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- C. H. Spurgeon - Fallen Angels a Lesson To Fallen Men
"Fallen Angels a Lesson To Fallen Men" by C. H. Spurgeon
 "God
spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto
judgment." - 2 Peter 2:4
These are ancient things. Most men hunger after the latest news; let
us on this occasion go back upon the earliest records, and think of
the hoar past, before man was made. It does us good to look back
upon the past of God's dealings with his creatures; herein lies the
value of history. We should not confine our attention to God's
dealings with men, but we should observe how he acts towards another
order of beings—how he dealt with angels before man had become the
second sinner. If angels transgress, what is his conduct towards
them? This study will enlarge our minds, and show us great
principles in their wider sweep. We shall inevitably make mistakes
in our judgment as to God's conduct towards men if we do not
remember sufficiently how he has dealt with beings who are in
certain respects much superior to the human race. By seeing how God
treated the rebellions angels, light may be cast upon his dealings
with us, and thereby misapprehensions may be removed.
We shall go to our subject at once, asking aid from the Spirit of
all grace. We will first view the mysterious fact of the fall of the
angels, and their casting away, for our warning. Then, secondly, we
shall regard the fact of the hopeless doom of the angels that sinned
as it stands in contrast to the amazing mercy of the Lord towards
men. Thus our second head will lead us to view the text for our
admiration: I hope for the increase of our grateful love and
reverent wonder.
I. First, then, let us consider our text FOR OUR WARNING.
"God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell."
Behold here a wonder of wickedness, angels sin; a wonder of justice,
God spared them not; a wonder of punishment, he cast them down to
hell; a wonder of future vengeance, for they are reserved unto
judgment! Here are deep themes, and terrible. Black as tempest are
the facts, and flashes of terrible lightning flame forth therefrom.
Let us receive a warning, first, against the deceivableness of sin,
for whoever we may be, we may never reckon that, on account of our
position or condition, we shall be free from the assaults of sin, or
even certain of not being overcome by it. Notice that these who
sinned were angels in heaven, so that there is no necessary security
in the most holy position. We know that they were in heavenly
places, for it was from that high abode that they were cast down to
hell, by the terrible right hand of the Eternal King. These angels,
that kept not their first estate, but sinned against God, dwelt with
their brethren in the courts of the Most High; they seemed to be, as
it were, walled round with fire to keep out all evil from them.
Their communications were only with perfect spirits like themselves;
but yet, as they were undergoing a probation, they were made capable
of choosing evil if they willed so to do, or of cleaving to good if
their hearts were steadfast with their God. There were none about
them to tempt them to evil; they were, on the contrary, surrounded
with every good and holy influence: they saw God, and abode in his
courts, they conversed with seraphim and cherubim. Their daily
engagements were all of a holy order; worship and service were their
duty and delight. Their company was select; there were no lapsed
classes among them to render the moral atmosphere impure. They were
not only in a paradise, but in the central abode of God himself. Yet
evil entered into the breasts of angels—even envy, ambition, pride,
rebellion; and they fell, fell never to rise again,
"High in the bright and happy throng,
Satan, a tall archangel sat;
Amongst the morning stars he sung,
Till sin destroy'd his heavenly state.
"'Twas sin that hurled him from his throne.
Grovelling in fire the rebel lies:
'How art thou sunk in darkness down,
Son of the morning, from the skies!'"
Beloved hearer, this should teach us not to presume upon anything
connected with our position here below. You may be the child of
godly parents who watch over you with sedulous care, and yet you may
grow up to be a man of Belial. You may never enter a haunt of
iniquity, your journeys may be only to and from the house of God,
and yet you may be a bond-slave of iniquity. The house in which you
live may be none other than the house of God and the very gate of
heaven through your father's prayers, and yet you may yourself live
to blaspheme. Your reading may be bound up with the Bible; your
companions may be of the choicest; your talk may concern holy
things; you may be as if you were in the garden of the Lord, shut in
to everything that is good, and every evil shut out from you; and
yet you may have no part nor lot with the people of God. As there
were a Ham and an ungodly Canaan even in Noah's Ark, so may it turn
out that you may be such in the very midst of all that should make
you gracious and sanctified. It is unhappy indeed to read the annals
of human life, and to meet with men that have gone from their
mother's side—have gone from where their father knelt in prayer—have
gone out from brothers and sisters whose piety was not only
unquestionable, but even remarkable,—and they have gone to be
leaders in every form of wickedness. Many of the enemies of the
cross of Christ have been so trained in godliness that we find it
hard to believe that they can indeed be so vile; an apostle must
declare it with tears ere he is believed. The sons of God they
seemed to be, but they turned out to be sons of perdition after all.
Let no man, therefore, arise and shake himself, as though no sins
could ever bind him, because he feels himself to be a very Samson
through his connections and surroundings. Yes, sir, it may be that
you shall fall—fall foully, fall desperately, unless the grace of
God be in you—fall so as never to come to God, and Christ, and find
eternal life. It was so with these angels. The best natural thing
that creation can work is not sufficient to preserve the fickle
creature from sin: regeneration must come in—the work of the Holy
Ghost, a yet higher work than the material creating power of God, or
else you may put the creature where you please, and that creature
may be perfect, and yet sin will reach and destroy him. You and I
are far from perfect. We are not angels unfallen: we are not angels
at all; but we have evil hearts within us; therefore let us not
imagine for a moment that the most select position can screen us
from the worst of sin.
The next thought is that the greatest possible ability, apparently
consecrated, is still nothing to rely upon as a reason why we should
not yet fall so low as to prostitute it all to the service of the
worst of evils. Angels are beings of remarkable power. We know that
they have amazing intelligence and beauty. We read of one whose face
was like that of an angel of God. When a thing is spoken of as being
exceedingly good, it is often connected with angels: "men did eat
angels' food." It is supposed that everything with regard to them is
of superior order and of refined quality. I suppose that a spirit
that is not cumbered with flesh and blood, as we are, must be
delivered from much that hampers and beclouds. Oftentimes a clear
judgment is dimmed by a headache, or an attack of indigestion.
Anything that affects the body drags down the mind; but these
angelic beings are delivered from such weakness, and they are
clothed with a glory of strength, and beauty, and power.
Hear then and observe! However great Lucifer was, he degenerated
into Satan: the Son of the Morning became Apollyon the Destroyer.
However excellent the fallen angels may once have been, they have
now become potent only for mischief; their wisdom has curdled into
cunning, and their strength has soured into a vicious force; so that
no man may say within himself, "I am a clear thinker, therefore I
shall never become a blaspheming infidel;" or, "I am gifted in
prayer, therefore I shall never become a blasphemer." You know not
what you may become. There is a great difference between gift in
prayer and grace in prayer: gift will breed pride, and pride will
ensure destruction; it is only grace that can preserve unto eternal
glory. There is also a great difference between office and person;
therefore, a man may not say, "I am a minister: I shall be kept
faithful in the church of God." Ah me! But we have seen leaders turn
aside, and we need not marvel; for if angels fall, what man may
think that he can stand? To trust our office as a security is to
rest upon a broken reed. The grace of God can keep the least and
weakest of us; but apart from that heavenly power how dare any man
hope to be preserved to the end? Self-confidence is the beginning of
declension. He that reckons that he is past temptation, is already
entangled in its net. We must never presume. Angels fell: why should
not men? An angel occupies a high position near the throne of God:
"Are they not all ministering spirits?" We have evidence in
Scripture that they are called on grand occasions to discharge high
commissions for the King of kings. And yet these courtiers, these
household messengers of the palace of heaven, these domestics of
glory, even these went astray, and fell, and turned to devils. Let
no man dream that because he occupies an office in the church his
salvation is therefore secure: an apostle fell. The arrows of the
prince of darkness can reach the highest seats of the synagogue. The
high places of the field of service are not free from danger; nay,
they are the more perilous as they are the more notable. The powers
of darkness make their direst onset upon the foremost soldiers of
the cross, hoping to overthrow the standard-bearers, and create
confusion throughout the camp.
Neither, dear friends—to continue my warning—must any of us suppose
that we shall be kept by the mere fact that we are engaged in the
sublimest possible office. Apart from the perpetual miracle of God's
grace, nothing can keep us from declension, apostacy, and spiritual
death. "Oh, but I spend my time," one may say—"I spend my time
wholly in the service of God! I go from door to door seeking the
lost souls of men, as a city missionary"; or "I conduct a large
class in the school, and I have brought many to the Savior." All
this is good; but if thou trustest in it for thy standing before God
it will certainly fail thee. If any one of us were to say, "But I am
a minister, called to offer prayer, and to preach the precious word:
my engagements are so sanctified, they bring me into such hallowed
fellowship with holy things, that it is not possible that I should
fall,"—this would be the height of folly. We need not go beyond the
pale of professed ministers of Christ to find specimens of every
infamy of which man is capable. After having preached to others
there is grave cause for trembling lest we be castaways ourselves.
No, there is nothing in the most sacred office in the church to
preserve us or our characters. Office, if we trust in it, may even
become, as in the case of Judas, a Tarpeian rock, from which we may
be cast down to our destruction; for the angelic office in heaven
did not keep the angels from being hurled over the battlements of
glory when once they dared to sin. Let not the angels of the
churches hope to be kept from falling unless he that beareth the
seven stars in his right hand shall keep them even to the end.
I want you to notice, as a great warning, that this sin of the
angels was not prevented! even by the fullest happiness. Oh, what a
change, dear friends, from the joy they once knew, when they were
the servants of God, to being cast down to hell in chains of
darkness, as they now are! The devils go about the world tempting
men, but they are never released from their darkness. They cannot
escape from the prison which they make for themselves—the blackness
and horror of God's judgment which always shuts them in, be they
where they may. What a difference between that and the throne of
God, and the vision thereof, which was once their joy! The service
of God was once theirs, but now the slavery of evil holds them in
iron bonds. Once they took delight in the high praises of their
Creator, and now they curse him in their heart of hearts. Once, on
high days, when the servants of God came together, they sang for joy
as they beheld new worlds created by their great Lord and King; now,
everything he does is as gall and wormwood to them. They curse him
and themselves, and they are busily occupied always in seeking to
pull down his kingdom, and to quench his light among the sons of
men. Oh, the misery of these old offenders! They once were supremely
happy—but this happiness of theirs did not suffice to preserve their
fidelity. The most golden wages will not keep a servant loyal to the
kindest of masters. The most blessed experience will not preserve a
soul from sinning. You may come here and be greatly blessed under a
sermon, and sweetly sing, and pray with intense fervor, and seem
carried up to the gates of heaven by it—but do remember that no
feelings of joy or happiness can be relied upon as sufficient
holdfasts to keep us near the Lord. We have seen men drink of the
cup of the Lord till they appeared to be full of love to him; and
yet they have gone back to be drunken with the cup of devils. We
have known men preach the gospel, and yet afterwards blaspheme every
truth of revelation, and deny the inspiration of the Book of God. We
have known them appear to be among the holiest and the best, and yet
they have come at last to be common frequenters of the most evil
haunts of the city, and to be ringleaders in folly. Is not this a
dreadful thing, and should it not be a warning to every one of us?
"Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." There is
one who is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless
before his presence with exceeding great joy; but if we do not trust
in him, and abide in him, we shall perish. If we dare to confide in
our position, our ability, our office, our service, or our
experience, we shall, sooner or later, discover that we are prone to
sin, and that when we sin God will not spare us any more than he
spared the angels that sinned.
This warning, be it noted, applies itself to the very foulest of
sin. The angels did not merely sin and lose heaven, but they passed
beyond all other beings in sin, and made themselves fit denizens for
hell. When Christ was describing the most wicked of men, he said
that he was a devil. "One of you is a devil," was his expression;
for the devil is the wickedest form of existence. Now, is it not
singular that after being in heaven it remained possible for an
angel to become so dreadful a being as a devil in hell now is? If
any of us come very near to the kingdom, and yet the life of God is
not in us; if we are joined with the church of God, and perform holy
duties, and yet we depend upon ourselves, and so fall into sin, we
may fall into the foulest of sins. I do not think that Judas could
have been what he was if he had not been an apostle. The best of
that which looks like goodness must be used as the raw material with
which to make a traitor who will sell his Master. The devils have
gone into open war with God: the same beings that once bowed before
his awful majesty are now openly and defiantly at war with the God
that made them. They once could sing their chorales with delight,
and day without night circle the throne of God rejoicingly, but now
they blaspheme, and rage, and rave against all that is good in earth
or heaven. They go about like roaring lions seeking whom they may
devour,—even they who once would have been ministering spirits,
eager to save and bless. They were once loyal subjects, but now they
are traitors, rebels, seducers. They try to lead the people of God
astray; they do their utmost to stir up sin in every human bosom. So
bad have they become that their leader actually met the Son of God
himself, and tempted him to fall down and worship him. Was ever such
infamous, such infernal impudence as for the devil himself to ask
the eternal Son of God to do him homage? O base proposal, that the
purity of the Most High should bow itself before the impiety of a
fallen spirit! Yet, so far have devils proceeded that in them evil
has reached its ripeness and maturity. Let this be a lesson to us. I
must not for a moment think that apart from the keeping of God's
Spirit I am incapable even of the foulest sin. Recall the story of
Hazael. When the prophet told him what he would do, he exclaimed in
amazement, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" He
was not only dog enough to seek the Syrian throne, but he was devil
enough to suffocate his master with a wet cloth, and then to carry
out with eagerness all those terrible deeds of barbarity which the
prophet had foretold. We may yet do horrible deeds which we think
ourselves incapable of doing. How much of devil there lies within
the unregenerate heart no man can tell. O my unrenewed hearer, I
would not slander thee, but I must warn thee: there are all the
makings of a hell within thy heart! It only needs that the
restraining hand of God should be removed, and thou wouldst come out
in thy true colors, and those are the colors of iniquity. If it were
not for the restraints of society and providence, there would be
eruptions of evil, even in the most moral, sufficient to shake
society to its foundations. An officer in India had tamed a leopard.
From the time when it was quite a kitten he had brought it up, till
it went about the house like a cat, and everybody played with it;
but he was sitting in his chair one day asleep, and the leopard
licked his hand—licked it in all innocence; but as he licked, the
skin was broken, and the taste of blood came to the leopard, and
from that moment it was not content to dwell with men. It rushed
forth to kill, and was no more at ease till it reached the jungle.
That leopard, though tamed, was a leopard still. So a man, sobered
by moral motives, but unchanged in heart, is a fallen man still, and
the taste of blood, I mean the taste of sin, will soon reveal the
tiger in him. Wash a Russian, and you find a Tartar; tempt a
moralist, and you discover a sinner! The thin crust of goodness,
which is formed by education, soon disappears under temptation. You
may be everything that looks like good, but except you have been
born again you are still capable of the direst evil. It does seem a
horrible thing to me that there should stream from a man's lips the
foulest blasphemy, and yet he that utters it was once accustomed to
sing in the house of God, and bow his knee with the saints. O God,
that ever a creature bidding fair to serve his Maker, should sink to
such a depth! Yet such horrors abound! The vessel which adorned the
lordly festival is broken and thrown on the dunghill, and even so
the excellent and honorable are defiled and cast away. I know what
some are whispering, "I never should become an open reprobate I" How
know you that? You already question the warnings of Scripture, you
may go further before long. He that is the most sure is the most
insecure; but he that cries, "Hold thou me up," shall be made to
stand. Be this our confession, "O Lord, I know that I shall become
utterly vile except thy sovereign grace prevent! "In humility let us
cast ourselves upon the mighty grace of God, and we shall be kept.
In fervent earnestness let us cry to the strong for strength, and we
shall not be overcome of evil. He that presumes shall fall; he that
confides shall stand.
The text may lead us a little farther before we leave it, by giving
us a warning against the punishment of sin as well as against the
sin itself. Read this,—"God spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell." They were very great; they were very
powerful; but God did not spare them for that. If sinners are kings,
princes, magistrates, millionaires, God will cast them into hell. If
they were commanders of all the forces of the world, he that is a
just and righteous judge would not spare them because of their
dignities and powers. "God spared not the angels," why should he
spare you, ye great ones of the earth? They were very numerous, too.
I do not know how many there were, but we read of legions of devils
on one occasion. But God did not spare angelic sinners because there
were so many of them: he made room in hell for them all; and set
them in darkness and in bonds, every one of them. God will not spare
sinful men because of their millions: "the wicked shall be turned
into hell, and all the nations that forget God." Be they few or
many, sinners must be punished, and God will not turn away his wrath
from those who do iniquity. God did not spare the rebel angels
because of their unity. I never heard of devils quarrelling: it is
very wonderful in Scripture to notice their unanimity—their concord
with one another; but "though hand join in hand, yet shall not the
wicked go unpunished." You unbelievers may combine together to hate
and oppose the gospel, but it matters not, God will deal with your
confederacies and break up your unities, and make you companions in
hell even as you have been comrades in sin. "God spared not the
angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell."
Neither did he spare them because of their craft. There were never
such subtle creatures as these are—so wise, so deep, so crafty; but
these serpents and all the brood of them had to feel the power of
God's vengeance, notwithstanding their cunning. Men often escape at
the bar of their country because of their long-headed ways of
evading the law; they keep within legal bounds, and yet are great
villains; or if they go over the line they hire a clever tongue to
plead for them, be they as guilty as they may, and through crafty
pleading they escape from a righteous sentence. Thus is it with men,
but no counsellors can pervert judgment with the Most High. He will
deal out justice even to a hair's breadth, and he will by no means
spare the guilty. "God spared not the angels that sinned:" why
should he spare any guilty son of Adam? Be sure that he will not
spare any one of us, if we live in sin. Unless we accept the way of
salvation by Jesus Christ our sin will find us out, and God will
find our sin out, and he will cast us also down to the place
prepared for the devil and his angels. Let the flatterers of to-day
preach what they may, the Lord will punish men who live and die in
their sins. He spared not the angels that sinned; certainly he will
not spare men if they sin. Let this stand as a warning to us.
II. But now I want to carry you on and ask all your attention to
this second point for OUR ADMIRATION.
I want you to admire, dear friends, the fact that though angels fell
the saints of God are made to stand. The angels sinned fatally; but
the saints of God "cannot sin, for they are born of God." You know
the sense in which the apostle means that; not that we do not all
sin, but that we do not so sin as to depart from the living God,
give up our allegiance to him, and cease to be his loving children.
No. "He keepeth himself," says the Scripture, "and that wicked one
toucheth him not." But what a wonder it is! I tell you, when the
tales of God's people shall be written, and the records of the
saints shall be read by the light of glory, we shall be miracles of
grace to ourselves and to one another. "Oh," we shall say, "I had
almost gone, but the hand of grace interposed, and snatched me from
slipping over the awful precipice. My mind almost consented to that
sin, and yet I was able to cry out, 'How can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God?' There was great stress of weather,
and my poor barque was almost on the rocks; but still, though I
grazed the bottom, yet I did not make shipwreck." "Oh, if I had been
left at that moment," one will say, "what would have become of me?
Though I had tasted of the heavenly gift, and the powers of the
world to come, yet, had I been left to myself at that hour, I should
have so fallen that I could never again have been brought to
repentance. But I was kept; preserved by as great a miracle as if a
spark should fall into the sea and yet burn on, or a straw should be
blown into a heated furnace and should not be consumed, or a moth
should be trodden on by a giant and yet remain uncrushed.
"Kept alive with death so near,
I to God the glory give."
To think that men should stand where angels fall! We are by
sovereign grace called to be as near to God as the angels ever were,
and in some respects we are nearer still. We are the body-guard of
Christ, his chosen ones with whom he communes. We are the table
companions of our Lord—we eat of his bread, and drink of his cup,
and are made partakers with him. We are lifted up to be one with
him, and are made to be "members of his body, of his flesh and of
his bones;" yet God's eternal unbounded power keeps us in the day of
temptation, and leads us so that if we go through the rivers we are
not drowned, and when we pass through the fires we are not burned.
O, the splendor of triumphant grace! Neither the glory of our
calling, nor the unworthiness of our original, shall cause us to be
traitors; we shall neither perish through pride nor lust; but the
new nature within us shall overcome all sin, and abide faithful to
the end.
"Now, unto him that is able to keep us from falling, unto him be
honor and glory, and dominion and power for ever and ever." I cannot
look back on my past life without feeling the tears rush into my
eyes at the remembrance of how I have been preserved in the
trial-hour. We could not possibly tell, nor would we wish to tell in
public, of those hours of weakness, those times of strong delusion,
those moments of foot-slipping and of heart-fainting, which have
happened to us. We grieve as we remember our worse than childish
weaknesses. And yet we have not stained our garments; we have not
dishonored the holy name by which we are named; we have not been
suffered to turn aside from the straightness of our path so as to
bring grief to the Holy Ghost and dishonor to the Church of God.
Verily this is a wonder. Mr. Bunyan tells us that Christian by the
light of day looked back on the Valley of the Shadow of Death which
he had passed through in the nighttime, and saw what a narrow path
he had kept, and what a quay there was on one side, and what a miry
place on the other, and where the hobgoblins were, and all the
fiends of hell. When he looked back on it he was lost in admiration
and gratitude. So it must be, and will be with you if through a
dangerous way you have yet held on in your plain course, and have
not turned from your integrity. We shall be brim full of gratitude
and love. Grace shall reign unto eternal life. Redeemed men shall
stand where angels fall, for God shall keep them. He is able to hold
them up, and he will do it even to the end.
Now, let us learn another lesson full of admiration, and that is
that God should deal in grace with men and not with angels.
"From heaven the sinning angels fell,
And wrath and darkness chained them down;
But man, vile man, forsook his bliss,
And mercy lifts him to a crown.
"Amazing work of sovereign grace
That could distinguish rebels so!
Our guilty treasons called aloud
For everlasting fetters too."
Now, you that do not believe in the doctrine of election, but kick
at it, and bite your lips at the mention of it, listen to this! God
gave fallen angels no Savior, no gospel, no space for repentance,
yet he gives these to men: why is this? What reason was there? Can
you conceive one? Why did God pass the fallen angels by, and yet
look in love upon the sons of men? "Oh," says one, "perhaps fallen
angels were the greater offenders of the two." I do not think it;
certainly many men go far to rival devils in rebellion.
"Perhaps men were tempted and angels were not." Stop, let us be
clear on this point. Very likely Satan, the first angel that fell,
was not tempted; but just as likely all the others were. Their
leader tempted them as much as Eve tempted Adam, or the serpent
tempted Eve. The mass of fallen angelhood may have been seduced by
the example of Satan, the Prince of devils. I do not therefore see
any great difference as to that matter. This I do know, that some
men are greater sinners than devils. "No," say you, "how is that?" I
answer that the devil never yet rejected free grace and dying love;
the devil never yet struggled against the Holy Spirit in his own
conscience; the devil never yet refused the mercy of God. These
supreme pinnacles of wickedness are only reached by you who are
hearers of the gospel, and yet cast its precious message behind your
backs. Singular it is that God should deal in mercy with men who act
so wickedly, while yet he never discoursed of mercy to the fallen
angels, nor set before them terms of peace. They were given over
there and then to be bound in chains of darkness until the judgment
of the last great day.
Notice that God gave the angels no respite. He did not wait for them
to continue in sin for years; but when they sinned, they fell. The
punishment followed hard on the crime. They cast God out of their
hearts, and he cast them out of heaven. How different is his conduct
to some of you! You have sinned through a series of years. How old
are you? Twenty years? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Is it
eighty years that you have lived in rebellion against God? And yet
he has not cut you down! Wonderful patience! The angels he banished
from his presence at once. He spared not the angels, but he has
spared you. Why is this?
The Lord never entered into any parley with the angels—never invited
them to repentance or to mercy. Oh, but what parleys God has had
with some of you! I am not the only one who has entreated and
persuaded you, but yet with some of you I have pleaded very
earnestly that you would turn from the error of your ways and
live—that you would believe in Christ and find eternal life. But why
should the Lord treat concerning peace with men and not with fallen
angels?
For the angels God never made a covenant of grace, "ordered in all
things and sure." They broke their covenant of works, and they fell
never to rise again. For the angels there was never a sacrifice: no
dying Son of God for them: no bloody sweat and wounded hands and
feet for them! And yet a great atonement is prepared for men. What
sovereignty of God's grace is here displayed! He opens the golden
gates of love for us, and shuts the iron gate on beings nobler than
we are. The Spirit of God strives with us, but he never strives with
fallen angels. Devils are left to themselves; but concerning man the
Lord cries "how can I give thee up?" How justly might God have left
us alone, for we have been given unto idols, and yet he follows us
with the admonitions of his mercy.
For the devils there is no pardon, no hope, no gate of heaven; and
yet there is all this for men. Oh, dear hearers, do not, I pray you,
reject these choice gifts of Almighty love. If God is so specially
gracious to the race of men, let not man become singularly
ungrateful to his God, presumptuously wanton in his sin. Let us turn
unto the Lord with full purpose of heart, seeing that he turns to us
with such speciality of favor.
I am sure that it is a great wonder and a thing for admiration that
God should look upon us and not on fallen angels; because, as I have
already said, angels certainly are not worse sinners than some men
have been. Angels are not more wilful than we have been, for we have
sinned against light and knowledge with deliberate intent and
purpose.
Angels are certainly more valuable: if God had wanted one of the two
races to be employed as his servants, the best would have been
chosen, and these are not men, but angels. Angels can do more for
God than we can: yet he has chosen us. Angels must, surely, be more
missed than men: their downfall made a great gap in heaven. We go
there to fill the space, and to repair the breach which was made
when they were cast down from glory. But, surely, it were easier to
restore the angels who came from heaven than to take up inferior
creatures who had never been there. If we make a distinction between
men in the distribution of our charity, we very properly say, "Let
us do good to those first who would be the most miserable without
it." Now, men have never known heaven, and consequently cannot so
much feel the loss of it as those who have been there and have
fallen from it. We are like people that have always been poor; but
the angels have been in heaven, and are therefore like wealthy
persons who have come down to poverty. What a hell to them to be out
of heaven! What misery to those spirits to miss the eternal glories
which they once enjoyed! One would have thought, therefore, that God
would have restored the angels before he upraised the human race.
But he has not: he has redeemed us, and left the elder race of
rebels unrestored. No man knoweth why, and in our amazement we
cry,—How is this? Whence this election of grace?
Tell me, ye who would leave God no choice, but would deify the will
of man, what all this means? Where is your proud theory that God is
bound to treat all alike, as if we had a claim on God? I point you
to the fallen angels, and what can you say?
Sometimes princes, when they mean to give pardon according to their
will, say to themselves, "We will pardon the man who will be most
dangerous if we leave him to be our enemy." Now, bad as men are, and
great enemies of God as they become, yet the devil has more power to
harm God than a man can have—and yet God does not pardon the devil.
He lets Satan go on with all his dreadful power and do his worst in
reviling his Lord; and yet the Lord's mercy comes to us whose powers
are within so narrow a range, compared with the fallen angels; he
makes choice of puny man to receive his grace.
One would think that to restore an angel was more easy and more
agreeable to the plan of the universe than to exalt fallen man.
There is nothing to do but to put an angel back in his place; but
men must be taken into a new existence. Christ himself must come and
be a man; and, to wash away the sin of man, Christ must die; nothing
more could have been needed had devils been saved. I cannot conceive
the salvation of angels to be more difficult than the salvation of
men. I rather conceive it to have been the easier thing of the two
if the Lord had so willed it. And yet, involving as it did the
incarnation of the Son of God and his death to make atonement, the
infinitely gracious Father condescended to ordain that he would take
up men, and would not take up the fallen angels. It is a marvel: it
is a mystery. I put it before you for your admiration. Oh, sirs, do
not despise it! Let not such amazing sovereignty of grace be treated
with contempt by any one of us. Talk no more about the injustice of
the election of certain men, for if you do the devils will bear
witness that you are cavilling at the royal prerogative of the great
Lord who saith, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I
will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."
Now, I think that I see in this a great argument with God's people.
Has the Lord given up angels and chosen you? It reminds me of that
famous text, "Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been
honorable, and I have loved thee. Therefore will I give men for
thee, and people for thy life. I gave Egypt for thy ransom; Ethiopia
and Seba for thee." See, he has passed angels by, and he has made
choice of us; what a height of grace! Behold how he loves us! What
shall we do in return? Let us do angels' work. Come, brothers and
sisters, let us glow with such a fire of devotion as might have
burned in an auger's heart. Let us be as intensely zealous as a
redeemed angel might have been. Let us glorify God as angels would
have done had they been restored and made again to taste divine
favor and infinite love. What manner of people ought we to be? What
manner of lives ought we to live? What manner of consecration ought
to be upon us? Should not our whole being live unto God?
I have given you this somewhat in the rough, for time flies; but
think it over, and profit by it. Think it over, you ungodly ones,
and not cast away mercy like this. When you read, "He took not up
angels, but he took up the seed of Abraham," be full of surprise,
and fly at once to Jesus. And, O ye saints, as ye read it, say to
yourselves—
"For more love than seraphs know
We will like seraphs burn."
God bless you, for Jesus' sake. Amen.C. H. Spurgeon
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