Jesus Is "Mighty God"
Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God...”
The Savior who was born in a barn and laid in a feeding trough would be called Wonderful because He would demonstrate the works and mighty deeds of God. He would be Counselor because He is the wisdom of God who counsels, commands and comforts anyone who would come to Him.
Jesus is “God”.
This Savior-Child, Jesus, was sent from God and is God. Haven’t you struggled with that idea? The human mind struggles with understanding and accepting the fact that Jesus IS God and He was sent by God. That sounds impossible (it sounds that way to me) but the foundation of the Christian faith has always been based on the fact that Jesus is God: Jesus is “Immanuel”, sent by God and God with us at the same time in the flesh.
The word for “God” used in Isaiah 9:6 is “El”. Out of the 245 times that it is used in the Old Testament, 213 times, its context causes it to be unquestionably translated as “God”, reflecting the One True, Almighty, Saving, Merciful, Loving, Rock-Solid, Commandment-giving, Holy God.
I read a short book recently entitled “101 Scientific Facts and Foreknowledge.” It tells of 101 non-spiritual facts, disease and prevention, health tips, nature, etc., which appeared in the Bible long before science could verify them. Humankind has always experienced these things, but it took science many years to actually discover, analyze and prove these facts even though God knew beforehand.
Every day we believe in things that we don’t completely understand. We don’t understand everything about electricity but it doesn’t stop you from “believing” in the power and principles of electricity. You don’t know everything about respiration, (breathing) but you don’t stop breathing! We still don’t really understand gravity but we still appreciate the laws of gravity and you wouldn’t jump off the Empire State Building or the Golden Gate Bridge to try and defy those principles. People do not have to totally understand something to believe it, but for most of us, we can accept the words of someone else, the writings of someone, some evidence, and then we are able to accept the principles.
The same thinking can be applied to spiritual things: We do not have to understand that JESUS IS GOD in order to believe it. (Jesus said all things are possible to him who what? Believes.) We may not comprehend how Jesus could be present at Creation as the Word and then thousands of years later come to earth as the Word made flesh, but we can still accept it and believe it, and trust Him as God.
There are hundreds of proofs and evidence that Jesus is God, but most importantly, we can believe that JESUS IS MIGHTY GOD because God and Jesus say so. God’s Word says so. The EVIDENCE says so and God says so. People who do not have the wisdom and counsel of God (the Counselor or Holy Spirit of God) would more easily believe a magician than they would God because they have been deceived. If people refuse to believe that Jesus is Mighty God, they HAVE BEEN DECEIVED and they haven’t been deceived by God, Jesus, or the Word, but by the devil.
People throughout history have been deceived by many false prophets and their teachings, which were far less convincing and diminutive compared to the WONDERFUL, miraculous, Lord Jesus Christ. When people deny that Jesus is God, they make an attempt to destroy God, to blaspheme His Holy Name (remember that Jesus was convicted unjustly of blasphemy when He claimed to be God), and in His stead, they make a god of their own choosing.
Instead of worshiping and serving the revealed Holy Almighty God, who mightily exists in three persons yet ONE, they make an attempt to murder this God by reducing Him. They try to place Him in a box of their own understanding, and in that way, they are serving a god who ISN’T there, and they become idolaters, instead of worshiping the Great God of the Bible, revealed through the eternal presence of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To reject Christ as God is to reject God.
Philippians 2:6-7 says: “He (Jesus) existed in the form of God, and did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”
Jesus is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father; very God of very God, who counted it not robbery to be equal with God. Jesus does not diminish God the Father in any way. Jesus does not detract from God because He “and the Father are one." (John 10:30) “I tell you the truth,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am! (The same name that God revealed to Moses.)” (John 8:58) “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.” (John 10:38) “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him… Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:7 & 9) (Jesus mentions his relationship with His Father over 100 times in the book of John.) Jesus is God, but He is also the Mighty God.
Jesus is “Mighty”.
To state that “Jesus is God” explains Jesus exalted position but “mighty” helps us to understand the character of His God-head. We don’t use the word “mighty” too often, but its Biblical use would include the words “powerful” and “strong”. We use the word “powerful” to include armies and aromas, speech, strength, men, motors and much more.
The word for “mighty” means “strong” or “strength”, but it is the intensive form of the word so Jesus is stronger or mightier than all the rest. In the Biblical sense, Jesus is immutably strong. He is eternally strong. His strength prevails against any forces. He is like the greatest fighter who will NEVER be defeated or the most skilled hunter who NEVER comes home empty-handed.
The creation in which we live is imprinted with the word “CHANGE”. CHANGE is written all over it; initially everything was GOOD, not fit to fail and fall but rather to stay strong: Now not only do leaves fall from trees, but the trees fall. Fruit falls and rots on the ground. Animals compete for survival. The sun rises and warms the air and earth and falls at night, but clear and calm days and nights can become filled with calamity and catastrophe. Relationships fail. Health falters. People are born and people die. Things change.
But God (two beautiful words throughout the Bible: “but God”) is imprinted with the word UNCHANGEABLE and Immutable. Only God is immutable, as it says in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever." He does not grow old with age or weary in battle. He does not grow slow of mind or slow of strength. God does not look forward to retirement. He does not wonder if Social Security will still be there tomorrow or next year.
Jesus is always and consistently powerful and strong. We do not occupy that position of strength, but He offers change for us in His birth, life, death and resurrection. He offers renewed strength and new life to us from his inexhaustible and unchangeable strength as the Mighty God.
Jesus is also self-sufficiently strong. Self-sufficient strength does not hope for enough of anything in order to satisfy itself. Jesus doesn’t need outside help or resources to remain strong. He doesn’t need spiritual vitamins or iron shots. Jesus had been designated and promised from all eternity, before the world began, to be the Savior and was finally He born to accomplish His saving task; but He was not born mighty. He was ALWAYS mighty, and proved in His earthly task, to be MIGHTY to save.
In His flesh, He was “found in appearance (temporarily) as a man in order to humble Himself (Being humble is not being weak, it is being entirely wise!) by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8) The Mighty God appeared “in the flesh” “as a man” in order to accomplish His role as Savior. And He was self-sufficient to accomplish that task. Humanly speaking, that may be difficult to understand, but spiritually speaking it is crystal clear because God is God, Jesus Christ is always Mighty God.
If this is so, why did Jesus pray to His Father while on earth? It was not because He was weak or insufficient. It was because He desired to always and entirely be consistent and congruent with God’s Perfect Will. Jesus never wanted to act in opposition to God because it would be a betrayal to his own Self. Jesus knew that to accomplish His task on earth as Savior, He needed always to be obedient in all things.
In John 1:3 we read, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Everything that we can see was created by Him and depends on His self-sufficient strength.
A similar claim is made in Colossians 1:16-17: “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
In the same way, Hebrews 1:2-3 says: “In these last days (since Jesus was born until He comes again,)) he (God) has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. 3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”
Jesus did not sit down at the right hand of the Majesty because He earned that position; He sat down at the place he vacated IN ORDER to accomplish the task for which He came to earth as Mighty God: to provide purification for sins which He had promised since Genesis! Jesus needed no one else’s strength to accomplish sin’s payment for us. He is self-sufficient and mighty to save.
Lastly, this word “Mighty” means “strong”, “strength” or “most powerful”, but its most primitive word, it means to “bind up anything that is broken”. In other words, Jesus as MIGHTY God, “binds up” the weak to make them strong. In Psalm 147:3, it says that God “heals the brokenhearted (literally, those who are broken in pieces, those who are crushed and crippled, smashed to smithereens!) and binds (or bandages) up their wounds.”
What things does the Mighty God have to “bind up” for you through Jesus Christ? Hurt, disappointment, feelings of failure, economic insecurity, sexual impurity, guilt from having made wrong choices, forgiveness for abandonment, forgiveness for anger, freedom from the past, fear of the future.
Jesus promises to bind up our wounds and brokenness because He is the Wonderful, the Counselor, and the Mighty God. He comes to FIX: to refresh, renew, repair and redeem anything that is broken or crushed. He guarantees to forgive, heal, to comfort and encourage, no matter what the cause or cost. He supplies and provides for ALL of our needs while He accompanies us always, protecting and defending with the inexhaustible power, but also compassion of the Mighty God.
A very basic question is always asked around Christmas: Who is this Jesus who was born in Bethlehem? We know that one of His names is Mighty God! Why? Because He has been Mighty in our lives!
OUTLINE
I. Jesus is God.
1. Jesus was sent FROM God and IS God.
2. We do not have to understand that JESUS IS God to believe it.
3. We believe that JESUS IS GOD because God and Jesus say so:
and so does the EVIDENCE.
II. Jesus is Mighty.
1. Jesus is immutably strong.
2. Jesus is self-sufficiently strong.
3. Jesus “binds up” the weak to make them strong.
