Hebrews Chapter One, Angelology

 

Hebrews 1:7 And of the angels He says: “Who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire.”

 

Here the author quotes Psalm 104:4 from a Psalm that celebrates God’s creative and preservative power. The surrounding verses speak of God’s creative activity first in verse 3 about Him laying the upper beams of His chambers in the waters, and how He walks on the wings of the wind as if the upper atmosphere was His proverbial floor. Though the language here is poetic I believe he refers to the second and third heaven in verse 3. His upper chambers seem to describe the Heaven of heavens, while the waters, as it were, alludes to space, the celestial heavens. If we read the opening account of Genesis we learn that God divided the waters under the firmament (land) from the waters that were above the land, dividing liquid water from the expanse of the heavens. In Genesis 1:8 the word rendered firmament could more appropriately be translated “expanse,” and is in fact translated thus in the ESV. Verse 14 reveals God creating the lights in the firmament (expanse) of the heavens to divide day and night. He called into being the sun, moon, and the stars in their courses. On the fourth day then, astronomical activity began. The purpose for two of the “lights” was to grant light to the earth: namely the sun and the moon, verses 15, 16. A little further we learn that God created birds to fly, “across the face (surface) of the firmament of the heavens,” Genesis 1:20. That being said, if the dizzying heights birds could reach was merely the face of the expanse of the heavens, then the “body” went far afield.

Verse 5 of Psalm 104 describes God laying the earth’s foundation, an unmovable core that was not subject to the violent seismic upheavals the global Flood would soon create in verses 6-9. Sandwiched between these verses, verse 4 deals with the creation of angels. God made them, or created them as spirits (invisible like the movement of the wind) and His ministers like fire, whose fuel then was to subsist off of the power of God. This Psalm may (I stress may) accurately identify the time angels came into being. Verse 2 attests that God stretched out the heavens like a curtain, leading into verse 3 in which the second and third heaven’s creation and function are touched upon. Verse 4 frankly addresses the fact that angels were created, and created like the material universe for specific purposes. Job 38:6, 7 states of the angels and their witness of creation: “On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

 

They are spirits, like God in that respect: invisible, swift and powerful. They are ministers. Oxford defines “minister” as, “a diplomat representing a state, or a king or queen, in a foreign country.” God foreknew that Adam would sin and the earth would be sin-cursed. It would indeed become a foreign country, hostile to God’s presence. The angels are His diplomats, faithful in their zeal to carry out God’s will in accordance with His eternal purposes. We know the holy angels obey the will of God in Heaven, and the current Heaven’s atmosphere is nothing like earth’s climate since our Lord taught us to pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Matthew 6:10.

 

Angels as God’s ministers are flames of fire. God Himself is a consuming fire, Hebrews 12:29. It makes sense then that His ministers are like Him, representing His majesty. In Malachi we learn that while the Sun of Righteousness can heal the faithful, it burns to cinders the wicked: the proverbial double-edged sword. Like the flaming sword in Eden, the cherubim guarded the way to the tree of life. They protected the way FROM those who would wrest it by violence, and FOR those who would come to God in faith. Though their ministries differ from our own, they are servants regardless, and should be respected as such, but not worshiped.

 

Ephesians 3:10, 6:12 and Colossians 1:16 agree in identifying principalities and powers as angelic titles. In Ephesians 1:21 we have the group, “principality and power and might and dominion.” It is best perhaps to think of the angelic race in terms of military ranks. These are not different species of angels; they are orders of angelic majesties that have been granted greater dignity for likely differing services rendered to God. Although while Colossians merely mentions the angels as beings created by and for Jesus Christ, Ephesians notes that these two titles apparently endure even in Satan’s army, referring to some of these angels as “the rulers of the darkness of this age.” The same verse warns us that we struggle against, “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Colossians 1:16 contributes a little more information regarding angelic titles, adding thrones and dominions apparently above powers and principalities. In just these few verses we learn five gradations or ranks of the angelic order in heaven, apparently also perversely reflected in Satan’s kingdom.

 

While we know that the holy angels serve the Lord unflinchingly, there is another host of angels, long since defected from God, still in service to their master. The cherub once known as Lucifer, now more commonly called the devil or Satan is identified as, “the prince of the power of the air (a reference to the celestial “expanse”), the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,” Ephesians 2:2. Colossians 1:16 likewise declares that the devil commands spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. John writes that the whole world, “lies under the sway of the wicked one, “ 1 John 5:19. Paul, in Ephesians 2:2, writes, “you once walked [in sin] according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.” We learn in Job that Satan still has access to God’s throne for the time being, and his express purpose appears to be to accuse His saints in an effort to discredit them and demonstrate that God’s plan of salvation has failed. “Now there was a day when the sons of God (angels) came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them,” Job 1:6. What follows in the next two chapters is a contest between the accuser of our brethren and God for the souls of men. In this instance, typified in Job’s life and faith. Zechariah also records a vision in which he saw, “the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him,” Zechariah 3:1. Once a mighty cherub, seemingly the highest rank or title of angelic majesty their race may receive; now he is a common (and defeated) enemy of the faith. Satan, ruler of the kingdom of spiritual wickedness, tempts and takes advantage of Christians by luring them into sin, or compelling us to refrain from genuine forgiveness when a fellow saint has expressed repentance, 2 Corinthians 2:11. The apostle also warns us that to achieve his goals he can still parade as the light bearer in order to deceive (2 Corinthians 11:14), and it is through this ruse that he propagates false gospels to mislead believers into error, Galatians 1:8.