Angels are worshippers. That’s their ordinary occupation, and it turns out to be the most practically useful thing about them.

Because it means their whole existence points away from themselves — which is exactly the posture we’re meant to copy, and exactly why they must never become the object of our attention.

True faith is about the grace of God in Christ and not about angels.

What They Spend Eternity Doing

A principal element of angelic activity is worship. Their ordinary function in heaven is voicing God’s praise (Isa 6:1-3; Rev 4:8-9), markedly regarding the glory of God in Christ (Luke 2:13-14).

‘[I]n their ministry as in a mirror they in some respect exhibit his divinity to us.’¹Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.5; Battles trans., 166.

And their devotion to the exclusive worship of God alone provides a model for us to emulate. The angels who worship are servants of God’s Word: they listen to his voice and obey his commands perfectly (Psa 104:20). Their overarching orientation is duty to God and service to others — a compelling example.

Notice how tightly those two things are bound together. Worship and service aren’t separate activities for an angel. Obedience is the adoration.

Don’t Try to Contact Them

At no point does Scripture encourage believers to seek direct communication with angels, or to initiate any personal relationship with them.

Through Christ our mediator (Heb 2:5-18), Christians have fellowship with God ‘with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’ — but there is presently no place for direct fellowship between people and angels.

Angels are not divine. Their abilities are given by God and, like ours, entirely reliant upon him. Union with Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father is definitely supported by the activity of angels, but it is certainly not established by them.

The activity of angels is supplemental in all respects.

‘Scripture tells us about angels in a way that does not detract from God’s honor … true faith is about the grace of God in Christ and not about angels.’²Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 277.

Where Rome Went Wrong

The Roman idea that a distinction may be drawn between believers’ worship of God and believers’ homage to angels has no biblical warrant at all.

‘Scripture knows no twofold religious veneration, one of a lower kind and the other of a higher kind.’ The reverence fitting to angels is akin to ‘civil honor.’³Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 284-85.

Here is Turretin:

‘Now as angels are not our intercessors with God, so neither are they to be considered objects of religious worship … [T]he question is not whether any honor and veneration is due to them (for we do not deny that honor is to be paid them by reason of their dignity, that we may acknowledge and celebrate their influence, revere their presence, obey their admonitions, imitate their example and repay their intense love for us by reciprocal affection — which is the sentiment of Augustine: “We honor them not by divine worship, but with love”).’⁴Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. G. M. Musgrave (P&R Publishing, 1992), 7.9.12; 1:563. Turretin is citing Augustine, Of True Religion, 55.

Read that carefully and you’ll see it isn’t a grudging concession. There’s real warmth in it. Acknowledge their influence. Revere their presence. Obey their admonitions. Imitate their example. Repay their love with love.

What’s excluded is precisely one thing: divine worship. Everything else on that list is not merely permitted but commended.

Why God Told Us Any of This

So why does Scripture mention angels at all, given how sparing it is with detail?

Their importance for us is simply that ‘God chooses to use them in ways that obviously affect us even if we don’t know exactly how’⁵Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 285. — less to satisfy curiosity than to support believers’ faith.

That’s the interpretive key to the whole subject. Every time you’re tempted to press for more information than the text supplies, the question to ask is what the information would be for. If the answer is curiosity, Scripture’s silence is deliberate. If the answer is confidence in God, Scripture has already said what you need.

‘If at any time we stand in need of their ministry, we shall receive it; and … as the world watches Christians in hope of seeing them tumble, so do good angels watch Christians in hope of seeing grace triumph.’⁶J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Tyndale House, 1993), 65.

There’s something bracing in that image. You are being watched by two audiences with opposite hopes.

It All Points Somewhere Else

Whilst angels care for and protect God’s people without ceasing, it is God himself who cares and protects by way of angelic action.

Which is the note the whole subject ends on. Their efforts are designed to direct us to Christ, ‘that we may wholly depend on him, lean upon him, be brought to him, and rest in him.’⁷Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.12; Battles trans., 172.

That’s worth holding against the two failure modes we started with. Obsess over angels and you’ve missed the point — they’re pointing somewhere and you’ve stopped at the signpost. Deny them and you’ve missed something God gave you for comfort, and impoverished your sense of how personal and populated reality actually is.

The middle path isn’t a compromise between the two. It’s what the angels themselves are doing: attention fixed on God, service rendered to others, and no interest whatsoever in being looked at.

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• 1
  Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.5; Battles trans., 166. ↩︎
• 2
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 277. ↩︎
• 3
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 284-85. ↩︎
• 4
  Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. G. M. Musgrave (P&R Publishing, 1992), 7.9.12; 1:563. Turretin is citing Augustine, Of True Religion, 55. ↩︎
• 5
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics. Abridged, 285. ↩︎
• 6
  J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Tyndale House, 1993), 65. ↩︎
• 7
  Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.12; Battles trans., 172. ↩︎