By Reuben A. Torrey
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
“His name shall be called Wonderful.” The prophet Isaiah, with a mind illumined by the Holy Spirit, looked down 740 years and saw the coming of Jesus of Nazareth and uttered the sublime words of our text—Isaiah 9:6. In them is wrapped up a world of meaning concerning the divine glory, the matchless character, and the wonderful offices of our Lord, but tonight we must limit our thought to one clause in the great verse: “His name shall be called Wonderful.” In the Bible, names have meaning, especially when applied to God the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost. The name is a revelation of what one is. Jesus is called “Wonderful” because He is wonderful. First, Jesus is wonderful in His nature; second, Jesus is wonderful in His character; third, Jesus is wonderful in His work.
Jesus Is Wonderful in His Nature
He is a divine being. He is divine in a sense in which no other man is divine. The Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is full of that great truth. He most unhesitatingly made the claim. In Mark 12:6, after speaking of the Old Testament prophets as servants, He speaks of Himself as the “beloved” Son of God and “only” Son of God. In John 10:30 He says, “I and My Father are one.” In John 14:9 He goes so far as to say, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father,” and in John 5:23 He says, “All men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” The apostle John said of Jesus in the opening verses of his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3). And further down in the chapter in the fourteenth verse he says, “And the Word [that is this Word that was in the beginning and that was with God and was God] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
The apostle Thomas, after the resurrection of our Lord, fell at the feet of Jesus and cried to Him, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). The apostle Paul said of Him that “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9), and he says of Him again in Romans 9:5 that He “is over all, God blessed for ever.” The apostle Peter in Acts 10:36 says of Him, “He is Lord of all.” The author of the epistle to the Hebrews said of Him, He is “the brightness of His [God’s] glory, and the express image [or exact expression] of His [God’s] person” and that He upholds all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). And Paul, in Philippians 2:6, says that before He became man He existed originally “in the form of God.”
If the Bible makes anything as plain as day, it makes it plain as day that our Lord Jesus is a divine being with all the attributes, glory, majesty, and power that belong to God. He is God. Well then might the prophet Isaiah, in his inspired vision of the coming of Jesus, cry, “His name shall be called Wonderful.” If Jesus was not “very God of very God,” then John was mistaken, and Paul was mistaken, and Jesus Himself was mistaken, and only that denomination that has never been noted for its prayerfulness, its spirituality, its devotion, its self-sacrifice, its missionary enterprise, that denomination which has only a history of building churches to see them die; that denomination alone is right—and John, Peter, Paul, and Jesus are wrong. Do you believe that? Can you believe that? No, a thousand times no! No man who is thoroughly sane in his head and thoroughly honest in his heart can believe that.
Jesus then is a divine being. He is wonderful, most wonderful, wonderful beyond description, wonderful beyond conception. The wonderfulness of His being and nature will be the object of our glad and adoring contemplation and the theme of our highest praises throughout the endless aeons that are to come throughout eternity.
But there is another wonderful thing about the nature of Jesus. While He is divine, He is at the same time a real man. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” He was “the only begotten” Son of God, but He is at the same time the Son of man. He is, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 2:5, the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Do you ask how are the perfect deity and the perfect humanity united in Jesus? I do not know, neither do I know how spirit and body are united in myself, but I know that they are. I do not know how the divine nature that I received in the new birth is united with the physical and intellectual and moral nature that I received by my natural birth, but I know that it is, and so also I know that Jesus is perfectly divine and perfectly human. Well might the prophet say then, “His name shall be called Wonderful.”
Jesus Is Wonderful in His Character
While Jesus is wonderful in His nature, in His divine glory, and perfect humanity, He is not wonderful in His nature alone; He is also wonderful in His character. His character was absolutely perfect. He was absolutely without blemish and without spot. He was not only faultless, but every possible perfection of character rested upon Him. There is not a perfection of character of which we can think that is not to be found in Him—and found in Him in its fullness. As the years go by and we study Him more and more carefully and come to see Him as He was and is more fully, the more the absolute perfection of His character stands forth. For thirty-three years He lived in a hostile world that sought to find some imperfection in Him, but they could find none. For eighteen centuries since, infidels have been hunting for some flaw in the character of Jesus, and they cannot find it. What would not the infidels give if they could only put their finger upon one single flaw, even one little defect in that character, but they cannot. Even the bitterest and boldest and most unscrupulous infidel of his day was forced to say, “I wish to say once for all that to that great and serene man I pay, I gladly pay, the homage of my admiration and my tears.” Jesus in the perfection of His character is indeed wonderful. He is the wonder of the ages. He stands out absolutely peerless and alone. When any man ventures to put any one else alongside of Jesus Christ, he at once loses the confidence of all candid and fair-minded men.
Jesus was also perfect in holiness. Peter spoke of Him as “the holy One and the Just” (Acts 3:14). John spoke of Him as “the Holy One” (1 John 2:20). Even the unclean spirits when they met Him were forced to cry out to Him, “I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). The epistle to the Hebrews speaks about Him as “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). He passed through all our experiences of conflict and temptation “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The dazzling white light that glorified the face and garments of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration was the outshining of the moral purity within.
Jesus was also perfect in love. His love to God was perfect, and so was His love to man. His love to God revealed itself in His unhesitating obedience to every command of God, in His unreserved surrender to God’s will, in His drawing back from no sacrifice that God demanded, in His delight in doing God’s will—a delight so great that forgetting the long denied demands of bodily hunger, He could triumphantly say, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). His love to God was absolutely perfect, but so was His love to man. His love to man took in all men; it took in the good, but it took in the vilest as well. It took in men like John and Nathaniel, but it took in also the demoniac of Gadara, the thief on the cross, the woman with seven devils, and the woman who was a sinner. It took in His enemies, for whom He prayed even as He endured the agonies and the reproaches and the shame they heaped upon Him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Jesus’ love hesitated at no sacrifice. “Though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful love, that, seeing full equality with God Himself in honor and glory, turned His back upon all this and chose the cow stable for His birthplace, the poor carpenter shop for His school, the contempt and rejection of men for His reward, the agony of Gethsemane, and the shame and ignominy and torture of death upon the cross for its consummation because by these things He could save the vile and worthless and outcast. Well might Isaiah say that Jesus’ name should be called Wonderful. There are many other perfections in the character of Jesus, for example, the perfection of His meekness and gentleness and humility and patience and courage and manliness, but we cannot stop to dwell upon these now. Enough has been said to show that He is wonderful in character.
Jesus Is Wonderful in His Work
As wonderful as Jesus is in His nature and in His character, He is not wonderful in His nature and character alone; He is also wonderful in His work.
In the first place, He made a perfect atonement for sin. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Every sin of ours was settled by the death of Jesus upon the cross. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). The death of Christ so perfectly atones for sin that the moment I believe in Jesus Christ and thus accept the atonement He has made for me, every sin of mine is blotted out from God’s account and God reckons me as perfectly righteous in Him. He who knew no sin was made sin for us “that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Is not this wonderful? Is it not amazing that the vilest sinner there is in Los Angeles, or anywhere else on this earth—the liar, the thief, the blasphemer, the murderer, the harlot—can come into this place tonight all crimson with sins they have committed, and yet the death of Christ so perfectly atones for them all that the moment they accept that atonement all their sins are blotted out and they become as white as snow? Oh, when the sins that I have committed come up before me, and they have been great, (the sins of everyone here tonight have been great) when they come up I look away at the cross, and I see Jesus hanging there. I hear His dying cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and I hear His other cry, “It is finished.” I can see the Roman soldier draw back his spear, and I see it go crashing into that side. I see the life blood pouring out, and I know that all my sins are atoned for. I know that “Jesus paid it all, All the debt I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.” Oh, it is wonderful: the sin of the whole race atoned for at Calvary, and all that any man has to do is to accept it.
But Jesus not only made an atonement for sin, He also saves from sin’s power. Jesus Christ has power to set any man who will put his trust in Him free from any sin and the power of all sin. He Himself said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Is it not wonderful that there is not a man on earth today so completely in sin’s power but that Jesus Christ can set him free? One night many years ago I met a man who had been a wanderer on the face of the earth for many years but had come of a good family, had been well educated, had moved in good society but who had turned his back on all this and had given himself up to a life of sin, and now at the age of perhaps forty-five years he was completely in sin’s power. He was a large, powerful man, but he approached me with much hesitation and whispered in my ear the question, “Do you think Jesus Christ can save me?” I replied, “I know He can.” Then I sat down and reasoned with him out of the Scriptures, and he listened and believed and was saved. For years he was a happy Christian, and enslaving sins were things of the past. Tonight he is with Christ in the glory.
That is but one case out of thousands and tens of thousands. I have known many, many such personally. I have seen Jesus Christ set men free from sin in pretty much every state in the union. I have seen Him do it in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, China, Japan, and India. There are right in this audience tonight many men and women whom Jesus has set free from an awful slavery that once held them captive. Indeed Jesus completely transforms man. The man who was once a blasphemer now prays. The man who once loved the vile book now loves the Bible. The man who once told questionable stories now sings hymns of praise. The men and women who once gave themselves over to sin are now working for their fellow-men. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
But Jesus will do even more wonderful things in the future. When He comes again He will raise the dead with His voice, and we shall be caught up with them to meet Him in the air. He will transform us into His own perfect likeness. This old weak, sickly, pain-racked body will be changed into the likeness of His own glorious body, free from every ache and pain, free from every weakness, free from every limitation, resplendent with a beauty never seen on earth, capable of unlimited activity. And He will transform us morally so that in our inmost character we shall be made just like Him. He will bring us fully into our glorious inheritance as heirs of God and jointheirs with Himself, heirs of all God is and all God has, heirs of His wisdom, His power, His holiness. Oh, it is wonderful!
Jesus is indeed wonderful. He is wonderful in the infinite glory of His divine nature. He is wonderful in the matchless perfection of His character. He is wonderful in His work, blotting out all sin by His death, delivering from all sin by His resurrection life, transforming us from all remaining imperfection into the full glory of sons of God by His coming again.
Jesus Christ is the Wonderful One! Now what will you do with Him? What will you do with this wonderful Jesus? Will you receive Him or reject Him? Oh, the wisdom and the blessedness of those who accept Him! Oh, the folly and wretchedness of those who reject Him! p
— Dr. Reuben Archer Torrey (1856-1928) served as the dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles from 1912-1924 and pastored the Church of the Open Door.
Comments are closed.