Handel’s Messiah made memorable a number of Old Testament prophecies of the coming of Christ, including the coming of a righteous king as a child born unto the people of God in Isaiah 9:6. In this wonderful prophecy the coming king is named in four pairs of titles: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. All these are wonderful affirmations of the divinity of Christ! But the first of these is easily misunderstood. This post is about what Isaiah means by describing the coming king as a wonderful counselor.
Today when we think of a counselor, we usually either think of summer camp or therapy. Summer camp is the more obviously modern and western conception of a counselor, so I think a good number of Christians think of counselors in the Bible more like therapists: people who give us advice for our personal problems. Indeed, the biblical counseling movement has been known to refer to Jesus as the Wonderful Counselor whom they imitate. But this is a despicable impoverishment of the terminology of Isaiah. When we look at how Isaiah uses the terms wonderful and to counsel together, we see a very different concept.
Isaiah pairs the terms wonderful and to counsel in two other passages: Isaiah 25:1 and Isaiah 28:29, both describing Yahweh (thus reaffirming the Messiah’s divinity). The first of these is obscured in English; where you see the word plans the author used the same word as counsel in Isaiah 9:6. A counselor is a planner, and that is indeed the most consistent understanding of counselor in Isaiah. Isaiah refers to these plans coming from afar off. He is referring to God’s eternal decree of all things that come to pass, to the doctrine underlying the possibility of prophecy. God’s counsels include all that comes to pass in the universe. Rather than dealing with people’s petty personal problems, the divine counselor foreordains God’s marvelous works in history.
The other passage in which Isaiah pairs the concepts of wonder and counsel confirms this conclusion. Initially, the context of a sort of agrarian parable (Isaiah 28:23–28) would seem to suggest that counsel (v. 29) has to do with solving riddles. However, the parable illustrated the point made earlier in the chapter: Israel had lost her proper function, and Yahweh would set her right. So God’s counsel here involves judgment! While this does function to illustrate the wisdom of God, the emphasis again is on God’s sovereign plan that always certainly comes to pass.
Isaiah’s use of the term wonderful counselor should cause us to pause and worship God. We should find in this term reason for awe: Jesus came as the pre-eternal one who declared the end from the beginning, whose plans are always carried out. Rather than responding to Isaiah 9:6 by attempting to turn to Jesus for advice with our fear of being buried alive in a box or our decision regarding whether to date some girl or take some job, we should respond to God’s work by being amazed. Indeed, it would be right even to be afraid! Consider your position with Jesus, become his subject, and turn to God in worship. Jesus as our wonderful counselor is our king and our judge. The only proper response is to worship the King!
As far as a counseling situation would go, however, if you have a real problem, and not petty existential angst, seeing Jesus as the sovereign of all things is better than as your advisor. Jesus does not whisper good suggestions in your ears for dealing with life and death issues! For big, scary problems, the Christian has a big, scary savior on his side. If we want to deal with serious issues–human trafficking, prevalent racism, cancer, war, systemic injustice, etc.–we need not a God who gives helpful suggestions on what classes you should take, but a God who orchestrated all things including the very tragedies we’re dealing with! Jesus as wonderful counselor, then, brings comfort, stability, and wise counsel to wrestling with the greatest problems we face in this world.
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