The Greek word “homoioma” [likeness] plays an important role in the statements about Christ in Rom and Phi — in expressing both the “divinity” and the humanity of the Son of God.

  • Rom 5:14 asserts that mankind as a whole, like Adam, has been subjected to the rule of death, even if it has not sinned in exactly the same way as he (epi tou homoiomati). Adam is the type of Christ, the Last Adam (cf 1Co 15:45). What Christ brings about by grace surpasses by far the equivalent effect of the fall of the first man.
  • Rom 6:5 presents certain difficulties of exegesis: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his [tou homoiomati tou thanatou autou], we shall certainly be united in a resurrection like his” (RSV). The interpretation depends on whether one understands “homoioma” in this verse concretely as a picture, the symbolic representation of something else (ie baptism as representing something else), or as the actual realization of an event by means of a symbolic representation (ie, in some real and meaningful sense, believers “die” when baptized into Christ). If one prefers the second alternative, the text would mean: “In the act of baptism the death of Jesus Christ is present, although in a different form from that on Golgotha,” and we are “received into the same saving event”… (NIDNTT)
  • Rom 8:3: “What the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: God… sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh [en homoiomati sarkos hamartias] and for sin… condemned sin in the flesh” (RSV). Here is Christ being born, and thus coming, into the very arena of human nature, because it was only there — in that arena — that he could confront the power of sin (or the “devil”: Heb 2:14,15) and defeat it along the lines and on the terms intended by the Father. Did Jesus then come in the ABSOLUTE IDENTITY of sinful flesh? Yes, and no. Yes, as to the substance of that body which he possessed. But perhaps… No, as to that body and flesh being “sinful” — his flesh was not “sinful” in the sense of sinning or having sinned. However, this requires a further caveat: the flesh, or the body, of Jesus may be said to have been “sinful” in the sense that — as the principle of that flesh operated in other human beings — it led inevitably to actual sin… metonymical “sin”. And so God made him, Jesus, to be “sin” (in his sinful flesh), even though Jesus knew no sin (actually, by commission): 2Co 5:19-21.
  • Similarly in Phi 2:7, Jesus is described as “being born in the likeness of men [en homoiomati anthropon genomenos]” (RSV). He was conceived in human form, and became like man. This “likeness” was real and not merely apparent. What has already been said about Rom. 8:3 applies here unequivocally. Christ was in fact conceived as a historically unique, unambiguously human being. He was in fact delivered to death, the curse of sinful men (cf Gal 3:13), although he himself was sinless (cf Heb 4:15). Thus at a specific point in time, and in a specific arena, or body (ie, “in his flesh”), he broke the power of sin and death.