Scripture states,

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants (Hebrews 2:14–16 NIV84).

What does this mean? How is it that Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice is sufficient to save humans from sin but is not able to save Satan and his fallen angels from sin? (Note the text doesn’t say Christ offers the angels help but they refuse it).

If one approaches Scripture from the perspective of law and law-enforcement rather than as a revelation of reality, texts like this are often difficult to understand. If one believes God’s law functions like human law, a system of rules that require legal enforcement through punishment, and the punishment for sin is death, then one often concludes that Jesus saves by making that legal payment on our behalf.

If that is the case, then why can’t His blood payment be applied to the sins of angels if they were willing to repent? Is the blood of Christ only sufficient to cleanse the record of humans, but it is not supreme? Is it not more powerful than the sins of angels? Is it unable to cleanse the record of angelic sin? Or is it that the Father is unwilling to accept the blood payment of His Son for the sins of angels? Is the Father’s wrath and anger toward angels greater than toward humans, and even the blood of His Son is not enough to get Him to forgive Satan and the fallen angels?

This is the type of confusion and error one may fall into if they hold to the false human-law penal/legal theology of the sin problem.

But all of this clears up beautifully when we move away from the human-law fiction, return to reality, and worship God as Creator, understanding that God’s laws are design laws, the laws that life and reality are built and function upon. In this reality-based understanding, we realize that sin is not legal; it is lethal! Sin is a state of being out of harmony with God, which alters the function and operations of living beings.

At its core, sin is distrust of God (Romans 14:23) that is internalized and applied to the self, to the mind, heart, inner being, motives, beliefs, and foundations of one’s individuality. It is based upon the acceptance of lies that leads to the incorporation of fear and selfishness. This state of being causes ever-increasing decay, degradation, corrosion, and corruption of the self, which eventually results in dissolution and death—complete disconnection from God and life. Engaged in, practiced, and not corrected, eliminated, purged, or removed from the being, the only result is death.

What saves is truth and love being restored within the living being, which reestablishes trust in God so that the believer opens the heart and receives the Holy Spirit, who brings the life of Christ and restores within us perfect harmony with God and His design for life. As Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 NIV84).

Salvation is dying to the spirit of fear and selfishness with which we are born and being reborn, reanimated, with the life of love and trust that comes from Jesus. And this is why Christ’s death could save humans but not fallen angels—for it is how reality works.

Why the Angels Are Different

The angels in heaven were created individually, each with their own breath of life (animating spirit). They were all created sinless with spirits of perfect love and trust. But they chose to believe Lucifer’s lies; each one broke trust with God and corrupted themselves from their own state of sinlessness!

Further, they lived in heaven, with direct access to God and Christ in their full glory, while they were considering the lies of Lucifer. They were presented with truth and love, and the opportunity to reject the lies, have their misunderstandings corrected, and have any false conclusions clarified and replaced with truth. If they had any doubts, emerging distrust, or pride, they had the opportunity to be healed by choosing to trust God and internalizing the revelations of infinite truth and love coming from their Creator in their face-to-face relationship with Him. Metaphorically, this would be like a computer that had been infected with bad code being exposed to the perfect original operating system, having all the errors purged and its operating system restored to perfection.

But the fallen angels refused the truth and despised the love, and at some point, they crossed a line of reality when their choices solidified into their being the lies, selfishness, and pride to the degree that they destroyed within themselves the ability to respond to truth and love. In fact, they came to the point that they despised truth and love, and they now do everything they can to hide from it and war to destroy it. Therefore, by the time Christ came and died for human salvation, no truth or love would have any redeeming impact upon the fallen angels—it was not for them that Christ came; it was for us.

Humans are in a different position than that of the angels in heaven in two ways:

• First, each angel was created individually, with its own breath of life. But humans are a unique creation, created in the image of God with godly capacities that angels do not have—the ability to procreate beings in our image. Only one breath of life was breathed into humanity, into Adam, and that breath of life is shared through procreation with all subsequent humans (Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:19).
• Second, the angels sinned in the light of God’s glory. They had the opportunity to be corrected in His presence. Humanity did not have the same comprehensive, extensive, and time-exposed revelation and knowledge of God that the angels had. Adam and Eve in Eden were new beings without the long experience, exposure, knowledge, and opportunity to know God that the angels had. They were deceived in regard to the truth of God’s character of love. Thus, there is hope for human sinners in a revelation of the truth of who God is—the presentation of the eternal gospel, the eternal good news about God, the truth that sets free.

Because humans have the capacity to procreate, only Adam received the breath of life directly from God. Eve was created from living tissue taken from Adam, so she shared the same breath of life breathed into Adam. As Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:23 NIV84). When they broke trust with God, they corrupted themselves; their spirits were changed from perfect love and trust to fear and selfishness. Having done this, the only life, the only spirit, they had to procreate with was their now terminal, infected spirit of fear and selfishness. Thus, every human descended from them is born in sin, conceived in iniquity (Psalm 51:5). We are born sin-infected, terminal, dead in trespass and sin. We have our own unique individualities, personhoods, but we are constituted with a spirit of fear and selfishness. We never had the opportunity of Adam, Eve, and the angels in heaven to live in sinless perfection and choose from a position of sinless perfection who we would believe, love, and trust. We never had the opportunity to live sinlessly.

Thus, Jesus, through Mary, became incarnate and partook of that same life breathed into Adam and corrupted by Adam, but the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and Jesus’ humanity was conceived with a new sinless breath of life brought by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20; Romans 1:3; Hebrews 2:14–17; James 1:15).

This is how Jesus was tempted in all points like us yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and in His humanity, using only human abilities, Jesus chose to live in sinless perfection, and He purged, killed, eliminated, the spirit of fear and selfishness from the humanity with which He was born and replaced it with His sinless spirit of love and trust. And He rose again on the third day, the second Adam, the new head of humanity, and opened the way for all who trust Him to be reborn, to receive His sinless life, not as a legal payment in books, but as a living reality within us, a new divine, animating, empowering, transforming, and cleansing presence within us. We become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). He is the Vine, and we are the branches that, when grafted in by faith, receive the Holy Spirit, who takes the life of Christ and reproduces it in us. Then we, being motivated by love and trust, grow in truth and are transformed, growing, maturing, and becoming ever more like Christ.

Thus, Christ’s sacrifice was for humans and not for the fallen angels because of how reality works. God’s kingdom is the kingdom of truth and love, and love cannot be achieved through imposed law, threats, external power, or inflictions of imposed punishments. It is only by truth and love that hearts and minds are won to love, friendship, loyalty, and trust. But when one persistently rejects truth and love (like the fallen angels), eventually they become so corrupted in lies, distortion, and selfishness that no amount of truth and love will be positively experienced and internalized; and therefore, trust is not restored.

Thus, as the Bible teaches, God wins “not by might nor by power but by the Spirit, says the LORD” (Zechariah 4:6). It is only by the work of the Spirit of truth and love that lies, fear, and selfishness are purged and trust is reestablished. And this is why Christ’s death, while not helpful to the fallen angels, who have destroyed any capacity to value and respond to truth and love, is helpful to the loyal angels; what He demonstrated by His sinless life and sacrificial death answered all their remaining questions and solidified them in their loyalty. As Scripture says, all things in heaven and earth are reconciled to Christ at the cross (Colossians 1:20).