its original form, such a confession might well have paralleled the christological confession in Philippians 2:5–11, a confession that begins with Christ “in the form of God,” but declares that Christ “emptied himself” and “became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross,” and concludes that as a result “God also highly exalted him.” It is possible that the confession and the author of Hebrews himself mean that Jesus abandoned the joy of his heavenly status (or the joy he might have had