Will we judge angels?

Question 8026.

Paul says that we will judge angels, and he says it in the middle of telling off a church for suing one another. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” It is one of the great throwaway lines of the New Testament, except that nothing Paul writes is really thrown away.

The statement raises two questions at once. What does it actually mean, and why on earth is it deployed in an argument about small claims? Both answers repay some attention.

The verse in front of us

The text is 1 Corinthians 6:2-3. “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels?”

Notice the phrase Paul repeats. Do you not know. He is not introducing new revelation; he is reminding them of teaching they have already received and evidently forgotten. That believers will judge angels was, apparently, part of the standard apostolic curriculum in Corinth, which tells you something about how much fuller their instruction was than ours often is.

The Greek verb is krino, which covers a range from forming an opinion to passing sentence. In context, with the world being judged in the same breath, the stronger sense is in view.

Which angels are in view

Scripture nowhere suggests that faithful angels face judgement. They have not fallen, they are called the elect angels in 1 Timothy 5:21, and they are not on trial. The angels believers will judge must therefore be the fallen ones.

That fits with what the rest of Scripture says about their end. Matthew 25:41 speaks of the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 2 Peter 2:4 says God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell to be kept until the judgement. Jude 6 says the same. There is a judgement coming for rebel angels, and the saints have a part in it.

Quite what our part will be, Paul does not say. I am content to leave it there. Whether we judge angels by pronouncing sentence, by participating in the court, or simply by our redeemed existence standing as testimony against them, the text does not specify and I will not invent a specification.

It is worth adding that the fallen angels are not currently all in the same condition. Some are active in the world, opposing the work of God and afflicting people. Others, according to 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6, are already held in chains of gloomy darkness until the judgement of the great day. Quite why the difference exists is not explained, though it may reflect a particular severity in the original offence of that group.

Why it is an argument about lawsuits

Paul’s logic runs from the greater to the lesser. If you are destined for a role in the judgement of angelic beings, how absurd that you cannot sort out a dispute about property between two brothers without dragging each other before pagan magistrates.

There is a sting in it. He is saying that their behaviour is beneath their destiny. The Corinthians were acting like people with no future, squabbling over the small things because they had lost sight of the large ones. It is a very modern failing.

What it means that we will judge angels

Take the promise seriously and it reorders your view of yourself. The New Testament repeatedly places redeemed humanity in a position of remarkable dignity. We are co-heirs with Jesus, we will reign with Him, and we will judge angels. Not because we are impressive but because we are His.

Hebrews 2 makes the same move from a different angle, quoting Psalm 8 about man being made lower than the angels for a little while and then crowned with glory and honour. The present arrangement is not the permanent one. This is also why the popular notion that we become angels after death gets things exactly backwards, as I have argued in whether we become angels when we die.

What it does not mean

It does not mean we may treat angels casually now. John fell at an angel’s feet twice, and while he was corrected for the worship, nobody suggests his awe was misplaced. A future role in judgement does not confer a present authority, and I have written about the difference in whether we can command angels.

It also does not mean believers face no judgement themselves. The judgement seat of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:10 concerns rewards for service rather than condemnation for sin, since the condemnation was borne at the cross. But it is real, and the same Paul who says we will judge angels also says we must all appear there.

And it does not license speculation about our future titles. Some of the material available on this subject reads like a fantasy novel. The text gives us one clause. One clause is what we have.

How the early church heard it

Put yourself in the Corinthian assembly for a moment. Most of them were nobodies by the standards of the city, as Paul had already reminded them in chapter one: not many wise, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. Slaves, tradespeople, women without status.

And Paul tells this congregation that they will judge angels. The gap between their present standing and their promised role is comic, and that is precisely the point. God chose what is low and despised in the world. The promise is not a reward for significance; it is the overturning of every human measure of it.

Living now in the light of it

The practical application Paul draws is the one we should draw. If we will judge angels, then the disputes that consume so much energy in churches ought to look rather small. Who was not thanked. Who moved the chairs. Who took the decision without asking.

I have watched congregations damaged by conflicts that would not survive five minutes of eternal perspective. Paul’s remedy is not to pretend the grievance does not matter but to weigh it against the destiny of the people involved. Would you really take a future judge of angels to the magistrates over this?

The same principle applies well beyond lawsuits. Church members fall out over buildings, budgets, music and rotas, and the heat generated is rarely proportionate to the issue. Paul’s method is not to declare the issue unimportant but to place it beside a destiny so large that the proportions correct themselves. A believer who genuinely expects to judge angels can afford to lose an argument about the noticeboard.

That does not mean rolling over on matters of truth. Paul was capable of a fight when doctrine was at stake, as the letter to the Galatians makes plain. The discernment he wants is the ability to tell the difference, and that discernment grows in people who have their eyes on the age to come.

The wider theme of the saints reigning

The promise does not sit alone. 2 Timothy 2:12 says that if we endure we will also reign with him. Revelation 3:21 records the promise that the one who conquers will sit with Jesus on His throne. Revelation 20:4 shows thrones and those seated on them to whom judgement was committed.

Set the strands together and a consistent picture emerges. Redeemed humanity is destined for a share in the administration of the age to come. That we will judge angels is one facet of a much larger inheritance, and it is offered to people who did nothing to earn it.

I take these promises literally, as I take the rest of the prophetic material literally. A literal Millennium with Jesus reigning from Jerusalem is not an embarrassment to be explained away, and the roles described for the saints in that reign are not poetry.

Holding the promise without arrogance

There is a way of holding a promise like this that produces humility and a way that produces swagger. Paul clearly intended the first. He raises the fact that we will judge angels in order to embarrass a proud church into behaving better, not to inflate them further.

The safeguard is remembering where the standing comes from. Every believer who will one day take part in that judgement is a person who deserved to stand under judgement themselves. Grace put us on the bench. Nothing about that arrangement gives anyone room to boast.

So, now what?

Let the promise do its work. You are not a small person with a small life. If you are in Jesus, you are being prepared for responsibilities that would make the honours lists of this world look like a raffle.

And then let it land where Paul put it. Is there a dispute you are nursing that would not survive that light? Somebody has to go first in these things. Given where you are heading, it might as well be you.

“Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!”

1 Corinthians 6:3, ESV