Angels in the Bible

Angels at the Key Moments of the Gospel

How the angels attend the life of Christ

The angels are never more active than around the person of Jesus. They fill the sky at his birth, strengthen him in Gethsemane, sit in his empty tomb on Easter morning, and stand beside the disciples as he ascends. At each moment their role is the same: they announce, they minister, and they interpret, and then they withdraw so that all eyes rest on Christ. To trace the angels through the Gospel is to see heaven itself leaning in to witness the salvation of the world, and to hear the angels teaching us where to look.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.Luke 2:10 (KJV)

The angels of the nativity

The gospel of the incarnation is delivered by angels. To the shepherds keeping watch by night an angel of the Lord comes with the announcement that has echoed ever since: Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. Then, as if one messenger could not contain the news, suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest.

Everything about the scene is instructive. The angels bring good tidings, not to kings but to shepherds, the lowly first. They point away from themselves to the child in the manger, the Saviour, Christ the Lord. And their instinctive response to the birth of Jesus is worship. The heavenly host does not gather to be admired; it gathers to praise God for the gift of his Son. The angels model for us the only fitting response to Christmas, which is adoration.

There is a holy restraint even in this glorious moment. The angels announce the Savior and then, Luke tells us, they went away from them into heaven. They do not stay to be thanked or admired; they leave the shepherds hurrying to Bethlehem to see the thing which is come to pass. The whole errand of the heavenly host is to get the shepherds to the manger and then to withdraw. This is the signature of every faithful angel: to point to Christ with all the glory of heaven, and then to step out of the light so that he alone is seen.

The angel in Gethsemane

When we turn from the joy of Bethlehem to the agony of the garden, we find an angel there too, but in a very different role. As Jesus prays in Gethsemane, in an agony so deep his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground, Luke tells us, there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. Here the mighty servants of God minister to the suffering Son of Man in his darkest hour.

There is a great mystery and a great tenderness in this. The Lord whom the angels worship, who could have summoned twelve legions of them to his rescue, receives instead the quiet strengthening of a single angel, and goes on to the cross. The angels do not deliver him from suffering, for that suffering was the very purpose for which he came. They strengthen him to endure it. Heaven does not spare him the cup; it steadies his hand to drink it for us.

This scene guards us against a shallow view of what angels are for. We might imagine that the purpose of angelic help is to remove hardship, to lift us out of every trouble. But in the garden the angel does not remove the trouble; he supplies the strength to bear it faithfully. So it often is with the help of God. He does not always change our circumstances, but he sends grace sufficient to meet them, and sometimes that grace comes quietly, unseen, in a strength we did not know we had. The angel in Gethsemane teaches us to look for God's help not only in rescue but in endurance.

The angels at the empty tomb

On the first Easter morning the angels appear again, this time as heralds of the resurrection. Matthew records that there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. The other Gospels tell of angels within the tomb who address the frightened women with the greatest news ever spoken: He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

Once more the angels are interpreters. The empty tomb by itself might mean many things, but the angels declare its meaning: the crucified Lord is alive. And having announced it, they send the women to tell the disciples. The angels do not linger to be questioned or admired; they proclaim the resurrection and commission the witnesses. The whole apostolic mission begins with an angelic sermon of one sentence: he is risen.

It is worth noticing whom the angels tell first. On the morning of the greatest news the world would ever hear, the announcement is entrusted not to rulers or priests but to a few grieving women who had come to tend a body. As at the manger, so at the tomb, heaven brings its best tidings to the lowly and the faithful, and makes them the first witnesses and the first preachers. The God who orders the angels delights to lift up the humble, and the resurrection is proclaimed to the world through the very ones the world would have overlooked.

The angels at the ascension

The final scene of the Gospel story, as Jesus is taken up into heaven, also has its angels. As the disciples stand gazing after their departing Lord, two men stood by them in white apparel, and gently turn their eyes from the sky to the promise: this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. The angels redirect the disciples from staring upward to living forward, in hope of Christ's return.

This is a fitting last word from the angels of the Gospels. They do not want the disciples frozen in wonder at the heavens; they want them at work in the world, awaiting the King. The angels who announced his coming now announce that he will come again, and they send the church out into the age between. From the manger to the clouds of glory, the angels attend Christ and point the church to him.

What the angels of the Gospel teach us

Gathered together, the angelic moments of the Gospel form a single lesson. At every turning point of the story of Jesus, heaven sends its messengers, and every time they do the same three things. They announce Christ, at his birth and his resurrection. They minister to him and to his people, in the garden and along the way. And they interpret events, telling shepherds and women and disciples what God is doing. Then they step back into glory, leaving the stage to the Lord.

This is the whole vocation of an angel, and it is a pattern for the church. We too are called to announce Christ, to serve one another, and to help each other see what God is doing, and then to get out of the way so that Jesus is glorified. The angels of the Gospel are not there to draw a following. They are there because wherever Jesus is, heaven cannot help but draw near and worship. And so, seeing them, we look where they are looking, and we worship him too.

A sober word: Scripture is deliberately restrained about angels. It tells us enough to trust God and never enough to make angels the center of our attention. The Bible distinguishes what is clearly revealed from what later tradition has supposed, and it warns plainly against the worshipping of angels (Colossians 2:18) and against superstition. The angels themselves refuse worship and say, Worship God (Revelation 22:9). Everything true about them points beyond them to the Lord.

Related: The angel Gabriel · Guardian angels and ministering spirits · Who is Jesus? · Angels in the Bible