Kenosis

Option two [of a translation of Phil 2:6] would be something like the following:

Although Messiah Jesus was in the form of God, a status people assume means the exercise of power, he acted in character—in a shockingly ungodlike manner according to normal but misguided human perceptions of divinity, contrary to what we would expect but, in fact, in accord with true divinity—he emptied himself and humbled himself.

In this reading, Christ exercised his deity. What is out of character for normal divinity in our misguided perception of the reality of the form of God is actually in character for this form of God. That is, although Christ was in the form of God, which leads us to certain expectations, he subverted and deconstructed those expectations when he emptied and humbled himself, which he did because he was the true form of God.—Inhabiting the Cruciform God, p. 27

<idle musing>
We just don't get it, do we? It is too radical, too incomprehensible to us. But, so like God!
</idle musing>