: A Reformed Perspective
PHILIPPIANS 2: AN ADAM CHRISTOLOGY?
“The Form of a god”? The Translation of Morphē Theou in Philippians 2:6
Revisiting the Deity of Christ in Light of the Carmen Christi Pt. 1, Pt. 2