upon his shoulders

Our family has been memorizing Isaiah 9:1-7 during our evening devotions this Advent.  In hearing the text repeated over and over out loud, I noticed the repetition of the word “shoulders”.  In its first usage, “shoulders” is where the “bar” of the people’s “burden” (as in “the yoke of their burden” ) and the “rod of their oppressor” lies.  Their shoulders are the locus of the people’s oppression, the place where their suffering is most keenly felt.  In its second appearance, however, “shoulders” is not the same place of the people’s burden but upon which the “authority” of the “child born for [them]” “rests”.  Suffering is no longer the “bar across their shoulders”; “authority rests upon his shoulders.”

Through this word-play, that is, through “shoulders”, Isaiah emphatically links suffering and authority.  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”, they now “rejoice as with joy at the harvest”, because “the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor” has been broken “as on the day of Midian”.  It has been broken because authority, in spite of all worldly pomp, does not in fact rest with “their oppressor” but upon the shoulders of “the son given to us”--the Messiah or Christ, the anointed one of God.  “The bar across their shoulders” has been broken because all authority rests upon the shoulders of the One who is for them, “for us”.

Yet the close linkage in the text between suffering and authority does not refer simply to the end result--the change in state from darkness to light, from suffering to joy--which the people enjoy.  Surely, Isaiah also has in view the means by which their oppression was broken.  Isaiah sees not only that the people now enjoy freedom; he sees with great clarity the One who purchased their freedom.  The prophet sees that the “child born for us” broke the “bar across their shoulders” only by bearing the bar across “his shoulders”.  The authority that rests upon the shoulders of the Messiah is revealed in his suffering for those oppressed.  Only then is he acclaimed, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  And only thus “will his authority grow continually”, even in us--as we share in his suffering for others so also to be exalted with and by him.

-Joe

as the head, so the body

The Christ hymn of the book of Colossians, 1:15-20, claims, once at the beginning and once at the end, that the “beloved Son” (1:13) is so close to “the Father” (1:12) that he is with the Father one God. First, in v. 15, it claims that the Son “is the image of the invisible God”; second, in v. 19, it claims that in the Son, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” These twin statements about the identity of God the Son are complemented by twin statements about the activity of God the Son as Creator and Savior. First, “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him” (v. 16); second, “through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (v. 20). Obviously, the work of the Son in creation and salvation in this second pair of statements is emphasized by the language of “all things”—first, the Son is the one through whom “all things” were created; second, the Son is the one through whom “all things” were reconciled to God. Moreover, in both cases, “all things” include that which is “in heaven and on earth” (v. 16, 20). In short, therefore, as reflected in this hymn, the early Christians claimed that Christ Jesus, the Son of the Father, one God from “before all things” (v. 17), is the Creator and Savior of the universe (or whatever is the biggest possible designation for “all things”).

Alongside these lofty claims, however, are two claims “from below.” That is, if the Son is God, the Invisible One, he is also simply “the head of the body, the church” (v. 18), the visible one. God, who is Spirit, who has no body in the form of God’s creation, is nonetheless, in Christ, the “head of the body, the church”, made up of many human members. A second claim “from below” is more shocking: the One in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” is the same One through whom God “was pleased to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through the blood of his cross” (v. 19-20). God, the eternal one, “before all things,” Creator not created, became in Christ the mortal one, beneath all things, rejected, crucified—“on the cross.” God, “before all things”, is “pleased” to work in no other way than “through the cross,” through God’s giving of God’s self to the world in creation and redemption. God, though “before all things,” is not a God who stands far off from all things, but enters into their condition in order to redeem them. God is pleased to dwell in the flesh, and to be glorified in it.

And how will God be glorified in the flesh?

If the dual claims “from above”—that the Son is God who creates and redeems all things—are related—then so too the claims “from below”—“the head of the body, the church” reconciles all things to God “by making peace through the blood of his cross” (vv. 18, 20). As the church proclaims in word and deed—in true worship—the identity and activity of the Son, it becomes like its “head.” The church that truly sings of its head will become like its head. The church that claims the identity of its head must take up the activity of its head, “making peace”—even at the cost of its own life, “through the blood of his cross.”

-Joe