Angels in the Bible

What Are Angels?

Their nature and work, and why they must never be worshiped

Angels are created spiritual beings who serve God, carry his messages, guard his people, and worship before his throne. The Bible tells us less about their nature than curiosity would like and more than enough for faith. They are mighty but not divine, numerous but not eternal, glorious but not to be worshiped. Twice in Scripture a man falls to worship an angel and is sharply refused with the words, worship God. To understand angels rightly is to see that their whole existence, like ours, is meant to point away from themselves and toward the Lord.

Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.Revelation 22:9 (KJV)

Created servants, not lesser gods

The first thing to say about angels is that they are creatures. They were made by God and for God, and they had a beginning. The Bible presents them as spiritual beings, mighty in strength, who do God's commandments and hearken to the voice of his word. They are not little deities, not the souls of the departed, and not beings who share the throne. However glorious they are, an infinite distance separates the highest angel from the God who made him.

This matters because human beings have always been tempted to blur that line, to treat powerful unseen beings as objects of trust and worship. Scripture draws the line sharply. The angels are on the creature's side of it, together with us. When Colossians warns against the worshipping of angels, it is guarding this very boundary, refusing to let the servants be mistaken for the Master.

Because they are creatures, angels also had a moral history. Some kept their first estate and some did not, which means the angels were not made as fixed and finished machines of praise but as beings who render, or withhold, their obedience. This is part of what makes their faithful worship so beautiful. The holy angels are not compelled; they are glad. Their obedience is the free devotion of creatures who have seen the worth of God and given themselves wholly to it, and in that they hold up a mirror to what our own obedience is meant to become.

Their work in the world

The Bible shows angels doing a consistent set of things. They worship God without ceasing, the great occupation of heaven. They carry messages, which is what the word angel means, a messenger. They guard and minister to God's people, as ministering spirits sent forth to serve the heirs of salvation. They execute God's judgments in history. And they rejoice, for Jesus says there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

In all of this they are active but never independent. Angels do not initiate; they are sent. They do not devise their own plans; they carry out God's. Even their worship is a response to who God is. There is a beautiful order in this, a whole realm of mighty beings whose freedom is expressed entirely in glad obedience. They show us what it looks like for a creature to be fully alive and fully surrendered at once.

There is a further comfort in this ordered service. Because angels only ever act on God's command, we need never fear that some rogue power is loose in the universe beyond his control. The mighty beings that fill heaven are not free agents pursuing their own ends; they are the disciplined instruments of a good and sovereign God. The world is not a chaos of competing spiritual forces but a kingdom under one throne. To know that even the angels move only at God's word is to know that nothing in all creation is outside his rule.

What Scripture does not tell us

We must be as honest about the silences as about the statements. The Bible does not give us a complete map of the angelic world. It hints at ranks and orders, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, thrones and dominions, but it never assembles these into a neat hierarchy, and the attempts to do so in later centuries went well beyond the text. It does not tell us how many angels there are, only that they are innumerable. It does not describe their appearance in any settled way; they come sometimes as blazing glory and sometimes, unrecognized, as ordinary men.

This restraint is deliberate and healthy. Every age has produced angel enthusiasts who fill the silences with speculation, and the results drift steadily away from God and toward a fascination with the beings themselves. The wise reader will match the Bible's own reticence, holding firmly what is revealed and refusing to manufacture what is not. Where Scripture draws a curtain, we do well to leave it drawn.

This is not a call to dull the imagination but to discipline it. Scripture stirs genuine wonder at the angels, at their strength, their number, their tireless praise, and we are meant to feel it. But wonder is safe only when it is anchored to what God has actually said. The moment our fascination outruns revelation, we begin to make angels in our own image and to trust the picture we have made. The reverent reader keeps close to the text, content to marvel at what is given and to leave the rest, unafraid of the silence, because the God who drew the curtain is wiser than our curiosity.

Why angels must never be worshiped

On one point the Bible is emphatic. Angels are not to be worshiped. Twice in the book of Revelation the apostle John, overwhelmed, falls down to worship at the feet of an angel, and both times he is stopped at once. See thou do it not, the angel says, for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets: worship God. The good angels refuse worship instantly, because they know exactly what they are, servants alongside us, and they will not steal what belongs to their Lord.

Paul warns the Colossians against exactly this danger, against being beguiled of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, a false spirituality that puffs up the mind while claiming to be humble. It can feel pious to be preoccupied with angels, but it is a subtle idolatry, and it robs Christ. The whole company of heaven is united in refusing our worship and redirecting it upward. If the angels will not receive it, neither should we offer it. Worship God.

How angels magnify Christ

The final word about angels is that they are worshipers of Jesus. The letter to the Hebrews says that when God brings his firstborn into the world, he commands, let all the angels of God worship him. The very beings we are forbidden to worship are themselves on their faces before Christ. In Revelation, thousands upon thousands of angels cry with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain. Their song is not about themselves; it is about him.

This is why a right understanding of angels always leads to Christ. They announce him, as Gabriel did. They serve his people, as the ministering spirits do. They defend the flock, as Michael does. And above all they adore him. To know the angels truly is to be swept up into what they are doing, which is worshiping God. They are not the point; they have never wanted to be the point; and they are glad, with all the strength of heaven, to point us to the Lamb.

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