Maker of All Things… Invisible

Detail from Simon Ushakov’s “Archangel Michael,” c. 1676.

by John Stephenson

As usual, St. Paul goes straight to the heart of the Faith with his fondness for the word group that includes the noun “abundance”(e.g., Romans 5:17; 2 Corinthians 8:2; 10:15) and the verb “to abound” (e.g., 2 Corinthians 1:5; 8:2; Ephesians 1:8).  The God who shows His face in Jesus our Lord never does things by halves, has no stinginess about Him, and never gives but He lavishes. When He creates, He brings a dazzling variety of creatures into being through His Eternal Son (Colossians 1:16); and when He comes to the rescue of a creation gone astray, He unites mankind under a new Head, raising guilty people up to a higher status than the one they had forfeited. “In Him the tribes of Adam boast more blessings than their father lost” (Isaac Watts, TLH 511:5). One might say that in Jesus it’s always more and never less.

As if it weren’t enough to crown the visible world with countless billions of human creatures made in His own image, finding a unique DNA and fingerprint for each one, God also created a vast multitude of personal beings invisible to the naked eye. Our Lutheran teachers liked to quote St Augustine, who said that, while according to their office they are angels (messengers), according to their nature they are spirits.

Not descending from a common ancestor like we do, each one is a unique and immediate creation of God, the angels not being carbon copies of each other, but arranged in a certain hierarchy, cherubim (Genesis 3:24; Psalm 80:1) not the same as seraphim (Isaiah 6:2), thrones, dominions, principalities, and authorities (Colossians 1:16) each with their assigned role, the archangel Michael (Revelation 12:7) as commander of God’s celestial armies, and Gabriel (Daniel 8:16; Luke 1:19, 26) as His appointed ambassador to humans with a special role in salvation history. Just as God acts through humans as His “hands, channels, and means” for distributing good things in the visible creation (Large Catechism I:26), so He governs and watches over the universe through the agency of the angels. It seems that particular angels even have assigned roles in the destiny of specific nations (think through the implications of Daniel 10:13).

Just as God acts through humans as His “hands, channels, and means” for distributing good things in the visible creation, so He governs and watches over the universe through the agency of the angels.

Our Lutheran teachers follow the catholic tradition in its reflection on Scripture in maintaining that, like Adam and Eve, the angels were created with the capacity not to sin. When Lucifer abused this freedom to become Satan, taking many (a third?; see Revelation 12:4) down to doom with him, the angels who remained steadfast in their loyalty to God were “confirmed” in the good, receiving the gift of being henceforth unable to sin, becoming the first created members of the Church triumphant, the Church in glory. Actually, the holy angels thereby became more free than ever as they gave themselves one hundred percent to the God “whose service is perfect freedom.” So we shouldn’t think of Gabriel as reading woodenly from a script in the style of a robot when he conversed with Zechariah and Mary; no, he transmitted the message with which God entrusted him in a uniquely personal way.

The Old Testament presents the angels as God’s heavenly courtiers, who love Him above all else and give voice to His praise; a holy angel announces Christ’s birth to the shepherds and a choir of angels intone words of praise that the Church on earth now sings Sunday by Sunday in the Gloria in excelsis. Angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and in Gethsemane, and they proclaimed His victory over death at the empty tomb.

Isaiah (Isaiah 6) and other prophets (e.g., Micaiah in 1 Kings 22:19) were exceptionally admitted to God’s heavenly throne room where they beheld Him attended by His angelic courtiers, and now in the New Testament Church the angels are present in Christian worship (1 Corinthians 11:10), especially when we assemble for Holy Communion. The pastor does not give vent to poetic excess but states sober truth when he stretches out his hands to lead the congregation’s praise in the words “With angels and archangels and with the whole company of heaven.”

Truly, in Jesus it’s always more and never less, as He is our Door to the God who does nothing by halves. One of our most beautiful and comforting Scripture-based truths is that God the Blessed Trinity, and very specifically our Lord Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, is at all times present with the whole Church militant in general and with each member of the mystical Body in particular. “Do you not realise that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Corinthians 12:5). Throw this blessed reality in the evil one’s face when loneliness, fear, and the burden of sin threaten to crush you in the middle of a pitch black, eerie night! And as if this article of faith known as the teaching of the mystical union were not overflowing evidence of God’s abundant bounty, the holy angels, God’s invisible warriors, are at all times sent forth to serve and protect those who are to inherit salvation (Hebrews 1:14). Our Lutheran teachers incline to the longstanding Christian opinion that each believer has his or her own personal guardian angel. “Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me.”

The holy angels, God’s invisible warriors, are at all times sent forth to serve and protect those who are to inherit salvation.

The annual feast of St. Michael and All Angels, falling on September 29 each year (in 2019 on a Sunday!), is the time in the church year when we remember the holy angels, hearing Scripture readings and singing hymns that focus on them. It often happens that when the preacher makes clear that angels are for real and not just a figure of speech, someone comes up to him and shares a unique angel story that offers specific evidence that the ministry of angels is ongoing.

I recollect the late St. Louis professor and author of an excellent commentary on Revelation, Dr. Louis Brighton, holding an audience spellbound as he related how mighty angels protected a pair of missionaries who had the courage to enter a village populated by particularly fierce cannibals; the angels remained unseen by the trembling missionaries, but showed their visible glory to the thunderstruck villagers, who soon entered the kingdom of God. And I remember a dear parishioner in St. Catharines, a woman with her feet firmly on the ground, who told a story of angelic deliverance when her pious grandfather took his family from their home in East Prussia in the closing days of the Second World War. They lost all their earthly goods, but were marvellously protected from a murderous mob to start their lives anew on a different continent. Why should we be surprised that the Lord continues to provide the kind of protection that He extended to the infant Church in Jerusalem (see Acts 5:19-20; 12:6-11)? He is the same yesterday and today and forever after all (Hebrews 13:8)!

Following the Ascension of our Lord, when human nature took its seat on God’s throne, a constant and growing stream of humans made and refashioned in God’s image have joined the holy angels in the Church triumphant, the assembly of those who behold God’s face and cannot sin but henceforth enjoy the fullest imaginable freedom. As they protect the Church on earth, the angels ready themselves for the day when the archangel will call (1 Thessalonians 4:16) and the angels will gather the faithful from the four corners of the earth (Matthew 24:31) into the presence of the returning Jesus, from whom the whole Church of humankind and angels will never be separated. Then, as we all behold God’s face and are immediately present to each other forever, we shall appreciate to the full why St. Paul was so fond of the word group around the noun “abundance” and the verb “abound”.

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Rev. Dr. John Stephenson is Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario.

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