A couple of years ago a friend said to me that he felt bad for our kids because the world is just getting so much worse.

Yeah, I get it. Economic opportunity is disappearing, liberty is in crisis, and war has ceased to be an occasional interruption and has become our nation’s status quo. Society’s morals have collapsed in ways we only recently thought impossible, and in this the church is complicit. For that matter, the church can’t even seem to agree any more on what the gospel is, and this includes some evangelical heroes.

But are these circumstances unparalleled in history? We just celebrated Christmas, a holiday which should be a reminder of a time when people “walked in darkness.” The religious leaders - at least, the influential ones with the big building at the center of town - were functional atheists who denied the most fundamental realities of Scripture. Popular religion had been overrun with rank legalism which denied the very character of God. The faithful remnant had never been weaker. They were subjects of a brutal regime and burdened with crushing taxation. Local authority was vested in the hands of a monster who thought nothing of slaughtering children in order to achieve his political ends.

And then one day, while a couple of the 99% were sitting on a hillside at night, an angel showed up and said to them - just imagine! - “Fear not!” Of course not! What was there to be afraid of?

And what a reason he gave! “Fear not, because there’s an infant lying in a filthy stall in an insignificant village that Caesar never even heard of, but he’s your Savior: Christ the Lord.” And that, in a nutshell, is Christmas: if God is with us in the Person of His Son, then fear not.

So, what about the holiday we are about to celebrate? As the New Year rings in, the Savior is no longer wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, but instead is wrapped in glory and seated at the right hand of the Father. He is no longer an infant, but is once more clothed in omnipotence. He is not walking among us, but has sent the Spirit of Truth that we might not be orphans.

It remains a rather obvious fact that many still walk in darkness. The collapsing economy, hopeless political strife, unending war, global poverty, abominable morals, and a church so full of elephants we can scarcely see the room any more - all this and much more is very, very true. But if the Angel were to appear to us just as the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve, I have a pretty good idea what he’d say.

“Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be for all the people. For on your behalf there sits this day in the Heaven of Heavens a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign unto you: you shall receive His Spirit, and one day you shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”

Labels: angels, Christ, eschatology, Fear, New Year

"It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look" (1 Peter 1:12).

Once, there was a united brotherhood of angels, glorious beyond imagining. They all shined with the radiance of the omnipotent God-King, for they were all his sons, and the King loved them. The grandest of them all was Lucifer, the Bringer of Light, he was the arch-angel and chief of all his brethren. Of all the sons of God, Lucifer was the most magnificent.

But Lucifer became filled with pride, and in his foolishness, he forgot that his glory was borrowed. He shook his fist at God rebelled. In his madness, he swept many of his brothers into a prideful fury, and the heavens shook. The God-King thundered from his throne, and threw Lucifer down from heaven. He landed on Earth, a twisted an broken thing, still bent on defying the Lord of Heaven.

God also created another creature called "man". He named the first man Adam, and he gave Adam a wife named Eve. Together, they would tend the paradise that God had made for them, and they would glorify God for his mighty works. But Lucifer, that Old Serpent, told them cunning lies, and he swept the man into his rebellion against God.

Those angels that did not fall, those that remained faithful to God, heaved a collective sigh. Man, God's brilliant and glorious creation, was in ruins. Surely, God would destroy the pitiful man and his wife and utterly wipe them off the face of the Earth.

And so all of heaven held its breath as the King went to confront his man in his sin. But as they listened, they heard no thundering. They heard his judgement, which they had seen before, but this time they heard something new, and they marvelled. They heard mercy, and they heard a promise. God would give man a seed, a hope, a child who would crush the Serpent. Through this child, God would deliver man from his sins. This child would be the Son of God himself. God would become man, and he would save his beloved, rebellious creature.

And so the angels watch as God unfolds his promise to the man. Every time God delivers a man from his sin, all the angels marvel and worship God. They praise him for the mercy that their brothers will never know.

Labels: angels, Potent prooftexts, providence, salvation

There are a few things in the Bible which have always bothered me a bit. I might go so far as to say they struck me as unfair, at least from my finite, human perspective. One of those things is, as the Catechism puts it here, the willful and irrecoverable fall of some of the angels into sin and damnation. Frankly, I have always wondered just a bit why it is that I as a mere human have a chance to be redeemed, while these angels do not.

As my theological views have shifted, the question of fairness has drifted away from those who are punished to those who are saved. If God is just and holy, how is it that anyone is saved? And of course, God's answer is Jesus.

But my answer to my own question about angels is this: I can be thankful that, while I was God's enemy, He took steps to save me. My salvation is all the more a miracle of grace when I know that these immortal beings, created by God as His messengers, described in the Scriptures as full of knowledge and glory, made the choice to reject God, and it was irrevocable, while my own sinful choices, daily compromises and rejections of God's truth, will not permanently separate me from my Savior, when I truly repent.

Hebrews 2:16 talks about Jesus our High Priest helping the offspring of Abraham, but not angels. So when I think about them, and the greatness of their fall, it is with both sadness for their loss and thankfulness for my gain, which is the surpassing greatness of Jesus my savior.

Labels: angels, Catechism Buzz, providence, salvation