The Teaching of Jesus About Angels

It is quite certain that our Lord accepted the main teachings of Old Testament about angels, as well as the later Jewish belief in good and bad angels. He speaks of the “angels in heaven” (Mat 22:30), and of “the devil and his angels” (Mat 25:41). According to our Lord the angels of God are holy (Mar 8:38); they have no sex or sensuous desires (Mat 22:30); they have high intelligence, but they know not the time of the Second Coming (Mat 24:36); they carry (in a parable) the soul of Lazarus to Abraham's bosom (Luk 16:22); they could have been summoned to the aid of our Lord, had He so desired (Mat 26:53); they will accompany Him at the Second Coming (Mat 25:31) and separate the righteous from the wicked (Mat 13:41, Mat 13:49). They watch with sympathetic eyes the fortunes of men, rejoicing in the repentance of a sinner (Luk 15:10; compare 1Pe 1:12; Eph 3:10; 1Co 4:9); and they will hear the Son of Man confessing or denying those who have confessed or denied Him before men (Luk 12:8 f). The angels of the presence of God, who do not appear to correspond to our conception of guardian angels, are specially interested in God's little ones (Mat 18:10). Finally, the existence of angels is implied in the Lord's Prayer in the petition, “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” (Mat 6:10).

This biblical study was taken from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Edited by James Orr, published in 1939 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co