Angels

But learning about angels isn’t practical—or so I’ve been told. I disagree, and I think that if you read this book you will as well. Think with me for a moment. A life well lived extends from wisdom. Biblical wisdom involves not only practical, principled, decision-making skills but eternal perspective. Eternal perspective requires understanding wh

The assumption presupposes the idea that angels have gender. They do not—indeed they cannot be gendered, since they are spirit beings and gender is a biological attribute. When angels assume visible form or flesh to interact with human beings, Scripture always has them male.

The ability of spirit beings to assume human form, including material corporeality, becomes even more interesting when considering 2 Corinthians 11:14, where Paul wrote that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” The verb translated “disguises,” metaschēmatizō, is rendered “masquerades” by other translators and scholars.

With respect to the New Testament, the primary appeal to angels having wings comes from Revelation 10:1: Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire.

One could actually make a more reasoned case for the women being cherubim.

“ANGELS EXIST OUTSIDE TIME AND SPACE” Though this is a popular axiom for the nature of angels, it is difficult to know precisely what someone who expresses the thought actually means by it.

Believers are already “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). We are destined to reconstitute the divine council of Yahweh alongside his spiritual children, the “sons of God,” the members of his loyal heavenly host. The same language is used of believers (1 John 3:1–3). We are the “holy ones,” the common term for angels in the Old Testament.2

The conclusion can be drawn, then, that angels—those divine beings sent to earth to interact with people—look like people and do not have wings.

This approach does not require angels be spatially present in a material way. They can, however, be materially and spatially present. For example, two angels share a meal with Abraham (Gen 18:1–8; cf. 19:1) and physically seize Lot (Gen 19:10); an angel struck Peter to awaken him (Acts 12:7). Rather than existing “outside space,” we might say that