and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6 ESV

As we continue our Advent meditations upon the four names given to the Christ in Isaiah 9:6, we come to the second title: Mighty God.

The Christ is not only Wisdom made flesh; He is also a king of might. This king, whose throne of peace and dominion will be established forever, will be a king of might and power. Powerful enough, indeed, to subdue His enemies, to break rebellious nations with “with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Psalm 2:9). And His mighty power will derive from the marvelous fact that this king is also God.

Of course, many kings throughout the ages have claimed to be earthly divinities. The two most well-known examples are Pharaoh and Caesar, who both classified themselves as belonging to the pantheon of gods. Yet however mighty the reign and kingdom of those kings became, they each still proved to be as mortal as the poorest beggars of their kingdom. Whether through sickness, the weariness of time, or an assassin’s dagger or poison, each proved to be powerless in the face of death. Indeed, many in life play being divine, but death exposes all as shams.

Yet the Christ was to be different. This king is to be called Mighty God, and that is no hyperbole. In chapter 7, Isaiah also predicted that the Christ’s name would be Immanuel, which means God with us. God was very much promising through the prophet a truly divine king in the person of the Christ. And we believe this to be true of Jesus.

Although Jesus did not come or conquer in ways that anyone anticipated, He walked this earth as a king hidden in plain sight among His people. And each day of His ministry, He pushed back a little further the darkness, both spiritually and physically. While He was certainly a king like no other, He proved His might and deity in the most spectacular battle in all of history. Like all other kings, the Christ died, but unlike the rest, “it was impossible for him to be held by” the grave (Acts 2:24). He conquered the unconquerable foe of man: death itself. And now He sits, alive, at His Father’s throne ruling over all creation, and we wait with great longing for the soon-coming return of Christ, our Mighty God.