Will Christians have authority over angels, and what does that mean now?

Question 08140.

Paul tells the Corinthians that we are to judge angels, and from that single clause a whole industry has grown up teaching that believers hold authority over angels here and now, with instructions on how to exercise it.

I want to take the verse seriously and the industry rather less so, because Paul’s point in context is almost the opposite of the use commonly made of it.

What Paul Actually Wrote

The setting is a church taking one another to court. Paul is exasperated. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world, he asks, and then, do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life (1 Corinthians 6:2-3).

The argument is from greater to lesser. You are destined for a role of extraordinary weight, so surely you can sort out a dispute about a debt without dragging each other before pagan magistrates.

So the mention of future authority over angels is deployed to shame a church out of pettiness. It is not a training manual, and Paul draws no present-tense instruction from it whatsoever.

Which Angels, and When

Paul does not specify, but the most natural reading is that fallen angels are in view. Nobody expects the elect angels to stand trial, and Scripture elsewhere describes judgement awaiting those who did not keep their own position (Jude 6).

As to timing, this belongs to the future, after the return of Jesus, when the saints are raised and glorified. The Greek krino covers both judging and ruling, and both senses may be intended, since judgement and administration overlap in the biblical picture of the coming kingdom.

My answers on the judgement of fallen angels and different levels of millennial authority set out the eschatological framework in more detail.

What Authority Over Angels Does Not Mean Now

Here is where I part company with a good deal of contemporary teaching. Whatever authority over angels belongs to the age to come, Scripture never transfers it into the present as a technique.

There is no instance in the New Testament of a believer commanding an angel. None of the apostles deploys angelic assistance. When Peter is released from prison an angel arrives without being summoned and Peter thinks he is seeing a vision. The church praying downstairs had asked God, not the angelic host.

My answer on whether we can command angels takes this further, and whether we can pray to angels deals with the related error.

The Warning in Jude and 2 Peter

Both letters attack teachers who blaspheme the glorious ones, and both hold up a striking counterexample. Michael the archangel, contending with the devil about the body of Moses, did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgement but said, The Lord rebuke you (Jude 9).

Read that against the modern practice of shouting at principalities. An archangel declines to pronounce judgement on Satan and refers the matter upward. It is difficult to square that restraint with believers claiming present authority over angels and issuing commands to territorial powers.

The charismatic enthusiasm for strategic-level warfare exceeds anything Scripture teaches, and it has the ironic effect of making the enemy seem larger than he is. See whether we can bind Satan.

What Ephesians 6 Gives Us Instead

The armour passage is the church’s actual warfare instruction, and it is almost entirely defensive. Stand firm, having fastened, having put on, taking up. The one offensive item is the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Prayer in Ephesians 6:18 is directed to God at all times in the Spirit. Nothing in the passage is addressed to the enemy, and nothing suggests present authority over angels of any kind. My answer on what spiritual warfare is works through the armour piece by piece.

James gives the pattern in miniature. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Submission first, resistance second, and no commanding at all.

Why the Future Promise Still Matters

None of this makes the promise trivial. Paul expects it to change how you behave on Tuesday, which is why he uses it on a church squabbling over money.

Think about what he is saying to them. You are people destined to share in the administration of the age to come, and you are currently unable to resolve a dispute about property without suing each other. The dignity of your future ought to reach back into the way you treat one another.

That is the right use of the doctrine. Authority over angels is not a present power to be exercised but a future dignity to live up to, and Paul thought it should make a practical difference within the week.

Holding This Humbly

I would add one last note of proportion. We are told very little about what this will look like, and I have no interest in constructing a scheme out of a clause. Scripture gives us the fact and withholds the detail.

What we can say is that the saints will share in Jesus’ reign, that the fallen powers will be judged, and that the redeemed will have a part in it. Revelation 3:21 promises a place with Jesus on His throne, which is more astonishing than anything the deliverance manuals offer.

Everything else is speculation, and speculation about authority over angels has a poor track record of producing humble people.

Reigning With Jesus

The promise of shared rule is not confined to one verse. Paul tells Timothy that if we endure, we will also reign with him. Revelation 20 describes those who came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years, and Revelation 3:21 offers a place with Jesus on His throne.

So future authority over angels belongs to a much bigger picture in which the redeemed share in the administration of the coming kingdom. That is astonishing and it is stated plainly enough that we cannot treat it as a metaphor.

What we are not given is the detail. My answer on levels of millennial authority covers what Scripture does say about the varying degrees of responsibility given.

Why Corinth Needed to Hear It

Put yourself in that congregation. Divided over favourite preachers, tolerating scandalous immorality, getting drunk at the Lord’s table, and now suing each other in front of the neighbours.

Into that mess Paul drops the reminder that they will judge the world and exercise authority over angels. It is not flattery. It is a rebuke shaped like a compliment, and it works by making their present behaviour look absurd against their future standing.

That method is worth borrowing. When a church is behaving badly, the answer is often not a rule but a reminder of what its members actually are. Who they will be tends to expose who they are being.

Living Up Rather Than Reaching Out

So here is the difference between the biblical use of this doctrine and the popular one. The popular use reaches out for authority over angels now, as a power to deploy. The biblical use reaches back from the future to reshape ordinary conduct today.

One produces conferences, techniques and men with titles. The other produces a church member who drops a grievance because the person destined to share in judging the world has decided a car park dispute is beneath them.

I know which of those two I have seen God bless, and I know which one Paul was actually asking for.

Holding a Future Promise Without Inflating It

One last caution about method. It is tempting to take a clause like this and build a system on it, and the results are usually poor.

Paul gives us one sentence about judging angels, in the middle of a rebuke about lawsuits, and never mentions it again. Any teaching that turns that into a detailed doctrine of present authority over angels has gone a long way beyond its evidence.

The New Testament’s habit is to give us enough for confidence and not enough for speculation. That frustrates the curious and protects the humble, and on the whole I think it is a good arrangement.

A Note on Michael and Restraint

I keep returning to Jude 9 because it settles the tone of the whole subject.

An archangel, contending directly with the devil, declines to pronounce judgement and says only, The Lord rebuke you. If that is the restraint of the strongest created being in the account, then anything louder from us is not courage.

Future authority over angels is a promise to be lived up to, not a licence to be exercised early.

So, now what?

If someone has been teaching you to exercise authority over angels now, weigh it against Michael in Jude, who would not pronounce judgement on the devil himself and handed the matter to God. That is the biblical posture.

And if you have never thought about the promise at all, let Paul use it on you the way he used it on Corinth. You are destined for a role of real weight in the age to come. Does the way you handle a disagreement in church this month look like someone in training for that?

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

1 Corinthians 6:3 (ESV)