Modern scholarship has persistently wrestled over whether the so-called “Christ-hymn” in Philippians 2:6-11 is primarily ethical/paraenetic or soteriological/kerygmatic. Though, the most nuanced proposals have avoided driving a wedge between the two. Much of the debate turns on the significance of verses 9–11 and their relationship to the obedience required of believers (2:12) and their future glorification (3:20–21). The kerygmatic readings have emphasized Christ’s accomplishment and Lordship as the basis or context of salvation and obedience (e.g., Käsemann), while some who attribute a paraenetic function to the hymn (e.g. Fowl) emphasize the believer’s analogous exaltation in Phil 3:20 as a reward for obedience. One strand of the soteriological interpretation, leveraging Morna Hooker’s logic of “interchange,” reads Christ’s exaltation as the basis for the believer’s future, analogous exaltation (e.g., Eastman, Barclay, Fletcher-Louis): Christ takes humanity to himself so that humans can become like the glorified Christ. This strand tends to treat future glorification as the completion of the gift of salvation, hedging against a notion of reward for obedience in 2:9 and 3:20–21.
The entire discussion, however, has overlooked, or at least underexplored, an implicit premise in Paul’s soteriological logic. Namely, that the historical exaltation of Christ (2:9) is already the definitive exaltation of God’s people. Thus, believers will experience their future glorification (3:20–21) as the eschatological revelation of their exaltation with Christ. So, akin to how Christ’s resurrection is the “first-fruits” (1 Cor 15:45) of a single resurrection-harvest, Paul can conceptualize the exaltation as a single, eschatological event yet with both past (2:9) and future (3:20–21) horizons.
Three lines of argumentation will suggest it is likely that Paul makes this implicit assumption as he pens (or adopts) Phil 2:9. I will show, first, that the corporate significance of Christ’s exaltation is consistent with parallel soteriological statements in Paul and other early Christian writings. Second, the principle of a corporate exaltation is implied by all three of the strongest proposals for a Jewish background to the hymn, as well as some of the Graeco-Roman backgrounds recently proposed by Fletcher-Louis. Third, the implicit premise helps account for certain “gaps” in Paul’s soteriological logic, explaining why believers presently have a “citizenship in heaven” (3:20; cf. 1:27), why they are “shining like lights” (2:15), and why Paul will not “labor in vain” (2:16). In all, this implicit premise allows Paul to hold the believer’s definitive, historical salvation and exaltation in Christ together with the believer’s existential participation in Christ’s sufferings and resurrection, including the experience of a future glorification. So also, Paul can indeed conceive of the believer experiencing glorification qua reward for obedient self-giving, but only and precisely because of the believer’s gifted share in Christ’s reward.