The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 10 –2
As you learned long ago in Lesson 2-13, there is no physical difference between devils and angels. They’re all the same species; the exact same type of creature, one is simply evil (Psalms 78:41, 49). That’s why Satan can appear as a holy angel! He looks just like one because he IS an angel! (2 Corinthians 11:14).
Satan was perfect, a holy angel, until the day that he sinned (Ezekiel 28:15). But he was, and still is, an angel! The same kind of being as Michael or Gabriel. The difference existed only in his heart and spirit, and was only discernible by his actions!
And of the angels which sinned, not all sinned equally. For Jesus said that a cast-out demon sometimes “goes and gets seven other spirits more evil than himself” (Luke 11:26, BBE). Now if those others are more evil, that would make the first demon less evil, right?
That’s why Jesus said some demons are harder to cast out than others (Matthew 17:21). Because some are more stubbornly committed to their path than others! But this sword cuts both ways; for if some demons are less evil, they are automatically more righteous.
Likewise, if all angels are all equally righteous, then why does Gabriel say that only Michael stands by his side against the evil angels ruling Greece and Persia? What about all the other “good” angels? Where were they?
Daniel 10:20-21 (BBE) …But I am going back to make war with the angel of Persia, and when I am gone, the angel of Greece will come… And there is no one on my side against these, but Michael, your angel.
So this is not the black and white, incorruptibly good vs. absolute evil battle we’re led to believe it is. The universally-believed idea that devils are incorrigibly evil and angels are unassailably holy is simply not what the Bible says. It is obviously – and I mean, obviously – not true.
The reality is, angels and demons form opposite ends of a political spectrum, and just as monarchists and democrats are both humans, so angels and demons are both the same type of creature!
Like human political parties, the ones on the far right always vote right, ones on the far left always vote left; and in the middle is a vast pool of swing votes. And just as human factions vary in their degrees of commitment and fanaticism, so angels vary widely in their loyalty to, or hatred of, God’s laws.
This makes sense, because it’s how everything we’ve ever seen works; why would the angelic realm be different? Because even the most righteous angels with the best intentions must make mistakes from time to time which are called sins (Job 25:4-5, Job 4:17-19). Why else would we have to judge angels?? (1 Corinthians 6:3).
SINNING ANGELS
Now before you object vehemently and say “Angels are holy! They’re sinless!!” I want you to think about it for a second! Haven’t ALL sinned, and come short of the glory of God? (Romans 3:23). If there were a truly perfect angel then wouldn’t he also have been worthy to open the seals on the book? Revelation 5:2-5.
Now let’s ask a different question: if angels cannot sin, then do they need to repent? Of course not! So I want you to read Revelation 2:1. This letter is written to the church, right? That’s what everyone thinks. But is that what it says? Read it again!
Who is it written to? Is it written to a human minister? To a human church? Read it again! It’s written to the ANGEL. To whom? TO THE ANGEL in charge of that church! Tired of me saying that? It’s the only way to break the tape that plays in your head when you read this verse, so you can read it with fresh eyes! OPEN eyes!
People are so sure they know what it means, they can’t see what it says! Everyone is sure this was written to a church, but it plainly says that it was written to an angel! Why is that so important? Because if they can’t see who it was written to, they can’t hear what he – the angel – was told to do! Revelation 2:1-2.
Whose works? Whose labor? Whose patience? The church? A human minister? OR THE ANGEL OF THIS CHURCH? What does it say? This was addressed to a “good” angel who cannot bear those who are evil!
And yet, to that same angel, God has something else to add: verse 4. God has something against whom? The church? Who was this addressed to, again? And yet this good angel still needed to repent of some things!
Verse 5 Remember therefore from whence thou [Who? The ANGEL] art FALLEN, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, EXCEPT THOU REPENT.
Unless WHO repents? Remember, this was not written to a human! It was written for us, but not to us! God TOLD US who this was written to, and all we have to do is LISTEN! He told a GOOD angel who “could not bear those who are evil” that God still had complaints about his actions! Because some of his actions were sins!
So He told this ANGEL, this basically good BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH angel, to REPENT OR ELSE! Or else what? Or else he would to be treated like all sinners – all those who serve the devil! (2 Peter 2:19, Romans 6:16).
This angel, though mostly good, had some small areas where he was following the devil… so to avoid the fate reserved for the devil and the angels who follow him even a little bit he had to REPENT! (Matthew 25:41).
DEVIL OR ANGEL
So the angelic realm is not red vs. white, evil vs. good, it is a vast spectrum of more-or-less obedient spirit beings. But where exactly does God draw the line between the two? What does it take to be considered a “demon”?
If they’re all the same kind of creature, and if every angel has sinned a little bit – and there is no man (or angel) that sinneth not (1 Kings 8:46) – then how much sin does it take to officially be considered one of the devil’s angels?
Like most questions, this is based on a flawed assumption. We imagine the word “angel” to be a kind of being, or perhaps a title of authority; but “angel” is an unremarkable and quite generic word in Greek, not a holy concept, and the word simply means “messenger”.
Using this word as we do today, to refer specifically to a holy, righteous spirit being is wrong! For the devil has his own angels! (Matthew 25:41). The word “angel”, like the English word “messenger”, means one who carries messages. No more, and most importantly, no less!
So the real question is not “when does a holy angel become an evil devil?”, but rather “when does a messenger stop being a messenger?” And the answer is simple – when he can no longer be trusted to carry a message!
A perfect messenger would never forget a single word; never mispronounce a single vowel. They would never leave your package by the gate in the rain instead of bringing it to the house like they should have done! (Clearly, I have a bad history with delivery people, but moving on.)
Regardless, the job of a messenger is to deliver the original message. If you have a single typo in your message, then you’re no longer a perfect messenger; you’ve sinned, for the holy message you carried has been defiled by your lips (Exodus 20:25 comes to mind).
Whatever your intention when you misremembered or misspoke the message, if your message is not true to the original words of God, you are not a perfect messenger. And apparently, there is no angel that can carry a perfect message every time. That is why “all have sinned”!
And yet when relaying a message from God, it’s one thing to accidentally say “freedom” instead of “liberty”, which doesn’t change the message in any meaningful way… and something completely different if you change “liberty” to “bondage”! (Isaiah 5:20).
All changes to His holy message are sins… But some mistakes so garble the message that the meaning of the message is lost, or worse, changed to mean something completely different! (Psalms 50:16-17). It’s better if such people don’t even try to deliver the message… since it’s better if the message is lost, than changed to mean the opposite of what you said!
So how to tell where an angel stops and a devil starts? Easy. An angel of God is only an angel of God when he can more-or-less accurately convey the message of God! Because what, really, is an evil angel? An evil messenger.
Today, to us, “evil” means “sinful, intentionally wicked”. But as with church, baptism, prayer, apostle, and so many other things, the word simply means bad. Not necessarily in the sense of wicked or malevolent… just… bad (Jeremiah 24:3).
Can we truly imagine that these figs are contemplating God’s destruction? Or are they simply… you know… bad figs (verse 8). Are eyes malevolent? Matthew 6:23. How about wild beasts? Genesis 37:20. Or bad news? Numbers 14:37. You get the idea. In the Bible, “evil” doesn’t mean intentionally wicked and sadistic. Just… bad.
So then an evil angel is really just a bad messenger – and a bad messenger is no more complicated than a bad cook, an incompetent teacher, an inept doctor. Likewise, evil angels are simply messengers who are bad at their job!
Rather like every FedEx driver I’ve ever had bring me a package (yes, we’re still on that). UPS is not perfect, but their sins are generally minor. They are decent angels. I miss DHL, which was awesome… the holiest of angels. But they don’t deliver in our area anymore. But FedEx drivers are evil angels, every one of them.
Everyone in the world understands these concepts. Why make angels more complicated than that?
THE DEVIL’S ANGELS
No message will ever be delivered as well as if you said it yourself – and God knows this better than anyone (Genesis 18:20-21). If it absolutely must get there on time, you don’t give it to FedEx, or even DHL – you take it yourself.
So God never trusts final judgment to any angel, knowing they are all capable of sinning in judgment. Sodom was specifically an example of this final judgment (Jude 1:7). But it’s worth noting that, though God couldn’t completely trust these two angels who were with Him in Genesis 18:22 and Genesis 19:1, the judgment they would have made was absolutely correct!
Experiences like that have led God to trust some angels more than others. These two were, in symbol at least if not in fact, Gabriel and Michael, whom we see again in Daniel as quoted above. Yet there are still things even they are not trusted with (Matthew 24:36, 1 Peter 1:12, etc.).
God knows the limits of how much He can expect a given messenger to do right – and gives him messages that are within his capability. And if the message is important, only gives it to the most trusted angels – and if it’s truly vital, does it Himself.
To see this from a golden rule perspective, let’s say you sent an employee out to the jobsite to convey a message to the workers about how you wanted the job done. This person, then, is quite literally an angel – your messenger.
But is he a holy angel, or an evil one? That depends on the job they do. Some people, you know you could trust with this message. Some who would convey the gist of your meaning, even if not the exact letter of it. These people, then, are righteous angels.
They are messengers that you trust to carry your messages correctly. Sure, they might forget a thing or two, or make a decision you wouldn’t have made… but what you wanted would get done in a way that was mostly what you wanted.
On the other hand, you must also know other people who, if their life depended upon it, couldn’t convey what you wanted to someone else. Maybe they don’t listen, maybe they can’t remember, maybe they have dyselxia. Maybe they think they know more than you do. Or, maybe, they just hate you and want the job to fail.
Regardless of why, if you sent a message through these people, it would be so mangled on their lips as to be unrecognizable. These people, then, are demons. People who are not righteous messengers, but rather evil messengers (Psalms 78:49).
When we take away the theological ideas of “sin” and “evil”, and read these words with their original meaning of “to fall short of the mark” and “bad, damaging”, respectively, we see that an “evil messenger who sins” is merely a “bad messenger”, who when sent to deliver a message “falls short of the meaning”.
But note that this implies absolutely nothing about their intention when they fail to bring the message. The majority of bad things that happen in the world are the result of incompetence, not maliciousness. So it is also, in the spirit world (Isaiah 56:8-12).
WICKED OR INCOMPETENT?
All angels are messengers. It’s literally the only meaning the word has. Righteous angels more-or-less-faithfully relay the message. Evil angels are those who cannot be trusted to convey a message correctly. But why, exactly, might they garble the message?
Thanks to the pagan ideas about the spirit world, we automatically assign motives to these devils that may not be fair. After all, a bad messenger is not necessarily an evil messenger – he may simply be an incompetent one!
He may not be deliberately twisting your words, he may simply not have been listening when you told him! (Revelation 3:3). When you send an employee to buy something at the hardware store, and they come back with the wrong thing, is it because they despise you?
Is it because they hate you and want you to fail, that they deliberately bought the blue one when you clearly asked for the pink one? Sure, there are employees who are angry at you who might do that just to spite you – but the enormous majority of “sins” on the job are sins of incompetence; sins of inattention; sins of disinterest.
How unfair would it be if you assigned the sin of rebellion to every mistake an employee ever made? How unrealistic would it be, to assume that all messages that were lost in transmission were corrupted by a willful, deliberate, evil person? And how unfair to them!
If I say “that woman is a terrible cook”, does it follow that she is a terrible person? An evil harpy bent on the destruction of God and taking over His throne? No? Why not? Because being bad at something doesn’t mean you are, necessarily, doing it wrong on purpose.
There are a lot of reasons a woman might be a bad cook; lack of training, lack of time, lack of interest, lack of money or ingredients, lack of taste buds… yes, or she may actually despise her husband and want him to suffer. But it’s unfair to automatically leap to that conclusion!
Likewise, when an angel forgets the message, leaves things out, paraphrases too much or takes too long to deliver it, he’s a bad angel… but not necessarily an intentionally wicked angel who messed up the message on purpose because he hated his Master!
But if he reinterprets the message because he reasons that “God must have meant…”, then he becomes a messenger, not of God, but of his own ideas about God! Jeremiah 23:16-17. It means he is no longer “trembling at God’s words” (Isaiah 66:2). No longer afraid to edit the words of God! But he should be (Revelation 22:18-19).
And it is to judge the difference between the incompetent and the wicked, the foolish and the selfish, the thoughtless and the cruel, that we must judge angels in the future. Because though these sins may all have more-or-less the same effect of a garbled message… they don’t come from the same heart or spirit, and that matters.
UNCLEAN SPIRITS
The word for the Devil in the NT is Diabolos, literally “slanderer”. Unfortunately, the KJV also translates a very different Greek word Daemon as “devil”, in the context of the evil angels who follow the devil.
This Greek word Daemon is the word translated as “devils” and “evil spirits” in the NT except for verses clearly about their leader, the Devil himself. But does it actually mean “evil spirit” in the sense of “malevolent”, which comes from Latin words meaning “desiring to do bad”?
“The Ancient Greek word Daemon denotes a spirit or divine power, much like the Latin genius… The original Greek word daimon does not carry the negative connotation … [the] Greek terms do not have any connotations of evil or malevolence. In fact, eudaimonia, (literally good-spiritedness) means happiness.” (Wikipedia, “Demon”)
The Greek word “daemon” meant a divine power or spirit being that was attached to a person or a place. The Greeks used the word rather like we use the term “my muse” today, a power that inspires us to do things.
Yet the Bible uses the term Daemon in an exclusively negative sense, which is strange since the word itself was not a negative word at all. Jesus’ and Paul’s audience would not have understood this as a bad thing, so why would they use a word that clearly didn’t mean what they were trying to convey?
…Obviously, because the word conveyed exactly what they meant. Jesus and Paul were referring to Angels who were attached to certain people or places, just like the Greeks understood. Read Luke 8:26-36 – note they were in the man… then they went into the pigs. Just as the Greeks would have understood the term!
But think back; when did Jesus say these devils were malevolent, exactly? Most of the negative words about them translated into English in the NT don’t really mean that at all in the original Greek.
Take Mark 9:25; “foul” spirit simply means, like in English, “unclean” (Mark 1:25-27). Now unclean is certainly not holy, but a pig is unclean and yet is not malevolent!
It is unfair to impute malignance to that which is simply dirty, confused, burdened, stressed out, or blind. Some of the demons may be malevolent, but it is unfair to assume that based on the words “unclean” (dirty), “evil” (bad at what they do) or “wicked” (burdened).
REBELLION OR CONFUSION
So what we’re really asking is, are the devils actively trying to undermine God’s authority, consciously disobeying Him and deliberately trying to hurt those who obey God… or are they – at least mostly – just confused, stressed, torn between their fractions, and… selfish?
Because even though a “demon” may not be trustworthy to send a message or judge righteous judgment, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily rebels. Just think about it… if the evil angels are really rebellious, disobedient spirits… why do they obey God?
If the devils are in open rebellion against God’s authority… how is that they obey Jesus?? Mark 1:27. If the devils didn’t obey Jesus’ authority, they wouldn’t leave! If they didn’t obey Him, He couldn’t have cast them out! But the Bible says clearly that the unclean spirits OBEY JESUS!
And not only Jesus; the evil spirits obey even Jesus’ servants the apostles! Luke 10:17. Even the evil spirits know there are people whose authority they MUST obey (Acts 19:13-16). But rebels don’t obey God, that’s what MAKES them rebels!!
I really want to drive this point home, because it’s foundational to everything you’ll learn in this series. There is not a single example of a devil disobeying God or Jesus in the entire Bible. Every spirit being, in heaven and on Earth, does what Jesus commands including the Devil himself! That’s why they obeyed Jesus and fled at His rebuke! (Luke 8:26-32).
But if the devils are not soldiers in an ongoing war between good and evil, what are they? Easy… they are servants of God! Remember, the Lord consciously, knowingly, sends lying spirits to do things for Him! (1 Kings 22:19-23). How could He do that with people who were not His servants?
Again, God consciously, knowingly, sent evil angels to torment Egypt (Psalms 78:49). And they went! So if they obey Him… they are not in rebellion against Him!! On the contrary… they tremble before God! James 2:19.
They tremble before God because they fear God… and therefore they never refuse to obey God! That doesn’t mean they obey Him well, or that they relay His messages accurately… but they obey Him!
Which means “rebel” is a very poor word to describe their relationship to God!
DEVILS DEPARTING FROM EVIL
What would cause them to tremble? Psalms 119:120. Think about that; the demons fear God. Now if they – the devils, remember – fear God… well, it says “the fear of the LORD is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13). Do the devils, therefore, hate evil? Because the whole point of fear is to encourage us and them to stop being evil!
Proverbs 16:6 By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.
“Men” is in italics in the KJV because it is not represented in the original language; the verse simply says “by the fear of the Lord, evil is departed from”… not necessarily by men alone, but by angels as well!
So if someone fears the Lord, does that mean they serve Him? Psalms 2:11. And if someone fears the Lord, is He merciful to them? Psalms 103:17. So the devils believe in God, and FEAR Him. Just like James said! And because of that FEAR, they TRY to do the right thing!
If these scriptures apply – and I don’t see how they can not apply – then it casts the demons in a very different light! Not as vile monsters who are trying to hurt mankind, trying to be as evil as possible just to spite God… but as more-or-less confused servants of God who believe they are doing the best they can to obey God!
Note I said “they believe they are doing their best”. They are not, in fact, doing their best – which is why God is upset. But their hearts and spirits have blinded them to the truth, have justified their mistakes, and all of their actions are right in their own eyes! (Proverbs 16:2).
Remember, there are many different levels of “trying”. A person who half-heartly waves a broom at the floor is “trying” to clean house. Likewise the angel of Laodicea isn’t “trying” to obey God as hard as Gabriel is. And yet as long as they are plausibly “trying” they are not rebels (Mark 7:6).
This requires us to rethink everything we think we know about the spirit world, and the nature of the “battle” between good and evil. Because the devils believe God, and tremble; so their rebellion is in their heart, among their own fractions – just like your own rebellion! (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 7:14-24).
Of course, if their heart is evil, their actions will be bad as well (Matthew 12:34). But in their own deceived way, they believe they are doing what God said – or at least, what they think God really meant.
I mean, why would Proverbs 16:2 only apply to men… when God clearly mentions SPIRITS in the same verse?
SAUL THE DEVIL
Again, shocking as all this must be to you, these are the only facts we have! The worst monsters in human history believed they were doing they right thing, taking care of them and theirs as best they knew how; why would angels be different?
Why wouldn’t all their ways seem right in their own eyes, no matter how obvious their evil is to everyone else? Take 1 Samuel 15 for example. God had told Saul, through Samuel, under no circumstances to leave anything alive in Amalek (verses 1-3).
But Saul had reinterpreted that command to mean something very different (verses 8-9), which angered God (verses 10-12). And yet when Samuel came to see Saul, Saul was so convinced he had done what God said, they were the first words out of his mouth! (verse 13).
He was proud of what he had done! For in his eyes, he had not only obeyed God’s command, he’d done EVEN MORE, and brought back gifts for God! (verse 15). Even though he had obviously, and I mean OBVIOUSLY, not obeyed the commandment of God (the sheep gave it away in verse 14).
So Samuel explains just how Saul failed to do what God had sent him, as a messenger and envoy, to do (verses 16-19). But Saul STILL can’t see it! He was STILL convinced that he did exactly what God asked! (verses 20-21). God didn’t buy that, and only then did Saul repent (verses 22-26). But even then it’s not clear if he really understood his sin, or simply gave up defending it.
Saul was a rebel in a sense, yes, but a deceived rebel. He honestly believed he was doing what God said, when you and I can plainly see that he did no such thing! But he had rationalized that he was doing what God REALLY MEANT, what God really wanted, even when it wasn’t what He had said at all!
But the key is that Saul at no point said “to hell with God, I’m doing things MY WAY!”… And neither have any of the devils! At no point in this did Saul openly rebel against God’s authority, even after God called him a stubborn, rebellious, witch-craft practicing idolater and took his kingdom away from him! (verses 27-31).
Saul’s “rebellion” was in taking the messages of God and redefining what God meant. Thus he rebelled in spirit by paraphrasing God’s messages to justify doing things that his heart believed were God’s true intent. But his soul never once rebelled by refusing to obey God!
And if you could talk to a mid-ranking devil, you would hear this exact same story. In his own eyes, everything he’s done was what God wanted (Proverbs 18:17). Thus a devil is merely an angel who doesn’t understand God’s way, and is genuinely confused about why his actions aren’t good enough for God!
Like Saul, the devils are, in their own way, obeying the spirit of the law; a spirit that they are clearly not qualified to interpret! Just as so many Christians do with the law today! (1 Timothy 1:7).
Which is why until you have proven you can keep the letter under the bondage of Genesis 15, God doesn’t grant you the right to interpret the spirit under the covenant of Genesis 17! And why you aren’t supposed to eat of the forbidden fruit until you are old enough to understand how to digest it!
…IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
Like the Pharisees they inspired, the demons honor God with their lips, but their heart is far from Him (Matthew 15:8). And since their heart doesn’t understand God’s way, their actions cannot possibly be something God would want (Matthew 7:15-20).
And yet, like Saul, they have at no time refused to obey God’s direct commands. Their heart has, their spirit has – as have all of ours – but they, their souls, have not! Go ahead – look for a verse that shows a devil disobeying a direct command of God. It doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t happen, not ever! Luke 10:17-20.
Their wickedness is simply the measure of how far they’re willing to bend God’s words to fit what THEY think is right. Of how willing their soul is to bend the commandment of God to fit their heart’s desires and their spirit’s misunderstandings!
Isn’t that the same as the difference between a Catholic, a Protestant, a Seventh-Day-Adventist… and you? Catholics are willing to rewrite the Bible if it’s inconvenient – but they do so believing they are doing the will of God.
Thus, the SDA is far more righteous, objectively, than a Catholic. And yet they reject the feasts, keep Christmas, and do many other things wrong – even while paying lip-service to the commandments. And they do this while believing they are doing everything God said.
Because everyone believes they’re obeying God. Some just obey Him more… abstractly. The Jehovah’s Witnesses reason around the law just like the Catholics, but they do it a little less; the COGs fear a little more to reinterpret God’s words than the Baptists do.
After agonizing thought and study, I might drink horse milk, eat honey that had had an ant in it, or eat meat that was cooked on the same grill as pork; but I wouldn’t say “Oh, I know the Bible says we shouldn’t eat pork but I don’t think it means that”.
All of these things may be sins, but they are not all the same kind of sin. All of us are “trying” to do God’s will, but some fear more than others to redefine that will to fit their convenience. Consider the cavalier way most of the world dismisses the commandments:
“We know Christmas is pagan, but it’s for the children! Besides, we should celebrate Jesus’ birth somehow! Anyway, God never said not to keep it!”
This is the kind of thinking that brought us Sunday worship, eating unclean meats, praying repetitively (and in a circle) and baking cakes to the queen of heaven. All of these things are meant to honor God.
Obviously, NONE of them do, and all of them are sins… but not sins of open rebellion! You might say they are a form of “soft” rebellion, the same way a child who hates to do dishes drags it out as long as possible, or “forgets” to do his homework.
It is a form of rebellion that comes from a heart he is not capable of ruling yet, and a spirit that has his soul in bondage. He – that is to say, his soul – is not yet capable of ruling them, so he must be ruled.
And yet when someone takes of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil too soon… he shrugs off the only bondage capable of reining in his lower fractions. And as with us, so, too, with the angels.
So as I said, the measure of wickedness is precisely how far a being is willing to bend God’s words to make them fit their lusts and their assumptions, their traditions and their fears. And likewise, rebellion is measured by how consciously their soul takes God’s words and twists them to their own purposes.
For angels as well as for us.
WICKED SPIRITS
God uses the word “wicked” to apply to some of the spirits whom Jesus cast out – but what did that mean, exactly? Did it mean, as it does to us, that they were sadistic and malevolent? Consider the guy in 1 Corinthians 5:11-13.
Are idolators and drunks deliberately, intentionally, sadistically evil? Of course not. Yet they are wicked, from the Greek word poneros. Yet not purposefully, for they are deceived, as are we all (2 Timothy 3:13). Here the word “evil” comes from the same word poneros.
Poneros means “full of labours, annoyances, hardships”. You may recognize its relative, the English word “ponderous”. It has the connotation of “difficult by reason of weight”. Not “wicked” as we use it today.
But poneros was also used metaphorically, building on the idea of a difficult and laborious job that you find unpleasant, to arrive at the secondary meanings of “bad, diseased, blind, evil”. Again, this doesn’t mean malevolent – it just means “burdened/burdensome”.
Now we know, of these very angels, that they hated their jobs (Jude 1:6). That some didn’t trust their master (Luke 19:20-27), and some did their work unenthusiastically. Thus they were angels who found His commandments “grievous” (1 John 5:3, from a different Greek word also meaning “heavy”).
So when Jesus called them “poneros spirits”, a much better translation would be burdened and/or burdensome spirits. Spirits who are not necessarily malevolent – merely those who are weighed down by sin (Psalms 38:4). Weighed down by falling short of the mark while also doing a job their fractions find burdensome.
So are these deceived deceivers wicked, evil, sadistic… or simply burdened with the same struggle we all face, the one Paul describes in Romans 7:14-25? Like us, they, as a result of failing at that struggle, do very bad things to other people – but not necessarily because they want to hurt them.
Like us, they are sinners (they miss the mark), evil (do bad things), wicked (burdened), because they are trying to walk on the path of righteousness with a Volkswagen on their back (Hebrews 12:1).
And when you’re weighed down by your lusts and selfishness you can’t walk very fast or very straight on the path… because your sins weigh you down! Which is why you need to unload that burden (Psalms 55:22), by taking His yoke upon you (Matthew 11:30).
Something wicked and evil sinners, by definition, have not (yet) done!
And since Christians are supposed to bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), people with too much baggage can weigh others down with them (1 Peter 4:3-4). Such overburdened wicked people or spirits should be cast out of your life, so they don’t drag you down with them!
As God, in the end, will do for all humans and spirits who won’t let go of their lusts, habits, grudges, and selfishness (Matthew 13:49-50). He doesn’t need that in His life – even though He’s tolerating it now (Luke 6:35), from a distance, hoping we’ll let go of it before He has to let go of us.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The point to this lesson is simple:
Never blame on rebellion that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
All angels obey God’s commandments. And yet all angels likewise disobey God in their heart and don’t fear enough to edit His words in their spirit. All of them do, and have always done, that which was right in their own eyes. But never have they openly disobeyed God.
There is no angel, no atom in the universe who has ever said “I will not obey you, God”. If there were… God couldn’t be the ALL MIGHTY! By definition He has power over everything, and everyone.
But having the power to make someone do what you want, and the power to make someone remember and do what you said when you’re not watching… that’s a very different thing. The power to make someone obey you, and the power to make them do it right are very different things.
Some hearts and spirits are broken… and some hearts and spirits have complete dominion over their souls, with angels as with humans! It’s like the difference between a well trained dog who, when commanded to stay, stays…
…and another which, after being told three times to stay, finally stays for 10 seconds then bounces up again. Neither of these dogs is rebellious, per se… but one is a much more obedient than the other. Why? Because the second dog’s heart is so much more in control of its body!
And so it is also with the angels. All angels have made mistakes, “sinned”. Yet there’s a difference between an angel who is told “Leave!” and simply leaves… and another who is told “Leave!” and says “Who, me?? Oh, right now? But why?”
A clever mind can find loopholes in any law made of words! Yet a servant who truly wanted to please you would understand the clear intent of the first command, which was that God didn’t want to be bothered by them or others like them.
A more-and-more stubborn devil will require more and more specific commandments before they’ll do exactly what you want. So some devils are harder to control than others (Mark 9:29). But they will never disobey a clear, direct command from someone in clear authority over them.
Obviously, God would rather not have to be so clear and direct with His servants to make them do His will. He shouldn’t have to be. That’s why He is creating a group of saints who will not need to be forced to do His will, for they will already want the same things He wants.
A group of saints who, not coincidentally, will be capable of being perfect messengers, and absolutely trustworthy judges of His will.