Why doesn't God give Satan and the fallen angels a chance to repent?

The only thing is innocence or glory - innocence in human condition - earthly; glory in a heavenly, Angelic condition sustained. Hence I apprehend, morally speaking, angels could not be brought back because of the knowledge of good and evil in the light with God; so man, Hebrews 6; but - innocence lost, with the knowledge of good and evil - the work of God according to His own glory, and hence necessarily bringing into it - or, a law, provisionally showing the abstract moral perfection of a knowledge of good and evil in a creature, but actually, relatively founded on a prohibition of evil, which brought in, where really apprehended, the conviction of sin.

The wonderful thing about man is that he can be changed. I do not for a moment doubt that God, who knew the end from the beginning, and had His counsels formed with regard to all His works before He put into operation His creative power, so made man that he could be changed in the whole principle of his being. We are not told anything about angels to lead us to believe such beings capable of being changed. Some of them have fallen away from God, and an opportunity of salvation does not seem to be granted to them. Man is the creature chosen of God in whom His workmanship of grace is to be displayed. What He has wrought as a Saviour will be brought to light in ransomed human beings.

The wonderful thing about man is that he can be changed. I do not for a moment doubt that God, who knew the end from the beginning, and had His counsels formed with regard to all His works before He put in operation His creative power, so made man that he could be changed in the whole principle of his being. We are not told anything about angels to lead us to suppose such beings capable of being changed. Some of them have fallen away from God, and an opportunity of salvation does not seem to be granted to them. Man is the creature chosen of God in whom His workmanship of grace is to be displayed. What He has wrought as a Saviour will be brought to light in ransomed human beings.

The wonderful thing about man is that he can be changed! do not for a moment doubt that God, who knew the end from the beginning, and had His counsels formed with regard to all His works before He put in operation His creative power, so made man that he could be changed in the whole principle of his being. We are not told anything about angels to lead us to suppose such beings capable of being changed. Some of them have fallen away from God, and an opportunity of salvation does not seem to be granted to them: Man is the creature chosen of God in whom His workmanship of grace is to be displayed. What He has wrought as a Saviour will be brought to light in ransomed human beings.

But the first desideratum is the want of life, life eternal in the Son. Till he gets life, what adequate sense of his sin? till then, how can he know God's holy nature in any real way? He has no more than a dread of God. A heathen might have this; and the evil spirits believe and tremble. So we are informed on divine authority, and revealed facts are explained by it. The reason is that they know too well there is no forgiveness for their rebellion. Although they believe Who Jesus is, it does them no good: they are sentenced to destruction. They sinned irreparably. There is no possibility of salvation for an evil spirit, for a fallen angel.

It was not so with those who in a higher sphere rebelled against God without a tempter. They each and all departed from God, though they excel in strength. They therefore are left to suffer the due reward of their deeds. But man, in his weakness and exposure to the subtle foe, is the object of God's richest mercy, and gives occasion for the display of His glory in nature and character, in His ways and counsels, as no other creature does or could enjoy; but this positively and perfectly in Christ alone, the Second Man.

Fallen Angels. — Of angels we here again read. We have been taught how far above the elect angels was the Son, who entered this scene as a man, and as a man was made lower than them. But other angels there are, those who fell, having left their first estate. For apostasy reared its head among the angelic host, and some were carried away by it. How that began, and who were the leaders in it, is to us wholly unknown. Little indeed do we know about the angelic hierarchy. We know that there are different ranks among them — principalities and powers (Eph. 1:21). We know their number is very great (Rev. 5:11). Yet of names of any of them we only know but two — Michael and Gabriel. Of none others have we knowledge from Scripture. Men may speak of others as Raphael, etc. Doubtless He who calls all the stars by their names designates each by some personal appellation. From us, however, that is hidden. And of the apostasy just referred to little is it that we know. Gen. 6:2 mentions it historically. Jude (6) and Peter (2 Peter 2:4) acquaint us with the present condition of the apostates, as well as with the awful future before them. Then Paul, to complete our knowledge of this subject, tells the Corinthians that Christians will judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3). God then can, and will, punish the apostate angels. Had we been like them, awaiting our doom, which of us could have questioned His right and His justice in so acting? And what has made the difference between our future and theirs? Nothing but the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ. With what thankfulness, therefore, should we reiterate the sacred writer's statement, "He takes hold of the seed of Abraham" (Heb. 2:16). For of no angel is that true.

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.

With the fall of man, we enter upon a new era in the history of God's truth in the world. A mercy it is that it did not close there; that further light from God was not withheld, and man left to the darkness he had chosen. No objection could have been raised against such a mode of procedure: it would have been quite compatible with His righteous character for a Holy Creator so to act. In judgment He had already acted towards creatures of His, who had sinned and left their first estate (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6); and the gloom and darkness to which they are consigned might have been, in the spiritual sphere, the immediate result for men also, as it will be eventually and literally their portion who continue in unbelief. In a path of unrelieved darkness, our race might have been left to run its course; to fill up the measure of their iniquity, unvisited by a single ray of hope or light; and still have been only thus reaping what they sowed. But grace was in God's heart for men, and truth from on high still visited them. If man is to be distinguished from all the ranks' in nature below him, he is also from those above him. Different from those he is, as we have seen, because of that which is in him; from these, may we not say, because of what God has for him. His estate differs from all inferiors because of what he is; his treatment from that of created intelligences above him because of what he is to be through Christ Jesus. God's purposes of grace have chosen a human, not an angelic, platform for their expression. His love is to be manifested "not to angels but men." Thus, rather than the judgment which a somewhat similar offence had in that case incurred, mercy is shown to man. Light from God was still vouchsafed.

But there is a very solemn back-ground to the blessed entrance into the kingdom: "Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (ver. 41). Observe, He does not say, Cursed of My Father, answering to "Blessed of My Father." God hates putting away. So when the awful moment comes for the curse to be pronounced on these wicked Gentiles, it is "Depart from Me, ye cursed." I believe it is the deepest sorrow to God, and throws all the onus of destruction on those whose own sin it was, who rejected His love and holiness and glory in rejecting His Son. "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." In the other case the kingdom was said to be "prepared for you:" not so when speaking about the curse. Hell was not prepared for poor guilty man. He deserves it; but it was prepared for the devil and his angels. Where the souls rejected the testimony, he does pronounce them cursed. He is the King, the judge. But whether it be the great white throne, or this earthly throne, it is "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." There was no hope of deliverance for these fallen angels — no redemption for them. They wilfully and without a tempter departed from God. Man was tempted by an enemy; and God feels for guilty man, drawn away by a mightier, if not more guilty, rebel than himself. How solemn to think that it was prepared for others, and that men share it with these rebellious spirits? It was not in the heart of God to make a hell for miserable man: it was prepared for the devil and his angels. But there were those who preferred the devil to God; and to such He says, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." The same test is applied to them as to the godly before — the treatment of the King and of His messengers, or rather of Him in them.