The gospel is good news for us, not angels; yet they rejoice and worship as if they were the ones experiencing this peculiar good of our merciful God.
When I was growing up, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” by Charles Wesley (revised by George Whitfield) was one of my favorite Christmas songs — but the point of the first line went completely over my head.
Don’t get me wrong, I understood lines like “Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled” and “Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings / Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die.” However, there was that lead archaic imperative that escaped me for years: Hark! (Listen!).
In a 2007 Christianity Today article, Gordon Giles notes,
In the Gospel account, the angels praise God, whereas in “Hark! the herald angels sing,” they are inaccurately described as praising Jesus. Furthermore, Luke does not say that the angels “sing,” and so it may well be that this reinterpretation by Whitfield has emphasized the popular but unscriptural picture of angels singing the Gloria.
While Giles is correct, we would do well to listen to and learn from the angels in Luke 2:10. Their praise and adoration towards God about the birth of Jesus is a model for what our attitude should be concerning the Christ Jesus. Why?
Angels didn’t need to be reconciled to God, but man does.
He Didn’t Come for the Sins of Angels
When God brought Jesus into heaven at his ascension, says Hebrews 1:6 (with 2:5), he declares (in the words of Deuteronomy 32:43), “Let all God’s angels worship him.”
Angels and humans are different beings. The most notable thing we have in common is that God created us both, and we were perfect in the beginning. But the difference is significant. In particular, Hebrews 2:16 emphasizes that the coming of Jesus doesn’t help angels. The writer declares, “Surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.” John Calvin explains why this glorious truth shouldn’t make us proud, but rather humble us,
By this comparison he enhances the benefit and the honor with which Christ has favored us, by putting on our flesh; for he never did so much for angels. As then it was necessary that there should be a remarkable remedy for man’s dreadful ruin, it was the design of the Son of God that there should be some incomparable pledge of his love towards us, which angels had not in common with us. That he preferred us to angels was not owing to our excellency, but to our misery.
There is therefore no reason for us to glory as though we were superior to angels, except that our heavenly Father has manifested toward us that ampler mercy which we needed, so that the angels themselves might from on high behold so great a bounty poured on the earth. (Commentary on Hebrews, 73–74)
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