What are angels?

Question 08113.

Getting clear on what angels are is surprisingly difficult, because most of us learned the subject from Christmas plays, greetings cards and films before we ever opened a concordance. The popular version has wings, harps, halos and a distinct shortage of anything the Bible actually says.

So let me take the popular picture apart and rebuild it from Scripture. The biblical angel is a far more impressive creature than the one on the mantelpiece, and understanding what angels are will do more for your view of God than you might expect.

Created Spirits, Not Eternal Beings

Start where Scripture starts. Angels are creatures. Colossians 1:16 says that by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. That sweeping statement puts every angelic being, of every rank, on the created side of the line.

They had a beginning. Job 38 pictures the sons of God shouting for joy as the foundations of the earth were laid, which places their creation before ours but firmly within the created order. They are not eternal, not self-existent, and not divine in any degree.

This is the first thing to grasp about what angels are, because it settles a good deal of nonsense in advance. A creature may not be worshipped, prayed to, or consulted, and the angels in Scripture are notably firm about this themselves. Twice in Revelation John falls at an angel’s feet and twice he is told sharply to get up and worship God.

There is a further implication in their being created that we tend to miss. Everything angels have, including their power, their intelligence and their holiness, was given to them. Nothing about what angels are is self-generated. That makes the rebellion of some of them all the more shocking, since it was a revolt of the endowed against the giver.

Spiritual Beings Who Can Appear

The Hebrew and Greek words behind our English term both mean messenger, malak and angelos, which describes their function rather than their nature. Their nature is spirit. Hebrews calls them ministering spirits, and Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones as He did after the resurrection.

Yet they are able to appear in bodily form when they operate within the physical creation. Three of them ate a meal with Abraham. One wrestled with Jacob until daybreak and left him limping. Two took Lot by the hand and led him out of Sodom. Whatever the mechanics of that, it is purposeful rather than permanent.

So what angels are is not what popular imagination supposes. They are not glowing mists, and they are not people with wings. They are personal spiritual beings who can, when God sends them for a task, be seen and heard and even touched.

Powerful, Intelligent and Personal

They have intelligence, will and emotion. They speak, reason, ask questions, rejoice, worship and choose. Peter says they long to look into the things of the gospel, which is a striking picture of curiosity in beings who have seen a great deal more than we have.

Their power is considerable. One angel struck down the Assyrian camp in a night. One rolled the stone away and sat on it, which has always struck me as a detail with a certain amount of attitude in it. Peter says angels are greater in might and power than the false teachers who blaspheme them.

But their power is derivative and bounded. They are not all knowing, since Jesus said the angels do not know the day or the hour. They are not everywhere at once, as Daniel 10 shows plainly when one is delayed. Understanding what angels are means holding their greatness and their limits together.

An Ordered Company

Scripture presents the angelic world as structured rather than uniform. There are cherubim, associated with the presence and holiness of God, and seraphim, seen in Isaiah 6 crying holy to one another. There are archangels, of whom Michael is named, and Gabriel who stands in the presence of God and is sent with messages.

Paul’s language in Ephesians and Colossians of thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities and powers indicates rank and order among these beings, and the same vocabulary is used of the fallen ones in Ephesians 6:12. Whatever the details, the picture is of an ordered host rather than a crowd.

The numbers are vast. Revelation 5 speaks of myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands around the throne. Daniel saw ten thousand times ten thousand standing before the Ancient of Days. See how many angels there are for more on that.

What They Do

Their first work is worship, and it is worth saying that this is not an interlude in their existence but the substance of it. Isaiah and John both see beings whose whole occupation is the holiness and worth of God.

Their second work is service, and here they touch our lives. Hebrews describes them as sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. They deliver messages, they guide, they protect, they strengthen, they execute judgement, and they carry the believer home at death, as Lazarus was carried to Abraham’s side.

Notice again that they are sent. Angels take orders from God and not from us. Any teaching that has believers commanding angels has misunderstood what angels are and where they stand, and I have addressed that in whether we can command angels.

They also have a role in judgement that we prefer to pass over quickly. It was an angel who struck Herod down in Acts 12, and it is angels who gather the harvest at the end of the age in the parables of Matthew 13. The same beings who guard and comfort also execute the verdicts of God, and Scripture sees no tension in that at all.

What Angels Are Not

They are not glorified human beings. We do not become angels when we die, whatever is said at funerals. Angels are a separate order of creation altogether, and 1 Corinthians 6:3 says something remarkable in the other direction, that we will judge angels. See whether we become angels when we die.

They are not all sweetness. Every recorded appearance produces fear, and the first words are usually reassurance. Nor are they all winged, despite the artwork. Cherubim and seraphim are described with wings, but the angels who visited Abraham and Lot were taken for ordinary travellers.

And they are not neutral spiritual forces available to anyone. Angels belong to God and serve His purposes. The beings that answer a summons from a medium or a channeller are not the ones described in Scripture, and 2 Corinthians 11:14 tells us what to make of that.

Do They Have Free Will?

The fall of a portion of the angelic host implies that they were created with genuine choice, and the confirmed state of the rest suggests that the choice, once made, was settled. Scripture does not lay this out systematically, and I hold my conclusions here lightly.

What can be said is that the unfallen angels are described as holy and as doing God’s word, obeying the voice of His word, in Psalm 103:20. There is no hint anywhere of anxiety in heaven that another rebellion might break out.

This bears on what angels are in an important way. They are moral beings, not machines. Their obedience is worth something precisely because it is willing.

It also bears on how we read the warnings addressed to us. If beings of that calibre, standing in the light of God’s presence, could fall, then no creature is secure in itself. Our own perseverance rests on the faithfulness of God rather than on the strength of our will, which is exactly where Scripture places it and exactly where I want it to rest.

Why This Matters for You

Every true statement about what angels are ends up being a statement about God. They were made by Him, they serve at His word, they worship without ceasing, and they are astonished by a gospel they did not need for themselves.

That last point deserves a moment. Angels have never been redeemed. They have never known forgiveness, never sung about a Saviour who died for them, and Peter says they stoop to look into these things with longing. You know something by experience that they can only observe.

So the doctrine humbles and encourages at once. There are beings far greater than us who nonetheless serve those who inherit salvation, and who watch the gospel work in us with wonder. That is a strange and glorious arrangement, and it is entirely God’s doing.

So, now what?

Trade the greetings card for the Bible. Learn what angels are from the passages themselves, and you will find your view of God enlarged rather than your curiosity satisfied, which is what usually happens when we study anything in Scripture properly.

Then leave them to their work and get on with yours. Do not pray to them, do not seek them, do not command them, and do not envy them. You have something they do not have. When did you last thank God that you know redemption from the inside?

Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!

Psalm 103:20 (ESV)