Mark 1:13

THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS

‘And the angels ministered unto Him.’

Mark 1:13

The doctrine of the Ministry of Angels is one which appeals strongly to our religious sentiment. We delight to think that ‘God’s Messengers of Love’ are always about us; that—it may be—each individual soul is the special care of one particular heavenly guardian. Sometimes our thoughts will take a wider range. How far are what we call the laws of Nature in reality due to the obedient and faithful ministrations of unseen personalities, offering up to the Most High the sacrifice of endless and perfect service?

I. Endorsed by Christ.—Faith in angelic aid and supervision receives support from the narratives of the Evangelists. Not only do we read of such ministrations in connection with the Temptation in the Wilderness, but we hear of them in relation to the Incarnation, the Agony in Gethsemane, the Resurrection, the Ascension. Mary received her calling from an angelic visitant. There were ‘deathless’ angels ‘seated in the vacant tomb.’ Our Lord Himself uses such expressions as ‘the holy angels’ or ‘the angels in heaven.’ He declares that He will come again with them ‘in the glory of His Father.’ He refers to them as nescient of the time of the Advent. He describes them as moved with joy over the repentance of ‘one sinner.’ Children are spoken of by Him as having their angelic representatives before the throne of thrones. Angels are pictured in one of His parables as ‘carrying away’ the soul of Lazarus ‘into Abraham’s bosom.’ In those last crowning hours—that awful climax of His own ministry of redeeming love—He reminds His Apostle of the possibility of angelic interference, if only He were willing to avail Himself of it. The Ministry of Angels is, therefore, a doctrine which comes to us not only with the clear warrant of Scripture, but plainly endorsed by our Saviour Himself.

II. But with reserve.—Christ’s teaching, however, on this subject, like all His teaching with regard to the other world and the life to come, is marked by its strict reserve. He does not, indeed, accept the standpoint of the Sadducees. On the other hand, there is no countenance given by Him to the exaggerated angelology of a section of the Judaism of His day. Unfortunately, the members of His Church have not always been willing to keep themselves within the limits prescribed by Him. In the first century the fault showed itself in an alarming form. The Colossians, it seems, classified the angels into grades such as ‘thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers’; and they appear to have assigned to each class the precise degree of worship due from man to those who composed it. In his Epistle to the Church at Colossæ St. Paul sets against such imaginary divisions and their consequences the spiritual supremacy of Christ. The ministry of angels is a Christian truth in which we do well to rejoice; but there is no real scriptural authority for what is sometimes taught as Christian angelology.

III. Its subordinate position.—Another not less important and noteworthy characteristic of our Lord’s teaching upon that doctrine is the completely subordinate position which He assigns to it. In this respect He corrected some of the religious thought with which He found Himself confronted. One of the cardinal features of His preaching was His insistence upon the nearness and accessibility of God. Men were not to look upon their Maker as dwelling in ‘aloofness.’ Men were not to turn away from the contemplation of God to lose themselves on the one side in faith in the creature rather than in the Creator, or on the other in superstitious fear of evil agents ever scheming for the ruin of mankind. Our Lord’s doctrine of God was incompatible with an exaggerated trust in angels, and equally incompatible with a craven terror of demons. Do we altogether realise the full wonder and beauty of that doctrine? The exaggeration of angelic ministrations may be such as to come between not merely ourselves and our Heavenly Father, but also between us and the Divine Son.

IV. The supremacy of Christ.—Loyalty to the Gospel demands that we should seriously and earnestly set ourselves to grasp it in something of its real length and breadth and depth. We can at least do so to this extent—we can at least learn to repeat with heartfelt sincerity that most touching, most moving, line of Charles Wesley’s: ‘Thou, O Christ, art all I want.’ Thou, and not another! Thou, and not angel or archangel! Thou, and not saint or martyr! Thou, even thou! ‘Under the shadow of Thy wings shall be my refuge’—both now and hereafter, both in life and in death, both in the hour of temptation and in the Day of Judgment,

Cover my defenceless head

With the shadow of Thy wing.

There is no inconsistency between such fervent faith in God and belief that there are ministering spirits who have their work to do in connection with us. The inconsistency begins and becomes serious when the greater trust is in a measure displaced by the lesser.

—Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen.

Illustration

‘That last assault of the prince of the world might well have a stunning effect even upon Jesus. Its flash of dazzling revelation might tax the balance even of His super-ordinary steadiness. So, when the challenge comes, “Fall down and worship me,” we see Jesus avert His eyes from the tempter’s brilliancy; and while He says, “Get thee gone,” He turns to God and stretches forth His hands to seek and claim the delivering grasp of rescue from a fearful strait. That moment of appeal saw the escape of Jesus from Satan’s importunities. The final incitement to treason so stirred His loyalty to God that the links that bound Him to heaven were drawn tight and close in a spasm of yearning desire. His soul reached out to God, and His heart clave to Him. It was thus that the angels came. They were not sent to make up any lack in the power of Jesus to resist in the crisis of His trial. It was simply that He so recoiled from the inducements of hell, and so sought the fellowship of heaven, that the one went and the other came, spontaneously and of necessity.’