If you, like me, have been a lifelong Christian — or a Christian for many decades — Isaiah’s prophetic list of titles for Jesus in Isaiah 9:6 is very familiar. It’s likely you can recall each from memory: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. When I hear these words, the choir in my head begins singing “For Unto Us a Child is Born” from Handel’s “Messiah.”
Familiarity is a good thing, a wonderful goal. But as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve experienced contempt for the familiar things of the Bible, but I must admit I’ve experienced the familiar becoming mundane. I hear those titles, and I do not instinctively respond with worship, awe, and wonder.
I’m a purebred Minnesotan and love my home state. But every time I travel to the mountains (something the Land of 10,000 Lakes does not have), I’m in awe of their majesty. I cannot imagine the sight ever getting old. But I’m sure those who live for decades in the mountains, sometimes experience the majestic becoming mundane.
Have the majestic titles in Isaiah 9:6 become mundane to you, too? Let’s seek to restore awe and worship to what has become mundane by slowing down and prayerfully considering the glories of the second of these titles: “Mighty God.”
Let’s consider the two words separately.
What is meant by God?
God refers to Jesus as the incarnate deity. That a child should be given the title “God” is either blasphemous or miraculous. There’s no middle ground. This unheard-of miracle was unimaginable to the Jewish mind.
But this unprecedented miracle was the only way to solve man’s greatest problem, the problem of sin against and broken communion with the Holy Creator.
Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 297-373 AD), a contemporary of the real St. Nicholas, explains in his work “On the Incarnation” why the incarnation was the only solution to this problem. He first writes on two ways God could not solve this problem,
- “It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die.”
- “It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil. … It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.”
To summarize this three-fold problem:
- All of mankind is sinful and cannot reverse or repay their own sin.
- God promised death for sinners and will not go back on his word.
- God made mankind for a good purpose, and it is unfitting of his character that he should allow the devil to destroy his work and nullify his purposes.
What was to be done? There was but one solution: the incarnation of the Son of God.
Athanasius continues,
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world…. He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption…. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own…. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us….
The incarnation was the unimaginable solution to our unfixable problem.
What is meant by Mighty?
The divine title for the child is completed with the word “Mighty.” “Mighty God” is used again by Isaiah only a chapter later, “A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God” (Isaiah 10:21). This, in context, refers to “the LORD, the Holy One of Israel” (10:20). That the child should share a title with the LORD only intensifies the mystery of the incarnation.
The Hebrew word for “Mighty,” gibbor, could speak to the omnipotence of the divine child, but Isaiah may be using the more nuanced meaning of a mighty warrior or war hero (like David’s “mighty” men). This battle theme is in the preceding verses of 9:3-5: “the rod of his oppressor” will be broken and “every boot of the tramping warrior… will be burned as fuel for the fire.”
So how is the incarnate God a peace-winning war hero?
Our mighty hero, Jesus, held no sword or spear and yet won his battle by being “pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5). Through his death he has “brought us peace” with God and one another (Isaiah 53:5, cf. Romans 5:1).
And one day he will return to win a permanent and universal peace, this time “with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance” on his and our enemies (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). He will put all of his enemies under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25-26), including Satan and death, and establish everlasting shalom.
Could we ask for a greater war hero than this Prince of peace?
So how should we respond to this “Mighty God,” to God incarnate?
Here’s Archibald Alexander, “I gaze upon this mystery. Angels can do no more. I am lost in wonder – so are they. This union of the infinite and finite I cannot comprehend; but I can adore the incarnate God.”
Heavenly Father, by your Spirit’s power, help us to see the light of the glory of Jesus’ incarnation, and respond in worship. Amen.
Steve Johnson serves as associate pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Rochester, Minnesota.