Deep Christmas Thoughts, Part 1

“Wonderful Counselor”: The Wisdom We Cannot Produce Ourselves

Every year at Christmas, many of us hear Isaiah’s familiar words and imagine them printed on greeting cards or sung in soaring choruses:

“For to us a child is born… and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

We’re so used to hearing these names that they can wash over us as sentimental Christmas poetry. But for Isaiah’s first listeners, these titles weren’t decorative. They were disruptive. They weren’t slogans. They were a declaration that God was stepping into a world gone wrong with a kind of wisdom and power Israel had never seen.

This Advent, in Deep Christmas Thoughts, I want to take these names one by one and explore what they meant in Isaiah’s world and what they reveal about Jesus. We begin with the first title: Wonderful Counselor.

A Name Born in Crisis

Isaiah 9 isn’t written in a quiet season. It emerges in the middle of political panic. Judah’s king, Ahaz, is cornered by rival nations. He fears invasion, collapse, and the loss of the throne. Instead of seeking the Lord, Ahaz turns toward the security strategies of the nations: diplomacy, alliances, and the shadow of Assyria’s empire.

Isaiah keeps telling Ahaz to trust the counsel of God. But Ahaz cannot imagine a world where divine wisdom outperforms military strength.

Isaiah 9 announces that God will raise up a king who does not repeat Ahaz’s mistake. A child will come who does not rule by fear, coercion, or scrambling after political leverage. This king will rule with the counsel that flows from God Himself.

Isaiah names him “Wonderful Counselor.”

More Than an Encouraging Friend

In modern English, “counselor” suggests someone who listens empathetically across a small table. But in Hebrew, yôʿēts is not the word for a therapist. It is the word for a royal strategist. A counselor in Isaiah’s world was a member of the king’s inner circle, the one who understood the complexities of governing a nation, reading situations, making decisions, establishing justice.

To call a king a “counselor” was to say he knew how to rule well.

But Isaiah goes further. He adds a word that changes everything: wonderful.

The Supernatural Layer Hidden in the Word “Wonderful”

The Hebrew word is peleʾ. English translations soften it. Peleʾ does not describe something impressive or heartwarming. It describes something supernatural, the kind of thing only God can do. The splitting of the sea in the Exodus, the mighty acts of salvation, the moments where heaven touches earth… these are called peleʾ.

Every time the Old Testament uses this word, it is applied to God alone.

So when Isaiah calls the coming king a peleʾ yôʿēts, a “Wonderful Counselor”, he is saying something staggering:

This king will possess wisdom that shares in the very wonder of God Himself.

This is not cleverness. This is not charisma.
This is not the talent of a gifted ruler.

This is divine counsel breaking into the world through a human king.

Isaiah’s Hope and Our Hunger

Isaiah’s promise responds to a crisis we still recognize. We live in a world drowning in advice, strategies, opinions, and commentary. We are long on information and short on wisdom. Leaders fail, institutions fracture, and the voices promising direction are often the loudest but rarely the wisest.

In a world like ours, the title “Wonderful Counselor” comes as good news:
There is wisdom available to us that does not originate in us.

Christians confess that Jesus is the fulfillment of this hope. He doesn’t just speak wise words. He embodies the very counsel of God. His teaching carries authority because it flows from the heart of the Father. His life reveals the shape of God’s wisdom, a wisdom that overturns our assumptions: losing your life to find it, greatness through service, glory through the cross.

N.T. Wright often describes Jesus as the place where the identity and purposes of Israel’s God are revealed in human form. The wisdom of God does not arrive as a principle or a proverb. It arrives as a person.

The Shock of Jesus’ Counsel

What makes Jesus a “Wonderful Counselor” is not simply that he knows what to say. It is that his counsel is rooted in the supernatural work of God.

Jesus doesn’t simply diagnose the brokenness of the world. He steps into its deepest wounds and heals them. His counsel carries creative power, just as God’s word spoke creation into being. His miracles are not parlor tricks; they are signs of new creation breaking in. His forgiveness does not merely soothe guilty feelings; it reorders reality.

The wisdom of Jesus is not advice. It is revelation.

The Counselor We Didn’t Expect

Isaiah’s world expected a king who would strategize like every other ruler. But Isaiah insisted that God would provide a king whose counsel would not depend on political maneuvering. Centuries later, Jesus confounded both Romans and religious leaders for this reason. His counsel ran counter to every form of human power.

The wisdom of Christ is cruciform wisdom. The cross is where divine counsel is revealed most clearly, because it exposes the lie that human strength can save us. If Isaiah promises a supernatural strategist, the New Testament shows that Jesus’ strategy is self-giving love that conquers evil through suffering.

This is why Paul calls Christ “the wisdom of God” and says that this wisdom appears foolish to the world.

It is not the counsel we would craft. It is the counsel we need.

Why We Begin Advent Here

Advent is a season of waiting, longing, and recalibrating our expectations. Beginning with “Wonderful Counselor” reminds us that Christmas is not merely a sentimental story about a child in a manger. It is the announcement that God has given us a king whose wisdom renews the world.

If Isaiah is right, then Christmas is a season to admit something crucial:
We are not wise enough to save ourselves.
We do not have enough insight to fix what is broken.
We cannot chart our own path to peace.

But the child born to us can.

A King Whose Counsel Brings Peace

Isaiah ends the passage with a promise that the government of this child will grow and his peace will have no end. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the presence of God’s counsel shaping all things.

This Advent, as we stand in a world still defined by anxiety and confusion, we begin where Isaiah begins: with hope in a king whose wisdom is beyond us and whose wonder breaks open the world.

“Wonderful Counselor” is not a nice phrase for a Christmas card. It is the first crack of light in a world longing for dawn.