Michael the Archangel

Ask three Christians who Michael the Archangel is and you will usually get three answers. A high-ranking angel. A symbolic figure. The pre-incarnate Son of God. The Bible is not silent on the question, but its evidence is scattered — a verse in Jude, a few in Daniel, one in Thessalonians, one in Revelation, and a chain of Old Testament theophanies that never use the name Michael at all. Read together, the evidence settles the question. And the answer is not an obscure curiosity; it is the gospel.

A name that is a claim

Michael is Hebrew — Mîkâ-El. The compound has three pieces: mi (who), kâ (like), and El (the short form of Elohim, God). The name means “who is like God.” Older translations sometimes render it as a question — who is like God? — but the form in Scripture is not interrogative; it is declarative. Michael is the name of a person, and the name itself is a statement about that person: this one is like God.

Archangel is the Greek end of the compound title: archē (chief, first, ruling) + angelos (messenger). It is not “one of the archangels.” There is no class of archangels in Scripture. Archangel means chief commander of the angels — the messenger above whom no other messenger ranks.

Put the two pieces together and the title is its own thesis. Michael the Archangel is the one who is like God, the chief of all the messengers. Already the case for a created Michael has trouble. There is a verse in Isaiah that says of God,

I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me.

Read against pagan idols, the verse holds; Isaiah’s context is the contrast of the true God with the false gods of the nations. But Scripture itself names a person whose name means the opposite — the one who is like God. There is only one figure in the canon for whom that title coheres with the rest of the Bible’s testimony: the Son.

The single verse where both names appear

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

This is the only verse in the entire Bible where the phrase Michael the archangel appears as a whole. Michael is named elsewhere; archangel is used elsewhere; but the compound — and the case it builds — sits here. Two scenes are layered in the verse. A dispute between Michael and the devil over the body of Moses (Moses, who died on Mount Nebo, Deuteronomy 34, and whom Jude is here remembering as resurrected; Matthew 17:3 confirms Moses appeared, bodied, on the Mount of Transfiguration). And a refusal — Michael does not himself rebuke the devil; he says, the Lord rebuke thee.

The standard objection runs from the second half. If Michael defers to the Lord, is he not lower in rank than the Lord — therefore a creature, not the Lord himself? The objection has weight on the surface. It collapses when the exact same exchange is found in the Old Testament, with the speaker named.

And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee.

Same accuser. Same rebuke. Same words. But here the speaker is named: it is the LORD himself — Yahweh — and the scene begins with the angel of the LORD standing before Joshua. The verse identifies the angel of the LORD’s utterance as the LORD’s utterance. Michael in Jude 9 is not deferring to a higher being; he is speaking the very words of the Lord — the same words Yahweh speaks in Zechariah 3, against the same enemy, in defense of the same kind of figure (a man Satan would accuse before God).

The angel with God’s name in him

The phrase the angel of the LORD appears throughout the Old Testament and tends to confuse modern readers because angel in English suggests one of the created heavenly host. The Hebrew word is broader: malakh, messenger. The angel of the LORD is the messenger of the LORD — and one passage tells us plainly that this particular messenger is not a creature like the rest.

Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.

Two things in those two verses. For my name is in him — the divine name is not borrowed and not delegated; it indwells this messenger. And he will not pardon your transgressions — which, in Scripture, only God can do (Mark 2:7; Luke 5:21). The angel of the LORD has a divine prerogative because he carries the divine name. Paul makes the identification explicit when he says of Israel’s wilderness rock that that rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4). The pre-incarnate Son led Israel; the angel of the LORD is the Son in his Old Testament office of messenger and guide.

The same messenger appears to Joshua at the entry into the promised land, with the same divine signature — and a further detail.

And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho … there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship … And the captain of the LORD’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy.

Three things to notice. He calls himself captain of the host of the LORD — chief commander of the heavenly armies, the angels (Psalm 103:21). Joshua worships him; the worship is accepted, not rebuked. And the same words spoken at the burning bush — loose thy shoe from off thy foot (Exodus 3:5) — are spoken here. The being who said those words to Moses is the same who says them to Joshua. The God of the burning bush is the captain of the LORD’s host.

Now set this beside a scene at the other end of the canon, with John the Revelator.

And I John … fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.

John tries to do what Joshua did. He is forbidden. The angel who refused John is one of the created angels — a fellow servant. The captain of the LORD’s host who accepted Joshua’s worship is in a different category altogether. The text of Scripture itself draws the distinction.

The one in the universe who is like God

The New Testament gives an explicit description of someone who is, in the most literal possible sense, just like God.

Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power …

The brightness of his glory. The express image of his person. No other figure in the canon is described in these terms. No angel. No prophet. No king. No created being of any rank. The description is the meaning of Mîkâ-El rendered into Greek prose — the one who is like God, in the strict sense of bearing the same glory and the same image. And the description is given of Christ.

And the same Christ said this of himself:

That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.

The same honour. Not derivative, not less, not a piety reserved for the Father with respect rendered to the Son. The same. And Christ says further that to withhold from the Son the honour due to the Father is to withhold it from the Father himself — because the relation between them is such that you cannot honour the Father without honouring the Son. The Bible reserves this position for one being. Michael, the one who is like God, has a singular referent.

How he became like God

If Michael is like God, the question follows: how? Scripture supplies a direct answer.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

The relation is begotten, and the Son is the only begotten — unique, without parallel in the universe. Begetting is not creation. A created thing has a nature different from its maker; a begotten son shares the nature of his father. This is why only Christ can be described as the express image of God’s person: the express image is born, not made.

And what does the begotten Son inherit? The Father’s name (we saw it already — my name is in him, Exodus 23:21). The Father’s authority. The Father’s glory. And one further thing, made explicit in John 5:

For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

Life in himself — underived, self-existent, eternal life — is what makes God God. The Father has it intrinsically. The Son has it given, which is the language of inheritance, not of loan. The Father has not delegated a portion of life to a creature; he has given his own life to his own begotten Son. The Son therefore has the very thing that distinguishes God from everything else in the universe. That is what makes him like God. That is what the name Mîkâ-El compresses into a single Hebrew word.

A note on what this article is not arguing. The full doctrine of the Godhead, the relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, and the historic Trinitarian and non-Trinitarian formulations all deserve their own treatment. What this page is establishing is narrower: that the figure called Michael in Scripture is the divine Son of God, begotten of the Father, who shares the Father’s nature, name, and life — and that this is the only reading of Michael that the texts will support.

The voice of the Archangel

A single verse in 1 Thessalonians links Michael’s rank to the return of Christ:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

The Lord himself descends — and the voice that accompanies the descent is the voice of the archangel. There is no second speaker in the verse. The Lord descends with the voice of the archangel because the Lord is the Archangel. And what is the effect of the voice? The dead in Christ rise. Now place this beside what Christ himself said earlier in his ministry:

Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth …

Whose voice raises the dead? His voice — Christ’s. The voice of the Son. The voice of the Archangel. The two are the same voice. And the resurrection of the dead — the great prerogative no creature can exercise — is the work of that voice.

Michael in Daniel

Daniel names Michael three times, each in a context that identifies his rank.

But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.

The phrase one of the chief princes reads in English as if Michael were one of several. The Hebrew rîshōn — rendered one in the King James — also means first in the sense of foremost, primary, or chief. Michael is the first of the chief princes, not one among peers. The whole rest of his title — Archangel — says the same thing. He is not in the rank; he commands it.

A few verses later Gabriel calls Michael your prince — Daniel’s prince, the prince of Daniel’s people (Daniel 10:21). And then in chapter 12, the title escalates:

And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered …

The great prince which standeth for the children of thy people. The one who stands for his people in the time of trouble. The one whose standing is the cause of his people’s deliverance. There is no creature who fits that description. The figure of Daniel 12:1 is the one of whom Hebrews speaks as our great high priest (Hebrews 4:14–16), standing for his people in the heavenly sanctuary.

War in heaven

The last passage where Michael is named is also the one most often misread.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Most readers, hearing this for the first time, place it before the fall of man — when Lucifer, as Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 describe, was cast out of heaven for his pride. That earlier casting did happen; it is the substratum of the whole drama. But the war Revelation 12 is describing here is not it. The context of the chapter is precise about timing.

And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns … And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

The man-child is Christ — born of the woman (faithful Israel), threatened by the dragon at his birth (Herod and the slaughter of the innocents), caught up to God and his throne (the ascension). Verses 3–5 cover the incarnation, the attempts on Christ’s life, and his ascension. And it is only after this — after verse 6 — that we read of war in heaven in verse 7. The war of Revelation 12:7 happens after the ascension, not before the fall.

The internal evidence confirms it. The voice in heaven that announces the victory (verse 10) names Satan as the accuser of our brethren, which accused them before our God day and night. There were no brethren to be accused before the creation of man. The same voice says now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ. Salvation did not come before the cross; it was promised, prefigured, sworn — but not yet accomplished. Now is come is the language of an event that has just happened. The voice is announcing the victory of the cross.

And note who fights in heaven on behalf of the redeemed: Michael and his angels. After the ascension, the Son returns to heaven not only as the Son but as a man — the new representative of the human family, replacing the one whose deception in Eden cost the race its place. The dispossession of Satan from his accusing role in heaven, and the installation of Christ as the new mediator for his people, is the substance of the war Revelation 12:7 names. Michael is named here, even after the incarnation, because the controversy that ends in this casting-out began in heaven long before — and Michael was the rejected commander from the start.

Why it matters — being, not doing

Pull the threads together. The figure named Michael is the chief commander of the angels (1 Thess 4, Joshua 5). He bears the divine name (Exodus 23). He pardons sins (Exodus 23). He receives worship (Joshua 5). He raises the dead (John 5, 1 Thess 4). He is the great prince who stands for his people (Daniel 12). He has life in himself, given by the Father (John 5). He is the express image of the Father’s person (Hebrews 1). He is the only begotten of the Father (John 1). There is one figure in Scripture of whom all these things are said. The figure is the Son.

And here is the practical edge of the question. Michael’s likeness to God is not constituted by what he does. It is constituted by who he is. He is like God because he was begotten of God, sharing the Father’s nature by inheritance. His divine acts — forgiving sins, receiving worship, raising the dead — are not the cause of his divinity. They are its evidence. They demonstrate what was already true of him before he ever spoke a word into a tomb.

The same logic governs how we become like God. Every false gospel since Eden has taught the inverse — that being like God is something to be achieved, performed, climbed into, legislated for. Ye shall be as gods was the serpent’s promise, and its method was the eating of a fruit, the performance of an act. The true gospel inverts this. We do not become like God by behaving as God would behave; we become like God by being born of him.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

The new birth is not something we accomplish. It is something we receive. The pattern that holds for Michael — likeness to God by inheritance, not by performance — is the pattern that holds for every soul who comes to Christ. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 12:11), and blood, in Scripture, is the bearer of life (Leviticus 17:11). The blood of Christ is the life of Christ given to us. The overcoming of the accuser, in our case as in Michael’s, is the receiving of a life that was never ours to make.

The identity of Michael is therefore not a theological curiosity. It is the prototype of the gospel. The Son is like God by birth. Those who are in the Son are made like God by birth — the new birth he himself accomplishes in them. To miss who Michael is, is to miss how the gospel works.

Scripture index

Every passage cited above, in canonical order.

Further reading

• Revelation 1 — the vision of the Son of Man, the priest among the lamps, who speaks the divine self-designations in his own voice.
• Daniel 7 — the Son of Man receiving an everlasting kingdom from the Ancient of Days; the Christological backdrop to Michael in Daniel 10 and 12.
• Typology — how Old Testament figures are designed to teach the gospel before its accomplishment; the framework that lets the angel of the LORD passages do the Christological work they were given to do.