[The Wonderful.]

Isaiah ix:6.

HIS name shall be called “Wonderful” (Isaiah ix:6). And long before Isaiah had uttered this divine prediction the angel of the Lord had announced his name to be Wonderful. As such He appeared to Manoah. And Manoah said unto the angel of Jehovah, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor. And the angel of Jehovah said unto Him “why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is Wonderful” (margin, Judges xiii:17-18). This angel of Jehovah, the Person who appeared repeatedly in Old Testament history is an uncreated angel. Of this Being we read that He is the Redeemer, for Jacob speaks of Him “the angel which redeemed me from all evil” (Genesis xlviii:15). He is the angel whose voice must be obeyed, who has power to pardon transgressions, in whom the name of God is (Exodus xxiii:20-23). He is the angel of His Presence who saved them (Isaiah lxiii:9) and Exodus xxxiii:14 must refer to this Being “My presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest.” This angel of Jehovah speaks in the Book of Judges and declared, “I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you into the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said I will never break my covenant with you” (Judges ii:1). He appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush and He spoke to Moses as the I am! (Ex. iii.) The same One appeared before Joshua and he worshipped in His presence. With Him Jacob wrestled, with Jehovah, the God of hosts (Hosea xii:4-6). Malachi iii:1 shows that the Lord Himself is this Angel, the Angel of the Covenant, who also visited Abraham in the form of Man (Genesis xviii).

And after all these manifestations, seven hundred years after Isaiah had announced Him, as the Wonderful, He appeared in human form in the midst of His people. And now we know by divine Revelation in the completed Word of God that He is wonderful in His Person and in his work; but no mind can fathom, no heart can grasp, no pen can describe, how wonderful He is.

He is wonderful if we think of Him as the Only Begotten of the Father. “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 anything made that was made” (John i:1-3). “By Him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were made by Him and for Him; and He is before all things and by Him all things consist” (Col. i:16-17). He is the image of the invisible God, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person. How wonderful such a One, who ever was, with no beginning, One with God!

How wonderful His humiliation. “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 in fashion as a man He humbled Himself” (Phil. ii:6-8). “For verily He took not on Him the nature of Angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham” (Hebrews ii:16). Wonderful condescension that He who created the angels should be made lower than the angels and lay His Glory by, to appear in the form of man on earth.

Wonderful is He in His incarnation, “that holy thing” as the angel announced Him, truly God and Man. Born of the woman, resting on the bosom of the virgin as a little child and yet He is the One who ever is in the bosom of the Father.