This article is part of our Advent series “The Dawning of the King.” We have also created a PDF with hymns and daily Scripture readings to use as a guide, whether individually or with your family or small group.
To us a child is born, to us a son is given . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor. (Isaiah 9:6)
If you belong to Jesus, then you worship the God of double wonder.
When we say, “God is wonderful,” we often mean that something about him awes us into worship. We see him open wombs, split seas, destroy strongholds, save us — and we wonder at him.
Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:11)
But there is another side to God’s wonders. The words and ways of the wonderful God are not only awe-inspiring but unexpected. They surprise us, startle us, and often confuse us along the way. God dealt wonderfully with his people when he brought Sarah’s dead womb to life, redeemed Israel through the sea, and made the mighty walls of Jericho fall. But before God’s ways seemed wonderfully worshipful, they seemed wonderfully mysterious: Childless Sarah grew older and older. The Israelites stood blocked by the sea. Joshua’s army kept circling the city. How strange God’s ways must have seemed as he set the stage for deliverance.
You and I need this God of double wonder. Our problems are too thorny, and our perspective too narrow, for us to find our own way. So often, we don’t even know what we need most deeply. How desperate we are, then, for a God who will accomplish not only what we can’t achieve on our own but what we can’t even imagine. How desperate we are for a God who will meet our deepest needs, even if we feel pained and perplexed in the process.
We need a God in the whirlwind, a God we can’t tame, a God who is gracious and good yet also too big for us to grasp. We need, in a word, the one Isaiah spoke of so long ago:
To us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor. (Isaiah 9:6)
Wonderful Counselor
We might hear Isaiah’s messianic prophecy and assume “Wonderful Counselor” simply means this child’s wisdom surpasses all others. And we would be right in part. In this son, “something greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42). If Solomon had “breadth of mind like the sand on the seashore” (1 Kings 4:29), then this one’s mind has the breadth of ten million seashores. The wisest cannot rival him.
The double meaning of wonderful, however, tells us that this son’s wisdom does not just surpass all others; it surprises all others. His counsel is in a different category from mere human counsel — not just the best of all but beyond all, on a higher, heavenly plane. When he arises to work his wonders, Isaiah says, “the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden” (Isaiah 29:14). He is a son to confound all sages.
Across the Old Testament, we see God’s wonderful counsel at work as he upends human expectations again and again. He brings mighty Pharaoh to ruin (Exodus 3:20). He frightens thousands with just three hundred (Judges 7:21). Or as we already saw, he brings sons through barren women and topples walls with trumpets (Genesis 18:14; Joshua 6:20). As “the one who works wonders” (Judges 13:19), his ways make even the wisest wonder and say, “Who would’ve thought he’d do that?”
We cannot put this Wonderful Counselor in a box. Beholden to none and bribed by none, he is utterly free to walk the paths of his God-exalting, pride-humbling, wisdom-thwarting ways. He is even free to take those ways, bundle them up in a boy, and walk among us as Wonderful Counselor incarnate.
Wonderful Christ
If the boy born in Bethlehem is really the Wonderful Counselor, then we would expect him to defy expectations. We would anticipate words not only insightful but unsettling, a man wise with otherworldly wisdom. We would look for one whose ways make the most intelligent men scratch their heads. And so we find in Jesus Christ.
Who expected him to stay at the temple as a twelve-year-old, or pass through Samaria to make a true worshiper, or heal (repeatedly) on the Sabbath, or overlook multitudes to call out tax collectors and invalids and prostitutes? So wonderful were his ways that even John the Baptist (himself a wonder) felt compelled to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3). Isaiah could prophesy all he wanted; the Wonderful Counselor would still surprise everyone.
His wonders reach their climax when he, with a face set like flint toward Jerusalem, becomes not only the child born to us but the Christ crucified for us. No wise man expected Calvary. No sage foresaw the cross. “The discernment of their discerning men [was] hidden” beneath the black sky of Golgotha, as the one who works wonders worked the greatest one of all.
The Wonderful Counselor gave himself to the slaughter. And then (wonder of wonders!), he rose to die no more.
Wonderfully Ours
If you call the Christ born in Bethlehem your Wonderful Counselor, then you worship the God of double wonder.
First, you wonder with delight at his glory displayed in his word and in your life. He has been good to you, has he not? He has answered prayer, conquered sin, ministered comfort, and done more for you than you could have asked or imagined. The world might scorn or ignore him, but Jesus is wonderful to you.
Second, however, you may also wonder with confusion or sorrow at parts of your life that seem so broken. As you reflect on some failed relationship or ministry setback, some bodily pain or unanswered prayer, you cannot understand God’s purposes or trace his ways. You may feel perplexed to the point of despair.
Remember, dear saint, the words of a fellow confused sufferer:
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform.
We do not follow a predictable Christ. His counsel soars high above our heads. He is bound to surprise us, bound to make us wonder, What is he doing? He is the God who became man, the Counselor who became creature, the Wonder who walked among us, lived among us, died among us, and won the impossible victory.
So then, our wisdom, our peace, and our sanity is to worship him in the face of his wonders — knowing soul deep that if we are his, today’s sorrow will turn out better than we can dream. The child will arrive. The sea will split. The walls will fall. The stone will roll. Our Christ will come.
Desiring God