09. The Ministry of Angels

The Ministry of Angels "Then the devil leaveth him, and behold, angels came and ministered unto him." (Matthew 4:11) THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS.

" Behold, angels came and ministered unto Him."

SUCH is the close, according to St Matthew’s Gospel, of the great temptation of our Lord. We have already seen the significant contrast this ending to the temptation affords to its close in the Gospel of St Luke, and it now remains for us to study the significance of this angelic ministry as recorded in "the Gospel of the King."

It is true that Scripture tells us less of the ministry of angels in the New Testament than it does in the Old. The messengers and heralds of the King pass out of sight when the King Himself appears, but there is one verse in the first Epistle of Peter which seems for a moment to lift the veil which hides the heavenly intelligences from us, and shows us them following with the deepest interest the footsteps of their Lord and King on earth. After speaking of " the salvation " concerning which "the prophets sought and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you; searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them," the apostle adds that there were other intelligences than the prophets, who longed to know the mystery of a crucified and glorified Saviour, " which things," St Peter says, " angels desire to look into." (1 Peter 1:10). And the word the apostle uses t implies far more than the English expression "to look into" conveys to our ears. It is the " earnest gaze of one who bends over a given object and scrutinizes it thoroughly," [Plumptre in loc. in the Cambridge Bible for Schools] which is implied in the apostle’s word, and it gives us, though for a moment only, a revelation of the eager and reverent interest taken by these high intelligences of heaven in all the facts of the life of their King when on earth.

We do not wonder, then, to find that when Christ appears on earth, these spirits who had never sinned, who had bowed in adoration in heaven before His glory, who had long desired to know the meaning of the strange predictions of inspired men concerning Him, should have appeared too. " An angel of the Lord " appears to Zacharias to announce the birth of John the Baptist, the Lord’s forerunner (Luke 1:11). The angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary the coming birth of her Saviour and her King (Luke 1:26). The heavens are rilled with " a multitude of the heavenly host" praising God at the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:14). " An angel of the Lord " warns Joseph to depart into Egypt, and "an angel of the Lord" bids him return again to the land of Israel (Matthew 2:13; Matthew 2:19). At the Passion in Gethsemane " there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Jesus." IF At the Resurrection the stone is found removed from the mouth of the sepulchre, " an angel of the Lord " having " descended from heaven and rolled away the stone" (Matthew 28:2). Mary sees " two angels in white sitting one at the head, and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain" (John 20:12). And as each of the great events of our Lord’s earthly life has been thus attended by the ministry of angels, so at the Ascension of Jesus they wait to follow their King to the everlasting glory, and announce to His disciples as they were " looking stedfastly into heaven " the return of their Lord in the power and majesty of the Second Advent (Acts 1:10).

There was nothing, therefore, exceptional in this ministry and succour of the angels being offered to our Lord at the close of the temptation. It was only a part of that service which they rendered the Saviour throughout His earthly life, service which was the crowning joy of the angelic host. For the Lord Jesus Christ had come from heaven. He had been the light and glory of the city of God above. For ages upon ages, long before man was created, He had received the adoration and worship of countless myriads of angels who stood before His throne. The mighty cherubim, "eldest born of the intellectual creation of God," had gazed in fixed and unbroken wonder and awe at the " treasures of wisdom and of knowledge " which were hidden in Him who was the Eternal Word, the uncreated " Reason " of the Most High. The burning seraphim, spirits of worship and of love, had fed their rapt devotion from the fount of living fire ever glowing in the infinite heart of Jesus; and angels and arch angels, filled with the awful vision of His glory, and standing in the light streaming from His throne, had fallen prostrate before Him as they heard the Divine command, " Let all the angels of God worship Him." Their ministry on earth was only a continuation of the sublimer ministry of heaven. Nor has their ministry ceased with the Ascension of our Lord. If our conflicts with temptation, and our victories over the devil are like those of Christ in their severity and peril, they are like them also in their end and crown. The glorified Lord does not deny to His tempted followers the succour and help which He found so precious in His hour of earthly need. " Are they not all ministering spirits," says the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "sent forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14). They whose harps are struck to a louder strain of joy over "one sinner that repenteth," do not watch with indifference the long struggles which precede and follow true repentance for sin. They wait with eager interest the issue of our conflicts with evil, and they come to visit us with their gracious ministries when the struggle is over, as they came to Jesus.

How they come, what they do for us when they come, we may not be able to tell; but we may owe more than we know to the willing, if unknown service they render in our hour of need. He who is their Lord and ours may give them some special mission of help and of love for us when we most need it; and many a time the healing of the wounds inflicted in the strife, the quieting of the storm which had been raging within, the whispering of new hope and new courage to the depressed, the warding off of unsuspected attacks of the innumerable hosts of darkness when we were too weak to meet them, may be owed to the silent and blessed ministry they render to us.

" Whenever, in some bitter grief, we find All unawares, a deep, mysterious sense Of hidden comfort come, we know not whence; When suddenly we see, where we were blind; Where we had struggled, are content, resigned; Are strong where we were weak, And no more strive nor seek; Then we may know that from the far glad skies To note our need, the watchful God has bent, And for our instant help has called and sent, Of all our loving angels, the most wise And tender one, to point to us where lies The path that will be best, The path of peace and rest." But the ministry of angels to our Lord is more than a witness to His royal majesty, it also attests the reality and severity of the struggle with the devil through which the man Christ Jesus had passed.

Even if the final assault of the tempter had not been preceded by the long and exhausting fast of forty days, if there had been no other demand on the energies, both physical and spiritual, of the Lord Jesus than that involved in the struggle which was now for a season over, we can imagine the terrible reaction and exhaustion which must have followed such a contest. If the soldier is wearied and faint on the evening of the day of the battle, when its fierce excitement is gone, and the tumult of the conflict has ceased, how much more must such a spiritual conflict as that through which " the Captain of our salvation " had been passing, have ended in utter prostration and weakness. We know from our own experience a little of the sense of physical feebleness which ensues when any great spiritual crisis in our history has been passed, or when the forces of good and of evil have been arrayed on the battle-ground of our own soul, and we have had to fight for victory over some deadly sins, but we cannot tell how much a conflict on which was hanging the destiny of a world must have involved for the Lord Jesus Christ. ’And when to the tremendous issues of the struggle we add the fact that it took place at the end of a prolonged and exhausting fast, we may perhaps faintly imagine how utterly the Victor must have been " spent " at its close, and how welcome the boon this ministry of angels must have been to Him who, because "the children were sharers in flesh and blood, also Himself in like manner partook of the same." But if the angelic succour granted to our Lord attests the greatness of the spiritual conflict through which He had gone, it is an incidental but most precious proof to us of the completeness with which He had identified His lot with that of His brethren. He will work no miracle to supply His own hunger at the commencement of His temptation. He will not, now all is over. He will do nothing that shall in any way separate Him from His tempted brethren in every age. He began the conflict as man. He ends it as He began. Conscious of power that in a moment could have turned the stones into bread, and made weariness vanish before Almighty strength, He will not use His power. He submits to be ministered unto, and the Creator of all worlds is succoured by the creatures whom He had made. In the hour of His triumph we may read a new meaning in the gracious words, " We have not a High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but One that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15) Nor is the reality of the humanity of our blessed Lord, as witnessed by His temptation and by the ministry of angels which followed it, a doctrine of purely theological interest and without relation to our spiritual life. The worship of the Virgin, and the place assigned to her, in the devotions of the Roman Church would never have been possible if that Church had not first lost the vivid and tender realization of the true humanity of Jesus which pervades the New Testament, and was the life and joy of the faith of the early Church. Christ was farther and farther withdrawn from all real and true participation in the lot of men, and whilst the theological doctrine of His humanity remained untouched, the living sense of that humanity became fainter and fainter, until at length the way to God which He had opened through the veil of His flesh was lost, and His mother was invoked to occupy the place which He alone can ever fill. It may be true that the denial of the Deity of Christ has even graver results for the spiritual life of the Church than the forgetfulness of His humanity, but it is equally true that without the humanity, the Deity of our Lord is removed from all practical relation to the religious life of mankind. We can not afford to lose any part of " the truth as it is in Jesus:" the Deity of Christ, not less than the Humanity, and Humanity not less than the Deity, or rather as we prefer to say, the unique personality of Him who was not merely God and Man but the God-Man, is as essential to the vigour and health of the spiritual life as it is to the soundness and accuracy of its creed.

Romanism warns us of the peril that follows those who deny the one; Unitarianism warns us in equally impressive tones of the peril of denying the other. But the realization of the true humanity of Jesus in His temptation, as witnessed by the ministry of angels, is necessary not only to bring His temptations near to our own, and to enable us to realize the depth of His sympathy with us, it is also necessary to the reality and vivid ness of our sympathy with Christ in His struggle with the tempter. We have already briefly referred to the danger there is of the Church losing the tenderness and warmth of the love which the first disciples had to Christ, and of our forgetting the sympathy we ought to offer our Lord in the sympathy we are so eager to expect from Him. We can hardly wonder if our love for Christ grows less intense and warm, and the fountains of feeling in the heart of the Church are dried up, if the temptation be conceived as a dramatic conflict, the result of which had been determined upon and arranged beforehand. The moment we feel it was a real struggle, involving exhaustion, pain, and peril to Christ Himself; taxing His human energies to their very uttermost by the grievous strain; prostrating Him at its close in such weakness, that " the angels came and ministered unto Him," the heart leaps up in joy and gratitude to its Saviour and King, and knows not whether most to wonder at the love which for our sakes willingly endured so fierce a conflict, or the glorious goodness which quenched in successive triumphs " all the fiery darts of the devil." And we are tempted too. But temptation becomes a new thing to the soul if it realizes that in the struggle with the tempter, in the weariness and weakness of the conflict, in the moments when defeat seems inevitable, nay! in those victories which are only less terrible than a defeat, Christ is with us all through. We are sure, at least, of His sympathy, whosoever else may fail us; sure of His most tender and generous pity; of His making allowances, which none but Himself could make; sure even in the hour of defeat for defeat as well as victory comes, alas to us all that He will not judge us too harshly, for He knows, as none of us can ever know, "the depths of Satan," and on the throne of the eternal glory He " remembereth our frame; He knoweth we are but dust." But we may learn another lesson of not less practical importance from the heavenly ministry granted to the Lord at the close of His temptation. Christ had been tempted falsely to rely on the ancient promise of God to His people, " He shall give His angels charge over Thee," and to cast Himself down from the summit of the temple, and He had refused to tempt God, even though He lost the succour which in such an hour of need the angels could render to Him. He missed, as we should have said, the celestial ministry ever ready to be granted to the children of God, and above all, to Him who was the Son of God. He refused to avail Himself of the angelic " charge " because He refused to " tempt God." But the ministry which appeared to have been lost in the temptation is found at its close, in the succour of the ministering angels, and found not then alone, but in even richer abundance earlier in the life of our Lord, for only a few days after the temptation we find Christ saying to Nathanael, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye shall see the Heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son Man." (John 1:51) And so we may learn for ourselves the homely, but ever needed lesson that the self denials of the path of duty are never real losses to the soul. No doubt this truth may be so represented, or misrepresented, as to be turned into a falsehood to the conscience and a dis honour to God. It may be said that it comes simply to this, that goodness pays, and that therefore the service of God and of righteous ness becomes in the end a question of policy and of self-interest. But this is a caricature, not a statement, of the truth. If I resist temptation to do wrong because, and only because of the reward promised to them who overcome, I am not morally the victor over sin. I am really yielding to one temptation whilst professing to resist another. I am put ting self and not God first, and no man is a servant of God who has not learned that the essence of all goodness lies in putting God before self, and that to make obedience to the will of God the result of a calculation of the advantages of obedience, is to dethrone the will he professes to obey.

But, on the other hand, it is true and gene ration after generation of men and of women who have " suffered for righteousness’ sake " have proved its truth that wherever and when ever right is done, not from policy but from principle; where temptation to sin is vanquished, not because it will pay in the long run to resist, but because of the inner loyalty of the soul to God; where self-denial has been freely and gladly borne without a thought of the reward, and only because sacrifice is the sweet necessity of love, God will more than compensate the soul, even in this life, for the loss; and the blessings which seemed to have been lost, because we loved Him better than we loved ourselves, come back multiplied and augmented a thousandfold to the heart.

Abraham surrenders " his son, his only son " Isaac to death, but receives him again " from the dead," crowned with a richer wealth of promise than ever he had heard before (Genesis 22:15). Joseph refuses to commit one great sin, and his refusal ends apparently in the loss of all hope of earthly happiness, and in the exchange of the high place of honour for a prison cell, but he becomes at last a prince in the land of Egypt (Genesis 39:1-23). Moses " chooses rather to be evil entreated with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt," and he becomes the leader and law giver of a nation, and makes to himself an immortal name in the history of the world (Hebrews 11:24-26). Daniel is true to God in the midst of the seductions of a heathen court, although his fidelity seemed to close every path of worldly advancement against him, but he rises to the chief place in the land, and is " ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon." (Daniel 2:48) And thus the great law of the Master, that "whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life... shall save it," fulfils itself in human experience. Honesty is the best policy, but it is only so on condition it is pursued not as a policy, but as a principle. We gain what we lose, and more than we lose, in the path of duty, but only on condition that we are not thinking of the gain, but of the duty, when we make the sacrifice it entails. The rewards of righteousness disappear the moment they are made the conditions and motives of righteousness: they return in over flowing measure to those who, in their passion for righteousness, have forgotten altogether whether it has rewards or not. "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake, and for the Gospel’s sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold NOW IN THIS TIME houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." (Mark 10:29-30)

One last office remained to the angels in their ministry to their Lord. They had watched, may we not say, with deep and reverent awe the long conflict of forty days of Christ with Satan; they had beheld Him triumphant over every form of temptation; they had seen how His victory had been won at the cost to Himself of sore weak ness and exhaustion; they had been permitted to come to this earth to minister to His need; and now, "borne on joyful wings," they celebrate His triumphs on high.

Satan had assaulted " the Prince and Saviour" of the world with his deadliest force, but had failed, and if we may faintly imagine the terror and dismay which his defeat must have caused in the realms of his own infernal kingdom, we may also imagine the exultant glad ness with which the tidings of the victory of the great " Captain of our salvation " must have filled the courts of heaven, as they echoed with the shout of triumph, " Sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously:" " The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name; Thy right hand, O Lord, is glorious in power; Thy right hand hath dashed in pieces the enemy: " " The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." But the warfare of Christ against sin is not yet completed. He has never laid down the glorious work which He began when " He was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." He will not lay it down till "the last enemy shall be abolished," and " all things are put in subjection under His feet."

Blessed, thrice blessed, they who in this holy war have taken sides with Christ, and have sworn, as with an oath, that they too will not rest until all sin, whether within themselves or in the sinful world without, shall be destroyed, and " God shall be all in all."