The Bible tells us little about the nature and powers of angels, whose functions seem often to dwarf their personality. Yet our Lord’s own words in the Gospels acknowledge distinctly that angels are real, not any mere figure of speech. In the book of Daniel the name Michael is given to a chief of the heavenly host, who is styled “prince” or guardian angel of Israel. The New Testament refers to him as the supreme spirit of good triumphing over evil. Nothing less can be implied by the tremendous text in the Apocalypse: “There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.”
“War in heaven” sounds like an utter contradiction. Yet the gospel delights to express itself in paradox. Many of Christ’s most penetrating sayings were spoken as paradoxes. The character which He creates is described by a series of apparent contradictions—hungry, and yet satisfied; meek, yet inheriting the earth; humble, yet receiving the kingdom; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing all things. For the Word of the Lord is a double-edged sword, turning this way and that. Both edges are necessary, both sides of the truth must be blended in experience and character, before we can stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.
Christ compared Christians to the pungent salt of the earth, and to the gleaming light of the world. In His words we hear of lamps that flash, and trumpets that peal, and weapons that pierce, and a great cry that breaks upon the midnight, and fire from heaven that baptizes and burns. The very fact that we feel less at home among such metaphors warns us that we ought the more heedfully to lay their lesson to heart. This paradox of war in heaven declares that the Christian life is a battle.
Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon tells us in the sharpest and most vivid way that those who are the friends of God must be the sworn enemies of Satan. As we love the Lord, we must hate that which is evil. We must not only renounce iniquity, but resist it, and fight against it, and trample it under our feet. Today tolerance is one of the most popular virtues; yet we must search our own hearts to see whether our tolerance be indeed rooted in divine charity, or whether it is a mere confusion between the eternal opposites of right and wrong. Much that people call tolerance is simply easy-going flabbiness; it proceeds from cowardice and sloth, from our dislike of clear thinking and strong feeling, from our doubt whether most things are worth being angry over, from a lurking suspicion whether anything seriously matters after all. How many Christians are holy enough to be as intolerant of evil as Christ was Himself?
The Christian Church exists on earth to be a perpetual protest against the powers of darkness; it is bound to be a constant offense and alarm to all that is contrary to the Word of God. We belong to the Church militant—the Church whose normal attitude towards this world’s evil is neither compromise nor neutrality, but war.
The Bible proclaims the eternal doom of all things evil, and promises the eternal triumph of all things good. We are apt to think of that triumph as a process rather than as a climax; yet it shall come in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. For the trumpet shall sound: and the great archangel himself is set to herald the winning of the supreme battle in which he and his host are engaged.
Here is the spirit of the Christian soldier who fights for God on earth even as the angels fight in heaven. His heart is garrisoned by the almighty love which casts out fear. He is kept peaceful in the midst of strife. He can be calm with the assurance of final victory. The warrior-saint, who does battle for Christ always, can possess Christ always even in the midst of battle. For this profound paradox is itself double: war—even in heaven; but, not less surely, heaven—even in war.
—At Home in the Bible, pp. 268-273