Of angels and men.

In our human pride, it is easy to for­get that there is anoth­er race of intel­li­gent beings work­ing on this earth and else­where in God’s cre­ation. They are angels, and like humans, they can be divid­ed rather eas­i­ly. With humans, we have the lost and the saved. But with angels, we have the fall­en and the holy.

And I was think­ing a few moments ear­li­er about those two dif­fer­ent class­es of angels. Those angels which sinned, God did not give a chance for repen­tance or sal­va­tion. They were con­signed to Hell and reserved for pun­ish­ment, but Jesus did not take on Him­self the nature of an angel to pro­vide sal­va­tion for them (Hebrews 2:16, NASB).

Like­wise, the holy angels have been sealed so that they may nev­er fall. And so both class­es of angels, regard­ing their eter­nal des­tinies, have no free will. This seems to be the com­mon posi­tion held by most of the teach­ers, preach­ers, and authors I have heard speak of the mat­ter. This is accept­ed teach­ing regard­ing angels. 

BUT… What hap­pens when a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion hap­pens with humans? God spared not the angels that sinned, but all humans have sinned. What do we have then? Should we not expect God to be con­sis­tent by send­ing every per­son to Hell as a result of their sin? Indeed, that would be just and fair.

Just as He sealed the por­tion of angels which did­n’t sin so that they could no longer sin, so has God cho­sen a spe­cif­ic group of peo­ple to save from sin. Admit­ted­ly, the process of sav­ing a sin­ner was a bit more com­plex than pre­vent­ing the holy from sin­ning. The Son of God had to die to bring sal­va­tion to God’s cho­sen humans, who are His sheep and His friends.

On both sides of the coin we have a group which is set aside per­ma­nent­ly for God and anoth­er group which were not.

And no actions of either angel or human can change which group he belongs to, any more than a leop­ard could change its own spots. Such changes of nature can only be pro­duced by the Creator.

Yet, why is it so easy to accept that God could so con­trol the des­tinies of angels while demand­ing from Him free will to con­trol our own? Are we not being hyp­o­crit­i­cal? Have we for­got­ten that we are but man? Sin­ful man?

How won­der­ful is the thought that God would seal holy angels unto Him­self, but how much more won­der­ful is it to think that God would look down into the cesspool which is human­i­ty and choose for Him­self vile sin­ners to become the Bride of His Son! Praise God, what mer­cy and grace He has shown!

Human­i­ty is so unwor­thy to be saved. And that thought is so impor­tant. Not a one of us, left to our own, does good, seeks God, or under­stands truth. Not a one of us can bring any­thing good to offer God, least of all a faith pro­duced by an all-deceit­ful heart! Unworthy!

If we as unwor­thy sin­ners could pro­duce a faith which is accept­ed by God, then our deprav­i­ty is only par­tial, it fails to affect our faith. It is only after the Lord regen­er­ates us and grants us faith and repen­tance that we may exer­cise those things and have them be accept­ed by the Lord.

If He real­ly is the Author and Fin­ish­er of our faith, let us rob Him no glo­ry by claim­ing our faith is our own, that we were able to under­stand God enough to seek after Him. Oh no… No until He has sought and found us may we find Him.

Angels and men. And God is sov­er­eign over both. May we ever give Him the glo­ry for our sal­va­tion, our rebirth… our lives!, for we had no say in any of them.