A question that some readers have asked me is “Why does God use angels?” After all, we have Jesus, and the Holy Spirit lives in us, so what role could angels possibly play that God Himself can’t just take care of on His own? I see the logical reasoning behind the question, but I think that it leaves out a lot of details about who God is, how He works, and what we have seen Him do throughout Biblical history both before and after the cross.

First, we need to recognize something about God’s nature. The very first thing we see about God’s nature in the Bible is in Genesis 1, where God reveals Himself as Creator. God likes to create. If we consider the sheer number of different insect species in the world, not to mention all the birds, fish, mammals, etc. He has a limitless ability to envision and create living beings. God created Angels, Powers, Thrones, Dominions, Living Creatures, Elders, and more in the heavenly realms, possibly all before He even began to fashion the earth. God did this partly because He loves to create. He also loves to love, and I personally believe that part of the reason God created such a myriad of different beings was partly because He wanted to love them. God gave us a job in Genesis, which was to take dominion over the earth. The Bible speaks of angels’ primary job as being messengers. If nothing else, God made angels to serve certain functions in His universe, in the same way that He created us to serve certain other functions in that same universe. So the first reason angels do certain things is simply because God designed it that way.

Second, let us look back at the work of the Holy Spirit and angels in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit appears in a few places: as the Cloud and Pillar of Fire (Exodus 13), where He comes upon Saul (in 1 Samuel 10:10), and when the priests made sacrifices to consecrate the first Temple 91 Kings 8:10-11).

Angels appeared *many* times throughout the Old Testament: to Hagar (Genesis 16), Abraham (Genesis 18), Lot and his family (Genesis 19), Jacob (Genesis 32:1), Moses (Exodus 3), the Israelites (Exodus 23:20-23, 33:2), to Balaam and the donkey (Numbers 22), the nation of Israel (Judges 2), Gideon (Judges 6), Manoah and his wife (Judges 13), David (2 Samuel 24), Elijah (1 Kings 19, 2 Kings 1), Daniel (Daniel 6, 10), the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1-6). Furthermore, Angels showed up in the New Testament to Joseph (Matthew 1:20, 2:13, 2:19), Zechariah (Luke 1), Mary (Luke 1), and a group of shepherds (Luke 2). Angels play a consistent role as messengers in the Old Testament, so it should not surprise us when God uses Angels in such a role today.

Another point to consider is that the Bible speaks of angels in a few different places in both the Old and New Testaments as being involved in heavenly warfare. If we think about the implications of this, it means that there are a bunch of spirit beings who are not God the Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit who are warring against one another in the spiritual realms. We are instructed by God to be involved in this battle, and God didn’t simply exercise His God-level powers one time the moment everything went wrong and squash all the baddies. For whatever reason ( *ahem* free will), God decided not to do that and has involved angels in that celestial battle. As such, why should we find it surprising when God uses angels to fight in what is literally a spiritual holy war?

We also need to remember that Heaven operates on a hierarchy system. God is the Supreme Emperor of all things. Monarchs don’t do everything themselves—many things they delegate to their subjects. The Throne Room in heaven also has twenty-four elders (Revelation 4:4) and four living creatures (Revelation 4:6) who presumably have some sort of ruling authority, with one-hundred-million angels surrounding them (Revelation 5:11). We see in Joshua 5:13-15 that God has an army, and that the army has a commander. Daniel 12:1 refers to Michael as a “heavenly prince” and in Daniel 10:13 Michael is referenced as “one of the chief princes”, meaning there are other chief princes and other not-chief princes as well. Ephesians 1:21 and 6:12 and Colossians 1:16 also list rulers, authorities, dominions, thrones, powers of this world, and wicked heavenly spiritual forces. If heaven operates on a hierarchy system, and it clearly does, why would we expect God to do everything Himself when He has clearly designed other beings for us to partner with to release His will in the earth?

At the end of the day, while the answer “God made it that way” isn’t a very satisfying answer, that really does seem to be the most apparent reason why God uses angels, but as we have seen, the entire Bible supports this fact as well, so when angels are sent to us by God we can be confident that we are not only permitted but encouraged to partner with them to bring heaven to earth.

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