Salvation Offered to Sinning Angels
By E. N. D.
In the first place, our Lord did not take two steps downward before He could become man's Redeemer. If man had been the only order of creation below God, there would have been but the one step; but there were other beings involved in sin. Sin had entered in among the angels, and our "God is no respecter of persons." We know that His mercy endureth forever, and we know that He had the same tender care and solicitude toward "the angels that sinned" as He had toward man who sinned. But the Bible is not a revelation to the angels, but to us. If it had been, God would have given us all the particulars, with all the appeal which He must have made to them, and we would have had told us the effort that He put forth to save them; but He has given us enough of the revelation of His character that we may know that He had angels in mind in the sacrifice of the Redeemer as truly as He did man. Read Eph. 4:8, 9: "Wherefore He saith, When He [Christ] ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now this, He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)" There is not one single vacancy which sin has made or can make in the universe of God, but what will be filled with the fulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently there was salvation held out to the angels through Christ, just as truly as there was to man. Read the article on "Christ as Michael the Archangel," in No. 3 of this series, by G. W. Reaser. We have the fact set before us again and again that Christ the Lord was the Angel of God's presence, Michael the Archangel, the Angel of Jehovah, the One who served through all the past in behalf of God's children, an Example to angels both good and evil, and that this service continued until our Lord became human and took upon Himself the nature of the other class, that of man. These suggestions, with the article referred to, we are sure will help our inquirer to understand that the great plan of salvation was full enough to include every sinner in the universe, whether that sinner be angel or man. We do not need the statement that He was made an angel, when we read that He was the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and then read that He was an angel. Certainly somewhere the transformation took place, but when He became flesh He continued not in the nature of angels; He took upon Himself the nature of man—descended as low as death can carry one, and by right of character ascended far above all things, that He might fill all vacancies. See Dan. 12:1; John 5:28; 1 Thess. 4:16; Jude 9; Rev. 12:7; Ex. 23:20, 21.