“coming in human likeness,” make clear that Paul has in mind the †incarnation, rather than Jesus’ deportment during his earthly life. This way of speaking about the eternal Son’s incarnation also parallels Rom 8:3, where Paul writes of God “sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Taking the form of a slave may seem an unlikely denigration of human nature, but the point is not the lowliness of human nature in itself. Rather, the hymn contrasts the vast difference between divinity and