"We are helpers of your joy" (2 Cor. 1:24). One Christian conversing with
The good angels do service to the saints in life. The angel comforted the virgin Mary (Luke 1:28). The angels stopped the mouths of the lions, that they could not hurt Daniel (Dan. 6:22). A Christian has an invisible guard of angels about him. "He shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways" (Psalm 91:11). The angels are of the saints' life guard, yea, the chief of the angels: "Are they not all ministering spirits?" The highest angels take care of the lowest saints.
The good angels do service at death. The angels are about the saints' sick beds to comfort them. As God comforts by His Spirit, so by His angels. Christ in His agony was refreshed by an angel (Luke 22:43); so are believers in the agony of death: and when the saints' breath expires, their souls are carried up to heaven by a convoy of angels (Luke 16:22).
The good angels also do service at the day of judgment. The angels shall open the saints' graves, and shall conduct them into the presence of Christ, when they shall be made like His glorious body. "He shall send his angels, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the one end of heaven to the other" (Matt. 24:31). The angels at the day of judgment shall rid the godly of all their enemies. Here the saints are plagued with enemies. "They are my adversaries, because I follow the thing that is good" (Psalm 38:20). Well, the angels will shortly give God's people a writ of ease, and set them free from all their enemies: "The tares are the children of the wicked one, the harvest is the end of the world, the reapers are the angels; as therefore the tares are gathered and burnt in the fire, so shall it be in the end of the world: the Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things which offend, and those who do iniquity, and cast them into a furnace of fire" (Matt. 13:38 - 42). At the day of judgment the angels of God will take the wicked, which are the tares, and will bundle them up, and throw them into hell furnace, and then the godly will not be troubled with enemies any more: thus the good angels work for good. See here the honour and dignity of a believer. He has God's name written upon him (Rev. 3:12), the Holy Ghost dwelling in him (2 Tim. 1:14), and a guard of angels attending him.
6. The Communion of Saints works for good.
"We are helpers of your joy" (2 Cor. 1:24). One Christian conversing with another is a means to confirm him. As the stones in an arch help to strengthen one another, one Christian by imparting his experience, heats and quickens