---
title: 'Angels, Demons, and the Nature of Christian Obedience'
type: text
hasMedia: true
requiresPurchase: false
authors:
- 'Ben Dunson'
date: 2026-04-20
collection: 'Articles'
subcollection: '2026'
topics:
- 'Character and Conduct of Life'
- 'Heaven and Hell'
- 'Bible Characters'
scriptures:
- '2 Timothy 3'
- 'Hebrews 13'
- 'Matthew 6'
- 'Psalms 103'
- 'Daniel 7'
- '1 Kings 22'
- 'Revelation 5'
- 'Hebrews 1'
- 'Psalms 104'
- 'Matthew 8'
- 'Mark 5'
- 'Romans 2'
url: https://confessional.org/articles/2026/angels-demons-and-the-nature-of-christian-obedience
---

# Angels, Demons, and the Nature of Christian Obedience

Angels and demons are significant in the drama of redemption as agents or opponents of God’s kingdom, but they have something else to teach us as well. Perhaps surprisingly to many Christians, one of the most significant things we learn about angels and demons has to do with the nature of Christian obedience. Put simply: angels obey God immediately, cheerfully, and completely. In reliance on the Holy Spirit, this is the kind of obedience to which we must aspire. Demons also reveal something about the nature of true obedience to God, but through a negative example. The Bible’s teaching on angels and demons—far from being irrelevant or a breeding ground for idle speculation—speaks with real force, exposing our shortcomings and illuminating the shape of the Christian life.

Christians know, from reading the Bible, that angels and demons exist. They also know that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Therefore, God had a reason for revealing to his people the existence of angels and demons. He obviously did not have to make known the presence of these spiritual beings normally invisible to the human eye, but he chose to do so.

There have been a variety of ways in which an attempt has been made to show the relevance of angels and demons to the Christian life, whether providing guidance on how to cast out demons and exercise power over them, to explaining aliens, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and other traditional tales as arising in response to visible manifestations of demons. Texts like Hebrews 13:2 cause some believers to wonder whether they may “have entertained angels unawares” in their everyday encounters. Christians understand that God would not have revealed the existence of these beings if it was not important for us to know about them. Nonetheless, some believers are likely tempted to admit simply that angels exist and then give up on understanding how they might be relevant for their own lives.

It is, however, important for Christians to understand God’s revelation about angels and demons, though it is likely that the most important thing they can teach us is neglected in the approaches mentioned above. God, after all, has not explained in the Bible *how* to cast out demons, though we see examples of Christ and his specially-empowered apostles doing so. Nor has he taught us that we should spend our time analyzing the possibly demonic origin of folk tales.

Angels and demons are significant in the drama of redemption as agents or opponents of God’s kingdom, but they have something else to teach us as well. Perhaps surprisingly to many Christians, one of the most significant things we learn about angels and demons has to do with the nature of Christian obedience.

Francis Turretin, the seventeenth-century Swiss-Italian Reformed theologian, helpfully articulates three primary things we can learn about obedience to God from studying the Bible’s teaching on angels (*Institutes of Elenctic Theology*, 7.8.3). Put simply: angels obey God *immediately*, *cheerfully*, and *completely*. This is why, when Jesus teaches us about the nature of Christian obedience in the Lord’s Prayer, he tells us to pray that God’s “will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Who performs God’s will in the heavenly realm? The angels do, and we should seek to emulate them.

What does their obedience look like? Psalm 103:20 says angels are the “mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!” Angels always obey, and do so without reservation. It is in their very nature to obey, as the Psalm makes clear. Of the angelic court in Daniel 7:10 it is said that “a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” The angels exist to do the will of God. They wait upon his word at all times: “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left” (1 Kings 22:19). Their worship is unceasing (Rev. 5:11–12):

> Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”


That is to say: their obedience is comprehensive and unending. At no point do they relax their faithfulness to God. In Hebrews 1:7, which quotes Psalm 104:4, we read: “Of the angels he says, ‘He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.’” The obedience of the angels is never delayed. It is always as swift as the wind or a flame of fire. Charles Hodge notes, “The angels… are described as ‘doing his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word’ (Ps. 103:20), and are thus the highest created exemplars of perfect, prompt, and joyful obedience to the will of God” (*Systematic Theology*, Vol. 1, p. 637).

Demons also reveal something about the nature of true obedience to God, but through a negative example. When Jesus, in “the country of the Gadarenes” (Matt. 8:28) early in his ministry, encounters two men possessed by a large number of demons (Mark 5:29), the demons cry out to him not to torment them “before the time” (Matt. 8:29; Mark 5:7). The demons know they will be condemned at the final judgment. And yet they continually rage against Christ, seeking to thwart him in his ministry and work of redemption. This is a powerful portrayal of the insanity of sin: knowing judgement will come and delusionally rebelling anyway. This is a picture of man in his sin. We know from Scripture what the consequences of sin are and yet we sin regardless. In that moment, we deceive ourselves into thinking, despite—like the demons—*knowing* otherwise, that the result somehow will be different than what God says it will be. Believers should thank God that his merciful patience gives us—*unlike* the demons—time to repent (Rom. 2:4), though we must never presume upon God’s grace as an excuse to remain in unrepentant sin.

My wife and I regularly emphasize to our boys that genuine obedience to God and to us as their parents must be immediate, cheerful, and complete. Apart from Jesus Christ himself, angels are the best example in the Bible of obedience of this sort. They are, in fact, perfect models for our own obedience, of God’s will “done on earth as it is in heaven.” Anything that fails to measure up to this standard is not obedience at all. We certainly all fall short of angelic obedience and need continual forgiveness for our shortcoming. In reliance on the Holy Spirit, this is the kind of obedience to which we must aspire. It follows, then, that the Bible’s teaching on angels and demons—far from being irrelevant or a breeding ground for idle speculation—speaks with real force, exposing our shortcomings and illuminating the shape of the Christian life.