He Created Angels

June/Training for Mission

2 June 2010

He created the good Angels...so that the goodness and majesty of the Trinity, in all the largesse of its munificence, might not be idle, but might have heavenly dignities in which, with a potent utterance, it could be mightily manifest.

- Columcille, Altus Prosator (Irish, 6th century)

Of the angels he says, "He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire."

- Hebrews 1.7

Columcille wants us to understand not merely that God created the angels, but why. God's purpose in creating the angels is the same as His purpose in creating all things: that He might manifest His magnificent goodness, munificence, and glory.

Remember, God is altogether holy, lovely and loving, and perfect within Himself. He needs no other creatures, nothing external to Himself. His motive in creating the world - in creating us - could only have been to express His goodness, manifest the wonder of His beauty, and spread His glory among the creatures, that they, too, might share in His being, joy, grandeur, delight, and love.

So Columcille accomplishes two objectives in this second stanza - to assert the reality of angels (very important to Celtic Christians) and to celebrate God's reason for making anything at all. He seems almost to be saying, in response to the hypothetical question, Why am I here?, that God has made us for Himself, to give Himself to us, draw us into Himself, share Himself with us, so that we, in Him, might partake of His being and joy, forever.

This purpose is spread before us every day. God calls us to partake of Him, by clinging to His precious and magnificent promises, realized most fully in Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 1.4). If you could really do that today, and every day, wouldn't it be just the most wonderful, most glorious way to live?

Today in ReVision: Engulfed - The President needs our prayers.

This Week's Download: Faithfulness in Ministry- Here's a tool, pastor, to use in evaluating your ministry.

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T. M. Moore, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.