Are the holy angels perfect, or do they sometimes fail God?

That obedience to the will of God characterizes every activity of the elect angels cannot in the face of Psalm 102 be called in question; they have no will contrary to the will of God. I suppose the angels whom He charged with folly (Job 4:18) were fallen angels.

The great angelic beings of heaven have their own state and conditions of life: they are the holy angels, who live in constant unswerving obedience to God, carrying out His will as His servants, even as it is written, “Who makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.” Men are differently constituted to angels, and although their life is a very blessed one, it is not given to us to enter into their thoughts and feelings, and all that constitute their heavenly life. We read of their shouting for joy in Job 38:7, and often of their praise. But this eternal life, which was with the Father is not communicated to the angels, but to those the Son has received from the Father.

Again, the elect angels are bound to do God's will, but there is no uncertainty. God sustains them in will and deed; they delight to do His will, and there is no question at all about the result. Such a question cannot be raised. Their delight to do God's will is a part of their existence, in which they are sustained by infinite power, and thus they do it by the strength given to them. Even Christ Himself was responsible to do His Father's will when He had undertaken it; but there could be no question for a moment as to failure. His moral being was perfectness, was never anything else, nor could be. But every created being is responsible; that is, he ought always to do God's will, not his own. It flows from the necessary and immutable relation of the creature to the Creator. The creature ought to be, in all its thoughts and ways, what suits the relationship in which it subsists. All relationships as such have duties in the including thoughts and feelings which correspond to and express the relationship. Husband and wife, father and child, master and servant, brother and sister, by virtue of the relationship in which they are, ought to be what the word expresses, and all that is implied in it. The husband is bound to be a husband: that is, he is bound to be what the word means; and so the wife; and the rest. The relationship is not the duty; but the duty is inseparable from the thought of it. It will be found that this is not the idea that men have of their responsibility to God (and in part they are right, but that they are so is the consequence of the fall), and in practical result they are wholly wrong.

But more; an angel out of heaven might conceivably repeat the sin of those who kept not their first estate, and become a slanderer of Him by the word of whose power angels are themselves upheld. The apostle is not rhapsodizing when he thus expresses his alarm. Angels have sinned, and may again transgress. The saints shall judge angels in the day of Christ (1 Cor. 6:3). The possibilities of sin are known to God only, and with its probabilities we have less concern than with the certainty that all unrighteousness is sin, and that no creature is self-sustaining nor exempt from the peril of apostasy, when considered apart from its Creator. The elect angels are preserved from falling by the same Almighty arm which is ere long to bring within the circle of their bright and multitudinous array the Church of the first-born who now walk by faith (Rev. 5:11).

For the angels were sinless at first, as Adam was. God never is the author of moral evil.

C.C. — The angels who have not fallen are absolutely indebted to God for their preservation.

QUESTION. — Is that why they are called “the elect angels?”

Ques. — What of the angels, are they not holy?

C.C. — We do not speak of holiness until after testing. Men and angels were created in innocence, not in holiness. We do not properly speak of holiness until after the attitude as to sin is taken. Angels who stood the test are called “holy” and “elect” angels.

It is sometimes said that Adam was without sin in his nature, and he fell, and therefore the fact of a person being sinless does not of necessity guarantee that he shall not fall. That is so, for God has never yet made an imperfect being. But, nevertheless, as far as I see from Scripture, every being that has been set on the footing of responsibility has fallen. The devil fell, demons are fallen beings, angels also have fallen, and yet all were made perfect. Adam fell, and he was made perfect. Every being must be maintained by the power of God, and where one has to keep himself in the position in which God has been pleased to set him, and that by his faithfulness, is sure to fail, as all such have fallen. Christ alone could stand under the most trying temptations, and under the most dreadful circumstances, even when forsaken by God; yet He glorified God perfectly, and finished to His satisfaction the work that was given Him to do. But no other has ever done that.

Moreover innocent man would have neither the need, nor the desire, to pass a judgment about God. He would enjoy His goodness with thanksgiving. Man who is a sinner is in no way capable of judging rightly, either of his state, or of his position before God; he has not even the wish for it. No, God reveals Himself in His own ways with regard to man. An angel does not furnish Him the occasion for it as man does; an angel has no need of mercy, of grace, of forgiveness, of divine righteousness, of a sacrificing priest, of power which, while sustaining him in weakness, raises him up from the dead. An angel is not, following upon all these things, made like to Christ, the glorious man, identified with His interests by the incarnation. Angels are a witness rendered to the creative and preserving power of God. They excel in strength. We see in them creatures kept by God, so that they have not lost their first estate. Now, grace and redemption, patience, mercy, divine righteousness, do not apply to such a state, but to fallen man they do.

But to return to our chapter, we may see now the unspeakable importance of the exhortation: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." No such words had ever been spoken to man; they would have been incomprehensible in a religion made for man in the flesh. It needed first that the "Life" should have been manifested, and consciously possessed, by those to whom they were addressed, for they are the expression of that life on earth. To angels they would be wholly inapplicable: glorious beings though they are, but how carry this mind which was in Christ! They had kept their first estate, excel in strength and do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word. In all this they are the condemnation of man, who did not keep his first estate, whose condition was marked by weakness and disobedience to His commandments, and refusal to hearken to his word.

But Satan's apparent triumph in his fall has been an occasion for the revelation of ways and counsels of grace, into which these glorious beings desire to look (1 Peter 1:12), and by which they learn the all-various wisdom of God. Indeed we did not keep our first estate, and angels kept theirs. But see what God has done for the saints according to His own eternal purpose and grace, given us in Christ Jesus before angels were. Angels are wondrous beings, but they have not the place we have. We have to do with God in a way angels have not. He has given us the glorious estate of the second Man risen and set over all creatures, Head of the new creation. Moreover grace and counsel in Christ are not dependent upon creature responsibility.

Again, angels excel in strength, but it is angel strength in which they do excel. Of man it is said "without strength;" the weakness of saints, however, is but the inlet to the power of Christ, His strength perfecting itself in their weakness. If angels do His commandments still it is in the obedience of angels, a blessed thing! But the obedience of saints is the obedience of Christ Himself — sanctified unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:2.)