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14 Angel Worship?
In antiquity, the issue of whether or not Christians should give worship or veneration to angelic beings became a major problem. Adherents to certain Eastern religions openly practiced the worship of angels. Because some of the converts to Christianity brought these habits with them from pagan culture, there emerged the problem of Christians involved in angel worship. The Christian community had to deal with this issue. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, for example, is one of his epistles that deals specifically with the issue of angel worship; but nowhere do we find a more comprehensive view of the superiority of Christ over angels than in the book of Hebrews.
Again, angels are heavenly beings who come from the very presence of God, but even so, they are creatures, and to ascribe worship to a creature of even the highest importance or rank is to engage in the sin of idolatry. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, in the very first chapter, he writes that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men, who suppress the truth and hold it in unrighteousness, and so on, and what he gets at there is our propensity toward idolatry—serving and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. The first, second, third, and fourth commandments all prohibit, in one way or another, any involvement in the worship of a creature.
The book of Hebrews opens with these words: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (vv. 1-2). This is not the only place in sacred Scripture where Christ is revealed as the Creator of the universe. In John’s Gospel, the Word is identified as the One by whom and through whom all things were made. The book of Colossians also stresses what we call the “cosmic Christ,” the Creator of the universe. So, the things that call attention to the uniqueness of Christ in this opening word show why He is the consummate revelation of God. God spoke in various ways in various times in the past, but now He has spoken in this way: by the One who is God’s heir and who is the Creator. Christ alone is the appointed heir of the Father. We become joint-heirs with Him by virtue of our adoption, but only Christ has, as it were, the natural or essential relationship to the Father as the only begotten Son, as the rightful heir of God.
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