Following the lead of scholars who have explored the affective dimensions of early Jewish and Christian poetic texts, this paper explores ways that early Christian hymns employed stylistic and poetic features which seem intended to transport their readers into an experience of the divine realities they are describing. First, using Charles Cosgrove’s study of a late-third-century Christian hymn with musical notation (P.Oxy. 1786) as a starting point, we will consider how the notions of deictic self-referentiality and the imaginal world of Greek hymns may shed light on the internal and extra-discursive dynamics of early Christian hymns. These concepts, familiar in ancient Greek hymnody, allow readers to distinguish between when the poet is providing liturgical or performative instruction to the present audience reciting the hymn (things they would literally see and experience around them; deixis) versus when the poet is describing a spiritual or other-worldly reality that can only be seen with the mind (deixis of the eye in contrast to deixis of the mind). Second, we will make note of Gary Selby’s work on mimesis in the poetic passages of the New Testament and consider how this provides a window into ancient understandings of poetry and its ability to use language to create an experience for its listeners. Third, we will examine Phil 2:5-11 in light of these concepts and show how the approaches outlined here allow for a new appreciation of the way in which an early audience may have experienced the reading of such a hymnic passage.