Reflections on Resurrection 6 – Angels?

I have to confess I feel almost embarrassed to write this post. Yet I have listened and read and it seems to me there is some real confusion among at least some people on this point, so I will say it as simply as I can.

We do not become angels after we die.

Or demons. Or spirit guides. Or any other sort of spiritual or disembodied power.

We don’t know a lot about angels and the other spiritual powers and beings who are part of the fabric of creation. We do know that angels are created beings of spirit. We know they also have free will, though a will unmediated by a material body seems to manifest in different ways. It seems they are either wholly serving God or wholly opposed to him with little of the gray areas and gradual change with which we live. But we mostly know they are different creatures from us.

They are spirit. We are embodied. That is a fundamental and eternal difference. Angels don’t become human beings and human beings don’t become angels. We have bodies and there is really no concept of immaterial existence for human beings within Christianity. Our narrative is one of resurrection.