I repeat the central lines in the Bible regarding angels, keeping in mind that every line is poured out from the God of love:
God is Love.
All that God does is loving.
God sends angels to us because God loves us.
Love is a rugged commitment to be With,
to be For us so that we can
progress Unto Christlikeness.
Angels are sent to express God’s love
by being God’s presence with us,
by being God’s presence for us, and
to lead us into the redemption of Christlikeness.
God loves us and that means God commits to be with us and to be for us, and this love of God is transformative. It leads unto Christlikeness. God loves us so much he will make us Christlike. This is not coercion but rather the transformative power of God’s love. To be in God’s presence is to be transformed by that presence. To have God on our side as our advocate is to be transformed by that presence. God’s transformative presence leads us to the center of God’s love, to the Son of God, and to our own Christlikeness.
No one who encounters an angel is ever the same afterward. We see this again and again in the Bible. Jacob is never the same after encountering angels ascending and descending. Ezekiel’s vision within visions made him unfit for the world of Israel; he became a man possessed by a vision so grand he could not be satisfied with this life. And Mary, once she was told that her son would be the Messiah, was transformed into a completely different kind of person. She was no longer “Mary daughter of So-and-So” but always “Mary, mother of Jesus.”
Angels are sent on mission to lead us into the transformation of redemption. Or as Jane Williams, author of a more-than-ordinary book about angels, once put it, angels are sent “to move us on, to help us to make some imaginative leap or overcome some mental hurdle that is preventing us from seeing what the world might be like and what our own role in it might be.”1
I’d like to provide the contours of the transformative, redemptive process of angel encounters. God created us, along with myriads of angels and spiritual beings. At times God sends angels on mission to keep us on mission, to be with us and to be for us. But God’s design from the beginning is to transform us so that we become Christlike. Likewise, angels are sent to transform us into Christlikeness.
One way they carry out the redemptive work of transformation is contained in the fierce word judgment. This word makes some of us hop backward a step and then sideward a step or two or perhaps duck. But the fact is that judgment is needed because the Bible treats evil as real and sinister and unwilling to change. Evil has one motivation: to destroy all life. So if we want to see God’s love-sent angels do the work of transformation, we need to let them do what God sends them to do, which is to rid the world of sin, evil, injustice, and death.
AN IMPOSSIBLE-TO-IGNORE BUT STILL IGNORED THEME
For the mission of the angels, namely, our redemption, to be accomplished, all things must be made right. For all things to be made right, judgment must come. For judgment to occur, evil must be defeated and those who choose the side of evil must be banished from the world of redemption. In the Bible, angels accomplish all this. At times they are sent on mission to announce or to execute judgment on evil and evil persons.
From the earliest prophets to the book of Revelation, from Elijah to the apostle John, two themes stand together and they fall together. You can’t have one without the other: God’s salvation is coming, and when that happens God will judge evil by putting it away. Angels are sent on mission to participate in that kind of redemption. For those who suffer, the message that angels are sent for judgment is very close to the best news they could imagine. “May it be!” is quickly followed by “And the sooner the better!”
ANGELS SENT TO CRACK DOWN ON EVIL
Cracking down on evil and evildoers is no assignment for chubby cherubs. Angels in the Jewish world were instruments of judgment. Jewish texts sometimes depict them as constant recorders of deeds. Here is a text not from the Bible, but rather from the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, that describes angels of judgment as those who care, who are watching, and who are recording the results of human behavior.
Then I saw two other angels weeping over the three sons of Joatham, the priest. I said, “O angel, who are these?” He said, “These are the angels of the Lord Almighty. They write down all the good deeds of the righteous upon their manuscript as they watch at the gate of heaven. And I take them from their hands and bring them up before the Lord Almighty; he writes their name in the Book of the Living. Also the angels of the accuser who is upon the earth, they also write down all of the sins of men upon their manuscript. They also sit at the gate of heaven. They tell the accuser and he writes them upon his manuscript so that he might accuse them when they come out of the world (and ) down there.”*1
This text is apocryphal, and I’m not sure angels do this. But it is important to recall that this is how Jews at the time of Jesus thought about angels. Before we get to the major themes about angels as spirits sent on mission for judgment, I want to sketch a number of Bible references where this theme appears.
The first reference to angels in the Bible is found in Genesis 3:24, which describes angels standing guard with the flaming sword of warning and judgment, as if announcing “Do Not Enter Here!” In the famous Passover chapter in Exodus (chapter 12), we read of the avenging angel who slays the firstborn of the households that do not have blood on the door. In their wanderings through the wilderness to the land (see Exodus 23:20–21), the children of Israel are led by God’s special angel. They are warned if they don’t heed the angel’s guidance they will not be forgiven. This same angel will lead them to victory over other nations. In chapter 24 of 2 Samuel, we learn of an angel that sent a plague of judgment that led to deaths, and we read a similar story in 2 Kings, chapter 19.
David once “looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem.”*2 Just in case you think this is restricted to Old Testament events, listen to the book of Acts:
Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.*3
Do we need to mention how angel-filled the judgments of the book of Revelation are? We need to see the Bible’s angels as flaming seraphs, swords in hands, sent on mission to rid the world of evil so that justice, peace, and love can flourish in the world God will redeem.
NOT JUST IN THE BIBLE
Angels can be agents of judgment. But just as often, they warn of judgment and summon the people of God to repentance.
Here is a journal entry from someone detailing an angel appearance:
In May 1563 an angel dressed in white began appearing to Anna Schützin, the downtrodden wife of a common labourer from the village of Dürrmenz in the Duchy of Württemberg. The angel denounced the hardened hearts of rich men and assured her that God’s anger was rising toward them. In the weeks that followed, the spirit continued to appear to Anna, urging her to tell her pastor to encourage his flock to repent….
Word circulated, too, that on Friday 9 July Anna was to preach in the local church, and on that day, about 1,500 pilgrims flocked to hear her story. Frightened by such notoriety, Schützin refused to speak, and instead hid from the crowds, who had brought gifts of money if she proved willing to answer their questions. In the aftermath of the strange events at Dürrmenz, the local pastors continued to believe Schützin’s story, while members of the more influential higher Lutheran clergy in the region doubted its authenticity.2
That journal entry dates to the year 1563. As I did research for this book, I read hundreds of stories about angels, and I have to admit to experiencing some melancholy over theme shifts in the last century and in this century. The messages ascribed to angels have turned soft and gentle and ever-so-positive. Yes, it is true that some have heard the hum of the angels of judgment and have not told their story to avoid being judged. This must be our reminder: angels often are sent to declare God’s judgment of evil, and we live in a world that needs to hear the hum of that message.
IMPORTANT THEMES FOR THE ANGELS OF JUDGMENT
The theme of angels as instruments of judgment, sent by God, grows in the Bible.*4 The final purpose of God is not punishment, nor is it retribution. God aims to restore all creation through the power of the resurrection. But that means God will judge evil, abolish evil, and make us all new for the new creation. God’s judgment opens the way for justice, for peace, for reconciliation, for healing, and for new creation. None of that can appear until judgment occurs. And in judgment we find the vigorous participation of angels.
Sometimes sin is so bad or injustice so pervasive that God intervenes through an angel to bring death. God purposes to restore creation, humans, and God’s people. But sometimes sins are bad enough that death must occur for restoration to begin. The Bible includes scenes where an angel—a spirit on mission from God, we need to remind ourselves—is sent to bring the judgment of death.*5
Sometimes the sin revealed by the angel is the complicated sin of leaders. There is a horrible story of death around David. We read of cringeworthy amounts of death that come by way of angelic destruction. This leads to David’s repentance for his own evil.*6 His people suffered because of his sin. There is a matching story about Assyrian deaths in response to the prayer request of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and executed at the hand of the Angel of YHWH. This episode is just as cringe-worthy and just as anchored in the pervasiveness of sin, idolatry, and blasphemy.*7 Angels sometimes have to deal death so that redemption can come into view.
Jesus announced that at times angels would execute final judgment. Notice Jesus’s statements regarding angelic involvement in death-dealing judgment on sin, systemic evil, and selfish destruction:*8
The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels….
The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear….
This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God.
One can’t wish this theme away by pretending it’s found only in the Old Testament. Jesus knows well the penetrating and pervasive depths of systemic evil in our world, and it is Jesus who lets us know that God will intervene through angels to execute the end of sin and evil. Only then will goodness and justice be forever established for all God’s people. In the early church it was one of God’s spirits on mission, an angel, who brought death to the violent, Christian-murdering Herod Agrippa.*9
Sometimes we need to be reminded that a battle is being waged and we are in it whether we know it or not. The book of Revelation teaches the larger picture of the cosmic war that comes to its final battle.*10
Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.
We looked at the cosmic battle in the previous chapter, so for now we need only a brief reminder that there are two teams, one captained by Michael and the other by the evil dragon. Each captain leads an army of angels into battle. The good news is that the decisive victory was achieved when Jesus crossed enemy lines, allowed the enemy to flay him on the cross, but then reversed their murderous glee when God raised him from death to rule over all powers. The war has been won, but the final battle has not yet begun. When the battle is over, it will be clear that the angels have been sent on mission to bring home the victory.
FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF REDEMPTION TO OCCUR
There will be no final transformation or redemption until all sin has been vanquished, until evil becomes a barely detectable echo down the long corridor of history, and until all evil persons have been defeated. Longing for that day of the new creation is central to the Bible. Angels sing in joy over that day. Hence, they are more than eager to share with God in judgment against sin and evil so it can be put away and the Great Dance of Eternity can begin. That will be the ultimate liberation from sin and evil, but here too is a surprise from the angels: that liberation has already begun.