“Before the Angels of God!”

“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” (Luke 12:8-9 ESV)

If anything, that Jesus ever said should make you sit up and take notice, it should be this exhortation in Luke Chapter 12. Yet this passage has been misunderstood by millions of poor souls. Remember, in verse 1, Jesus tells His disciples, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” This warning sets the tone and objective of the truths that follow.

Recall in Chapter 11 Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and lawyers by saying, “Woe to you Pharisees… for neglecting the weightier matters of the Law.”, and “Woe to you lawyers as well, for you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear…” This group of the religious Jewish leadership was full of hypocrisy. This is an interesting word Jesus uses to describe the Pharisees; it literally means “under judging” or, as we would say today, “underhanded judging.” It means someone acting ‘under a mask, not revealing their true motives and hiding their true intentions. Jesus said their hypocrisy is leaven, what we call yeast, a symbol of spreading evil to all those around them. These Jewish leaders said one thing to the public but believed something entirely different in their hearts. These leaders professed to know and follow God the Father but rejected and hated God’s Son, the Lord Jesus. So, the warning that Jesus gave was primarily to expose the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Lawyers. But it is as true today as it was then. God hates hypocrisy.

“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God.” Here, the word that ESV translates as “acknowledges” is translated in other translations as “confess,” like in the KJV and NASB. Neither is a great translation, in my opinion; modern English doesn’t do justice to the original Greek with a single-word translation. The original word in the Greek is a compound word meaning “together speak” or to “say the same thing as”; in other words, to agree with what Jesus says. So, Jesus is saying that instead of being a hypocrite like the Pharisees and saying one thing while actually believing something else, anyone who will “say the same thing as” Jesus, who truly believes in and agrees with Jesus, then Jesus will “say the same thing as” they are saying to the angels of God, “This one belongs to me!”

And likewise in verse 9, “but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Jesus is speaking out against the Pharisees and their rejection of Him as God’s Son and that He was the promised Messiah. The word translated “denied” is also a compound word meaning “to totally reject, disown, or refuse.” Unfortunately, some think that Jesus is saying that unless we stand up in front of a church or group of people and publicly profess our abiding faith in Jesus, He will not accept us and will deny knowing us before God.

That is not what Jesus is teaching in this passage. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Look at what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Once we have been born again, as Jesus said in John 3, we can’t be unborn. Once Jesus has taken up residence in our lives, He will not leave.

This warning was given primarily for the Pharisees, who would say they love God but did not have the love of God in them. These men were leading people away from God, not “saying the same thing as” the Son of God. These hypocrites constantly fought against everything that Jesus was saying. These people rejected, denied, and lied about Him. This is not a warning that unless a believer speaks up at every public event about their faith in Jesus, He will deny even knowing them.

Believer, we can rest assured that if we have repented (changed our minds) and confess (say the same thing as) what Jesus said about salvation- that no one can come to the Father except through the Son- we can know that Jesus will present us to the Father as one of His own sheep.

So instead of this passage being a warning to believers that Jesus might not present them to the Father as His own, it assures us that Jesus will present all who truly have accepted Him to the Angels of God.

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"