We need a messiah who is the MIGHTY GOD because we CANNOT STAND against evil, ourselves. We must never ever underestimate the power of sin. As Christians, we’ve been set free from slavery to sin; if we hadn’t been, we never would have come to faith in Christ! But sin is still present with us, lurking in the throne room of our hearts awaiting an opportunity to seize control any moment. 

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to keep our passion for Christ burning brightly, why we are not more consumed by loyalty and faithfulness as we should be to the one who died for us? Author, Max Lucado, gives a thoughtful answer—we face an enemy of our soul called, the agent of familiarity. Lucado explains,
His commission from the dark throne room is clear, and fatal: “Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted…” His aim is deadly. His goal is nothing less than to take what is most precious to us and make it appear most common….He’s an expert at robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive. He won’t steal your salvation. He’ll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. Worship will become common place and study optional. With the passing of time, he’ll infiltrate your heart with boredom and cover the cross with dust. Score one for the agent of familiarity (God Came Near.)
Has the poison of the ordinary dulled your excitement about walking with Jesus? If so, our hope is that understanding the titles of Messiah Jesus from Isaiah 9, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, will explode your view of just who this being is who called you by name to be his follower.
Why did the long-awaited Messiah of Israel have to be the MIGHTY GOD—and what does that title mean for our everyday walk with Jesus today?
The Isaiah 9:6 Text
The phrase, mighty god is constructed from the words EL for god and GIBBOR for mighty. Interestingly, the Hebrew word GIBBOR is often used to describe a powerful hero. This word use is not accidental. As OT scholars have pointed out the true hero of the OT is not Abraham, Moses, Joshua, or David, but GOD. The promised land was not Abraham’s land bequeathed to his descendants, but a land of milk and honey promised as God’s gift to God’s people. The “Ten Words” brought down from Sinai were not Moses’ laws but those of a God so holy that anyone who touched the mountain would die. The conquest of the promised land by Joshua was not accomplished by Joshua’s might, but because Yahweh fought for his people. The establishment of David’s throne in Jerusalem by defeating surrounding peoples like the Philistines was accomplished not by David’s military prowess but by God’s power—a truth David understood when he said to Goliath,
 “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand,” (1 Sam 17:45-47).
Behind the truth that it is Yahweh who saves, (which is what the name Joshua and Jesus mean) was the truth throughout Israel’s history that their political oppression was always the result of their disobedience to Yahweh. A careful look at what the OT prophets proclaimed reveals that the cause of Israel’s military oppression was their sin—their disobedience to their covenant obligations. For example, in the very first chapter of Isaiah, we read,
Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?… Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners….If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken (vs 4,5,7, 20).
The oppressors that the Messiah needed to overthrow never were the Assyrians, Babylonians or Edomites. The oppressor always was SIN. It was the sin of the Israelites that led God to allow their political enemies to oppress them. That is why the great lesson of the OT is that God’s people cannot save themselves. “The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness,” writes Paul. “The weakness was always human sin,” (Rom 8:1-3). The promised Messiah would (eventually) overthrow the political oppression Israel experienced—but only because the Messiah would overthrow the real cause of Israel’s military occupation—their SIN. And God, himself, would be the only one powerful enough to break the human shackles of sin. The Messiah would be the MIGHTY GOD—God himself, and the only being powerful enough to overthrow evil. Isaiah goes on to tell us that this Messiah, alone, who is the MIGHTY GOD has the power to ABSORB EVIL and OVERTHROW EVIL. In chapter 53 of Isaiah, the Messiah ABSORBS EVIL: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Isaiah goes on to tell us that God is displeased with human sin but sees no human who can solve the problem and overthrow evil. Only the MIGHTY GOD, himself, is powerful enough to defeat it. So, God will clothe himself in righteous and fight this spiritual battle.
Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation… He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head (59:15ff).
Sin is so powerful that only the MIGHTY GOD, Messiah Jesus, could overthrow it.
The Awful Power of Sin to Corrupt and Destroy
The message of the OT could be summed up: No human has the moral power to keep God’s Covenant Law—to be righteous. Thus, no man can experience the presence of God. Were sinful man to see the face of God he would instantly perish—the reason that God, in grace, expelled fallen Adam and Eve from the Garden. In Paul’s words to the Romans, By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, (3:20-22).
The awful power of sin to corrupt is revealed in the moral failure of OT fathers to fulfill their task as the heads of their families, following the covenant pattern of Abraham, about whom God said, “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him,” (Gen 18:19). Sin’s awful power had so corrupted the Israelites, that almost no fathers fulfilled this obligation, causing the OT to end with the prophecy in the very last verse, that finally one would come who would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.
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Indispensable servants are always at risk of becoming oppressive masters. Humanity has always known this; it is only recently that our technologies have become so useful as to replace human servants and occupy this ambivalent position, leaving their owners and users reduced to the spectacle of pathetic Ish-bosheths—unable to live with them or without them. There is no simple answer to this dilemma, though it may perhaps at least be some comfort to us in our predicament to realize that we are hardly alone, but are simply facing an age-old paradox that bedeviled Agamemnon before it bedeviled us.

In much writing about technology (including my own) you will often encounter the metaphor of technology as a treacherous servant. For instance, I wrote in a column for WORLD earlier this year about smartphones, “Technology is a great servant but a bad master; although these devices may be here to stay, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our children to ensure we are using them, rather than them using us.” The metaphor is common enough to be at risk of becoming a cliché, but I don’t know that we give it the thought it deserves.
After all, I think we are often tempted, when reaching for such language, to think that this paradox of “servant as master” is one of the novel features of our current technological experience, that it is precisely because our technologies have become so advanced that they are in danger of using us, rather than we them. After all, who was ever at risk of being tyrannized over by their hammer or hatchet? And yet, the problem of treacherous servants turning on or exploiting their masters is a theme as old as literature itself—or probably older.
I had occasion to reflect on this while preparing for my “Faithfulness as Christian Citizens” mini-course for churches, where I draw extensively on Old Testament narratives to draw out illuminating insights for political life. One of my favorite such passages is 2 Samuel 3. For those a little rusty on their Samuels, the narrative goes like this:
Saul has died, and David, as the Lord’s anointed, is seeking to consolidate his rule over Israel. However, initially he enjoys only the support of his own tribe, Judah; the rest of Israel, understandably, rallies around Saul’s sole surviving son, Ish-bosheth. A civil war commences, and the balance of power slowly shifts: “And David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker” (2 Sam. 3:2). A fascinating narrative then ensues. Abner, the commander of Ish-bosheth’s army, is described as “making himself strong in the house of Saul” (3:6); Ish-bosheth then accuses Abner (falsely or truly, the narrative never tells us) of sleeping with one of Saul’s concubines (thus symbolically appropriating kingly authority to himself). Abner responds indignantly and decides to defect and “transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and set up the throne of David over Israel” (3:10). Abner then summons a council of the elders and goes to David on their behalf to pledge fealty.
David accepts Abner’s peace overture, but when David’s own general, Joab, learns of it, he denies that the overture is genuine, denouncing Abner as a spy and treacherously murdering him. David then goes to great lengths to publicly distance himself from this action, proclaiming his grief at Abner’s death and cursing Joab.
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Despite the numerous different meanings of the word tradition, critics of sola Scriptura sometimes employ any positive instance of this term as though it were speaking of tradition in the sense defined at the council of Trent. But it is specifically that conception of tradition that sola Scriptura opposes— namely, that Scripture and tradition are to be received with equal reverence as they together constitute the deposit of the Word of God, and that the magisterium of the church can offer infallible interpretations of both.

Note: This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This post is written by Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) who is president of Truth Unites and theologian-in-residence at Immanuel Nashville in Tennessee. He’s a highly sought-after speaker and apologist, and his new book What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church releases on August 20, 2024.
In my engagements with Christians from traditions outside of Protestantism, whatever issue is being addressed, the discussion almost always kicks back to questions of authority. By what standard do we evaluate our differences? What is the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and where does the ultimate authority of interpretation for both Scripture and tradition lie? It is hard to find any area of dispute that doesn’t terminate in these more basic, methodological questions.
For this reason, we must press into the question of ecclesial authority. Here I will consider two of the most typical objections to sola Scriptura, the Protestant position on where ultimate authority over the church is located.
Objection 1: What about the Canon?
The church’s role in canonization is often set against sola Scriptura. Such critiques, however, generally fail to touch the Protestant position. Protestants stand in broad agreement with other traditions that the church has been entrusted with the responsibility of discerning the canon. For example, Protestants find themselves in a broad agreement on this point with the Roman Catholic position, as articulated at Vatican I: “these books the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority . . . but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church.”1
The necessity of the church’s witness unto the Word of God is a classical Protestant doctrine. (The seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed theologians were particularly adept at explicating this doctrine). For Protestants, the church’s charge extends not only to recognizing the canon but also to protecting the Scriptures during times of persecution and to translating, teaching, and proclaiming them. Thus, Protestants have spoken of the church as not only a necessary witness to the Word of God, but also the custodian and herald of the Word of God.2
The necessity of the church, however, does not entail her infallibility. Protestants have often compared the church’s role in the process of canonization to that of John the Baptist in pointing to Christ: It is a ministerial role of witness or testimony. That the church is entrusted with such a task in no way grants her infallible authority parallel to Scripture any more than John the Baptist possessed parallel authority to Christ. Rather, the one testifying is subordinate to that which receives the testimony. As Johannes Wollebius put it, “As it is foolish to tell us that the candle receives its light from the candlestick that supports it, so it is ridiculous to ascribe the Scripture’s authority to the church.”3
Infallibility is not necessary for canonization since the church’s responsibility is not constituting Scripture but simply recognizing it. Such recognition is not itself the action of an infallible agent. As J. I. Packer more recently stated, “The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. . . . Newton did not create gravity but recognized it.”4 Another metaphor for this action of the church used by the Anglican theologian William Whitaker is that of a goldsmith discerning true gold from other metals: “The goldsmith with his scales and touchstone can distinguish gold from copper and other metals; wherein he does not make gold . . . but only indicates what is gold. . . . In like manner the Church acknowledges the Scriptures and declares them to be divine.”5
Ultimately, the trustworthiness of the canon is rooted in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, as well as the progressive nature of revelation itself. Thus, the Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli pointed out that in the work of discerning the Word of God, the church does not start from scratch, but measures each book against the previous revelation she has already received from God. As Richard Muller expounds Vermigli’s view, the church “adjudges the canon only as she is taught so to do by the Spirit of Christ, her Teacher, and by the comparison of Scripture with Scripture— even as a counterfeit letter is proved by comparison with a genuine letter.”6 Muller points out that in explaining the church’s role in this way, Vermigli and other early Protestants like William Tyndale were not innovating—they were simply  repeating a view that had strong attestation in medieval scholastic debate, most recently by the fifteenth-century theologian Wessel Gansfort.7 The idea of a hierarchy of authorities, with the Scripture at the top over other subordinate (but necessary) authorities, was by no means a novel approach in the sixteenth century.
To state the point plainly, setting sola Scriptura at odds with the process of canonization confuses the recognition of infallibility with the possession of infallibility. The simple fact is that it is not necessary to be infallible to discern that which is infallible. When Moses heard God at the burning bush, he didn’t need a second voice whispering in his ear that this was indeed God. This is what Protestants intend when they speak of Scripture as self-authenticating. This simply means that the ultimate ground on which we receive the Scripture is inherent in it, rather than external to it. For there is no higher authority the Word of God could rest upon than the Spirit speaking through it. If you think you do have to possess infallibility to discern infallibility, you have a continual regress, because now you need infallibility to receive and interpret the infallible teachings of your church.
There is one way we can know with certainty that the church does not need infallibility to discern the canon: the facts of history. It just didn’t happen that way. With respect to the New Testament canon, scholars debate the exact date of its finalization, but it is generally seen to have become fully settled in the fourth century. The process of canonization leading to that point was bottom up, not top down. It was a gradual, cumulative, widespread, and organic process by which the church discerned the Word of God through the enabling direction of the Holy Spirit. It was not the result of an infallible statement from the Pope of Rome or an ecumenical council.
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