Monday, November 13, 2006

Here's what I'm thinking about while I'm supposed to be working. (Sorry, Dana.) Do angels sin? What got me thinking about this is that God has been convicting me of pride in my life lately. Like, all the time. Several times a day I can almost hear Him saying, "See that? That's pride." So this led me to think about the great author of pride, Satan himself. Which started me thinking about how his pride led to him getting booted out of heaven and taking 1/3 of the angels with him. This suggests to me that angels have free will, or else how could they have chosen to follow Satan?

Keeping this in mind, are we then to assume that angels go about their daily business confronted with temptation to sin? Somehow this has never occurred to me before. I know that the only sinless being is God Himself, along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. So, I'm just not sure where to go from there.

While googling this and searching some scripture (again, I'm procrastinating) I didn't really find an answer to suggest that angels sin, except for Job 4:18, which I'm not really sure is saying that anyway, but I did find 1 Peter 1:12, a thought-provoking verse that sent me down a totally different rabbit trail about whether humans are privy to information that angels aren't.

Unfortunately that's all the time I have for today's edition of "things that make you go hmmmm." I really do have to work now.
Posted by at

3 comments:

kw said...

Well, thanks a lot for keeping me from getting my work done today, too, since I have been doing a word search on angels.

Re: the Job verse, be careful to quote things from Job, because sometimes they are the words of his friends, who do not speak correctly for God, and this verse is from Eliphaz, so who knows if it is accurate.

What I do know from my word search is that angels are a different kind of being than humans, that they have existed from the beginning, that they dwell in the presence of God and exist to do his bidding. There are messenger angels and warrior angels and those who sing praise around the throne and those who declare his glory on earth. There are ministering angels, sent to care for humans. Apparently there have been some rebellious angels, who are now being held for judgment at the end of time. And guess who will sit in judgment over the angels? Believers. Hmm. Apparently angels only know what God reveals to them, and he has revealed some stuff to us through the prophets, Christ and the Bible that they would really like to know about.

I do not understand all of this, nor do I know the answer to "Do angels sin?" except to say that if sin is disobeying God, yes, they do.

Here are some of the more interesting and strange passages about angels. Read them in more than one translation before you decide what they mean.

2 Samuel 4:17
Matthew 13:39,41
Matthew 25:41
1 Corinthians 6:3
1 Corinthians 11:10 (hmmm)
2 Corinthians 11:14
Galatians 1:8
Galatians 3:19
Hebrews 2:16
2 Peter 2:4
Jude 6

12:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Why is it that far too often when we hear God speak to us, it is Him admonishing us? How often do you hear Him say, "See that? That's so awesome!" when you look at one of your beautiful children or after you teach one of your classes?

I think we all do the same thing. I can quickly make you a list of 10 things I've done wrong this week, but I'd have to think about 10 things I've done that are cool. Do you suppose that maybe it's not so much that we're hearing God admonish us as it may be Satan trying to get us to focus on our failures?

I prefer to believe God spends more of His time cheering me on, and I should retrain my hearing to listen for the cheers more than the boos.

Now, speaking of getting back to work...

2:09 PM
leigh ann said...

Well, that settles it. I'm definitely not going to get any work done now! Thank you, God, for Bible Gateway.

As for your point, Paul, it's well-taken. I probably am more in tune with what's wrong with me than the positives. I know that when I take the time to count my blessings, the list goes on and on.

On the other hand, part of the reason He's pointing this out to me is because I asked Him to. I've determined that the root of most, if not all, of my sin is pride (which is probably the root of most sin in general, I guess.) After avoiding it for a long time, I finally picked a daily dangerous prayer, and it is adapted from Zechariah 13:9. "I will refine you like silver and purify you like gold; You will call on my name and I will answer you; I will say "you are my child," and you will say "The LORD is my God."

Part of the refining is the convicting. I want this to come to the surface so it can be burned off. It just seems like there's a whole lot under the surface!

I can't remember which Donald Miller book it is, but in one of them he talks about us having a lifeboat mentality, basically from the premise of a sinking ship with a bunch of people and only one lifeboat, and we're always deciding who is good enough to be with us in the boat. It's a very judgemental mindset, and it just slammed me upside the head with conviction.

So now I'm trying to start seeing people the way God sees them instead of the way I do. It makes me really glad that His ways are higher than mine.

2:31 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)