NOTES for Php 2:6-11
What are we capable of for the sake of love? Oh, various feats. Let us remember the knights. We can do many different good deeds, defeat many enemies, win great glory for ourselves... But all this will be not for love's sake, but for our own sake: to exalt ourselves, draw attention, earn love in return.
Christ, however, reveals His love not so much by feats as by self-renunciation. Not by exaltation, but by self-emptying, abasement, kenosis. This is how God poses the question: what of your own can you give up for the sake of the one you love, what can you give for him? And the ultimate love of Christ is revealed in the fact that He gives truly everything. First He exchanges what He possesses as the Son of God for what is available to the Son of Man: life in eternity for life in time and space; omnipotence for the weakness of an infant; the ability to create the world for the craft of a carpenter.
But even this is not all. His love seeks a greater giving. First He becomes a slave for His own disciples and washes their feet. Then He, immortal in His divine nature, gives up His whole life, taking upon Himself the full horror of human suffering and death. Who else could give everything in this way out of love for me, simply in order to be with me both in life and in death?