Do angels have free will?

But further, with regard to freewill, man's likeness to God is an important point, for man was set to have a will and to exercise it; Angels were not. This leads us to a double sense of will.

First, the mere energy of nature which sets our practical powers in motion; this all active beings have, even animals - so Angels, only their activities, and what they will flows from the will of another, even God. But there is another sense of will, where I determine for myself from some motive; this Adam had in innocence, independent of the test of obedience which exercised him on the point whether his will was at any rate subject to God's, or what man is pleased to call "free." He was put into the garden to dress and to keep it; he dressed it as he pleased; he pleased himself in it - was meant to please himself - and, though in a little finite sphere, was in the image of God in this, which Angels are not. But he was in God's image in doing as he pleased simply; being governed by motives (which man calls being free, because it is not obedience to another), is a far lower state than the spirit of obedience, and so indeed in itself was Adam's, for Christ took the place of simple obedience and doing God's will.

These enemies are thus characterised; they are principalities and powers — beings possessing an energy of evil which has its source in a will that has mastery over those who do not know how to resist it; they have also strength to carry it out. Their energy they have from God, the will that uses it comes from themselves; they have forsaken God; the spring of their actions is in their own will. In this respect it is a source of action independent of God, and the energy and the qualities which they have from God are the instruments of that will — a will which has no bridle except from outside itself. They are principalities and powers. There are good ones; but in them the will is only to do that which God wills, and to employ in His service the strength they have received from Him.

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.

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).

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.

When God made man, He did not make him as he is, any more than the world as it is. He made everything good, but He was not pleased to put forth His power to keep everything good. He was pleased to put the creature to the proof. He tried the creature in two great spheres — above and below. The angels fell before man; and the chief of those that fell above is the great tempter. No man can account for sin, for the ruin of the world, in any other way than Scripture reveals. Many a man has essayed to do so. The brightest wits and the greatest minds have attempted it; but they have never conceived anything that was not rubbish when they have not followed the word of God. Some have endeavoured to account for sin by supposing that there are two Gods — a good one and a bad one; because there are evidences of goodness all around us, and there are too plainly the evidences of badness. This hypothesis, I need not stay to show, is sheer folly. There is but one who is Almighty; and man cannot get rid of the consciousness of One — not merely one thing but One Being — One who has power and will and purpose, One who has affections no less than mind, but who, nevertheless, subjects the creatures that He made to a moral probation. If He kept everything from falling, there could be no such trial at all. All would be mechanical or chemical; and the wonderful scene of the conflict of good and evil — of good wrought by His grace in the heart of man, and rising above Satan's power and wiles of evil — would be quite lost. What is still more important, the active display of love and righteousness on God's part, of moral qualities reproduced in repentant believing man, would be completely destroyed, if it were merely divine power so keeping the creature that there could be no failure.

274 Now I refer to an absolute will, as an image of God, though exercised in a subordinate sphere, and a contrast with a perfectly blessed state, such as Angels. It may be a title to have one without restraint from another, but till I have chosen, I have no will - what gives me one? If God and good, it is grace; if not, it is something else that is evil and self. Freewill belongs to God only, in its true sense - the right to please Himself identified, as it is, with the essential goodness of His nature; it belonged to man, in a finite way, within the limits of obedience. To say he was free to do evil, save as not outwardly hindered, is an abomination; now he is certainly inclined to sin, to say he is free to continue in it, equally so. He is bound to turn to good, but finds hindrance in an evil nature.

But has He whose purpose is to bring many sons to glory been defeated? It is clear that God cannot maintain the creature in active rebellion against His beneficent sway, and give him licence to corrupt for ever His fair creation. Must He then destroy the human race, and confess Himself unable to give effect to His eternal purpose of blessing? Must He confess that He has been out-manoeuvred by His implacable enemy? Far be the thought: He who makes the wrath of man to praise Him, and restrains the superabundance, can in His infinite wisdom make the puny efforts of every rebel creature serve to the fulfilment of His eternal decrees. No sane person could ever suppose the Creator overreached by the creature. All His creatures exist for His service. Elect angels have been upheld in their primal perfection, and others have been allowed to fall from their first estate, and for these we do not read of recovery. Man made in the image and likeness of God fell, and brought into existence a fallen race; but to these mercy has been manifested, and a way of salvation devised. But if preserved in their first and perfect condition, or if allowed to fall, all is for the wise purpose of God, and all are made to serve to the fulfilment of the purpose of eternal love. He does not bring about the fall of any one of His creatures, but where a creature is placed on the ground of responsibility, obliged to fulfil whatever obligations are imposed upon him, he cannot complain if by the exercise of his own will he finds himself a ruined sinner.

A creature could not be a creature and not imperfect, and hence liable to fall - I add could not be in the truth; hence, in a glorious state he "abode not in the truth." As to man he fell tempted, when something above and out of his state was presented, having lost sinfully his confidence in God.