Week 4 – Jesus: Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace

“To infinity and beyond!”  If you’re like me, when Buzz Lightyear made this declaration in Toy Story, your brain went a little offline. I mean, the idea of actual infinity, eternity or everlasting life is impossible for our brains to really grasp. And of course they are, we’ve never experienced these things and have no idea what eternal life really looks like or feels like. So when Isaiah uses the title Everlasting Father for Jesus, it takes some real brain space to try to completely flesh out what that means.

 

Let’s break it down by going way back to the book of Genesis – to Adam and Eve. Adam, being the first created man, is thought of as the biological father of the human race. He and Eve spawned all subsequent generations, so Adam is sometimes referred to as the Father of Mankind. But we know that men and women in the flesh do not live forever. Adam and Eve may have had the ability to bring physical life into the world, but neither Adam nor Eve had the power to give everlasting life. So the idea of Jesus as Everlasting Father in Isaiah 9:6 creates a distinction between Adam and Jesus in that, when Jesus came, he didn’t just initiate physical, carnal life like Adam, but he also fathered a new kind of life – eternal life.

Isaiah’s reference to Jesus as Everlasting Father is referring to the fact that Jesus, through God, would be the author of a life that never ends. So, while God is also called our Heavenly Father in the sense that we are his children, the word “father” is used in our scripture in a different way. It is showing that Jesus is also a father in that his life, death and resurrection would bring everlasting life for all who believe.

 

But Jesus wasn’t to be the kind of warrior that comes fighting a bloody battle. He was bringing peace. And not just peace between two warring enemies, but the kind of peace that penetrates dividing lines, hearts, minds  and souls.

In this passage, Paul is addressing the people in Ephesus who were still grappling with the concept that Jesus was sent for, not just Jews, but Gentiles as well. These two groups had been opposed to each other for so long that this was a hard and weird concept to grasp.

Think of two groups of people in your life that live and believe in very different ways from each other.  I think of the ‘jocks’ who, in my high school, drove fast cars and threw willd parties. They had next to nothing in common with the artsy group I was part of – the theater crowd who spent their weekends painting sets and singing show tunes.

It was kind of like these opposing groups acknowledging that Jesus came to unite them both equally. Back in the day, those opposing groups were the Jews and Gentiles. Jesus as Prince of Peace meant that He came to bridge the gaps and bring peace to all the people groups on earth. Thus, Prince of Peace.

It’s such a joy to not just gloss over the titles for Jesus as gushy names for Jesus, but as names that carry direct significance and context regarding historical implications and specific Kingdom goals of the Savior.