Are Jesus and Michael the Archangel One and the Same?

At first, it might seem strange to ask, “Are Jesus and Michael the Archangel one and the same?”. To most of us, that is an absolutely ludicrous thing  even to suggest. However, if we want to know how to explain and defend our faith thoroughly, we have to address it. As strange as it may seem to us, the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus is in fact Michael the Archangel, so we should know how to respond to this odd belief. We need to know the biblical arguments against it, and we need to be able to counter their arguments for it.

Jesus, Angels, and the Law

Let’s start by looking at the arguments against it. There is no passage that explicitly denies that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, but there are a few that deal with the more general question of whether Jesus is an angel at all, and the answer is a clear and resounding no. To begin, consider something St. Paul says in one of his letters:

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained by angels through an intermediary. (Galatians 3:19)

In this verse, Paul is talking about the Jewish Law, and he tells us that it was “ordained by angels.” That may sound strange to us, but it simply reflects the common first-century Jewish idea that Israel received the Law through the mediation of angels rather than directly from God.

Then, a few verses later, he says that those who follow the Law are “slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe” (Galatians 4:3). He doesn’t explain who these “elemental spirits are,” but given his teaching that the Law was “ordained by angels,” it stands to reason that they are the “elemental spirits” to which he is referring. If the Law was given through angels, it makes sense to say that those who follow it are in bondage to them. Otherwise, it is difficult to see how Paul could say that the Law, which he elsewhere describes as “holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12), could enslave people to “elemental spirits of the universe.”

Immediately after this, St. Paul goes on to say that belonging to Jesus liberates us from this slavery (Galatians 4:4-7). If we’re under Jesus, we are no longer under the Law or the angels. However, that cannot be the case, if Jesus is himself an angel. If he is, then we are still in this same kind of bondage; we are still “slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe.” Consequently, whoever he is, Jesus is definitely not Michael the Archangel (or any other angel).

Jesus, Angels, and Hebrews

And in case there is any doubt about that, we can turn to Hebrews for further confirmation. This letter begins with a contrast between Jesus and the angels. It says:

When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:3-4)

This text is pretty straightforward. Jesus is “superior to angels,” so he can’t be one himself. Then, in the next several verses, the letter continues this contrast, quoting multiple passages from the Old Testament and distinguishing between those that were said of Jesus and those that were said of the angels (Hebrews 1:5-13). It is a lengthy string of scriptural quotations, so it hammers the point home again and again and makes Jesus’ superiority to the angels (and, by extension, his distinction from them as well) crystal clear.

So again, just like we saw with the teaching of St. Paul, only one conclusion can follow from this: whatever Jesus may actually be, we know for sure that he is not an angel, so he cannot be Michael the Archangel.

The Only Archangel?

However, that is only one side of the story. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have arguments of their own, and we cannot ignore them if we want to really show that they are wrong. In particular, I want to examine the two arguments from the page I linked to in the introduction and see where they go wrong.

Let’s start with the first argument on that page:

God’s Word refers to Michael “the archangel.” (Jude 9) This term means “chief angel.” Notice that Michael is called the archangel. This suggests that there is only one such angel. In fact, the term “archangel” occurs in the Bible only in the singular, never in the plural. Moreover, Jesus is linked with the office of archangel. Regarding the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Thessalonians 4:16 states: “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice.” Thus the voice of Jesus is described as being that of an archangel. This scripture  therefore suggests that Jesus himself is the archangel Michael.

Bozo, Felix, and Popeye

Each step of this argument is flawed. To begin, the mere fact that someone’s name includes the word “the” doesn’t mean they’re the only one of their kind. Consider these names:

Bozo the Clown
Felix the Cat
Popeye the Sailor

According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ logic, Bozo must be the only clown, Felix must be the only cat, and Popeye must be the only sailor, but we know they’re not. Those types of names simply tell us what kind of thing someone is, so someone can be called “the something” without being the only “something.” And the same holds true for Michael. The fact that he is called “the archangel” could very well mean that he is simply one among several archangels, so using the adjective, the, is entirely inconclusive.

When we move on to the next step, we have to acknowledge that Scripture doesn’t mention any other archangels, but that fact is not nearly as decisive as it may seem. The word “archangel” is used only twice in the entire Bible (1 Thessalonians 4:16, Jude 9), and Michael is mentioned several times without being explicitly called an archangel (such as Daniel 10:13, 12:1; Revelation 12:7). Consequently, it is entirely possible that there are other archangels that either are not mentioned in Scripture or that are mentioned but are never explicitly identified as such.

Jesus the Archangel?

So from all that, we can see that even if Jesus is an archangel, he is not necessarily Michael. However, does the Bible really identify Jesus as an archangel? To answer that question, let’s move on to the next step in the argument. This one is based on a verse from St. Paul:

For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. (1 Thessalonians 4:16)

The Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that since Jesus will come “with the voice of an archangel,” his voice must actually be that of an archangel, which implies that he is one himself. However, that doesn’t actually follow, and there are two main reasons why. First, the phrase “with the voice of an archangel” does not have to refer to Jesus’ own voice. It could simply mean that an archangel will announce his coming, much like the next phrase, “and with the trumpet of God,” means that a trumpet will announce his coming, not that he himself will somehow sound like a trumpet. When we understand the verse this way, Paul is simply mentioning two things that will herald Jesus’ coming without implying that either will actually be Jesus’ own voice.

Secondly, even if the voice does belong to Jesus, that is a really weird thing to say if he is an archangel. To see what I mean, imagine this scenario: You go to see the president give a speech, and then afterwards a friend asks you what it was like. In response, you answer, “He spoke with the voice of a human being, and he explained his plan to improve our country.” Would anybody actually talk like that? Of course not! If a human being is speaking, you don’t say that he has the voice of a human being. That is completely unnecessary and, to be frank, quite silly.

Likewise, if Jesus is in fact an archangel, Paul would not need to say that he will speak with the voice of one. The only reason to point that out is if it would actually be different from his normal voice. Thus, however we take this verse, it definitely does not teach that Jesus is an archangel.

The Heavenly Army

The other argument that the page uses is, in my opinion, even less persuasive:

The Bible states that “Michael and his angels battled with the dragon . . . and its angels.” (Revelation 12:7) Thus, Michael is the Leader of an army of faithful angels. Revelation also describes Jesus as the Leader of an army of faithful angels. (Revelation 19:14-16) And the apostle Paul specifically mentions “the Lord Jesus” and “his powerful angels.” (2 Thessalonians 1:7) So the Bible speaks of both Michael and “his angels” and Jesus and “his angels.” (Matthew 13:41; 16:27; 24:31; 1 Peter 3:22) Since God’s Word nowhere indicates that there are two armies of faithful angels in heaven​—one headed by Michael and one headed by Jesus—​it is logical to conclude that Michael is none other than Jesus Christ in his heavenly role.

The most glaring problem here is that this kind of logic can also prove that Jesus is God, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe he is. The Bible says that the angels belong to both Jesus (Matthew 13:41) and God (Matthew 4:6, Luke 12:8), and since Scripture does not say that there are two groups of angels (one headed by Jesus and the other by God), Jesus must in fact be God.

Now, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would never accept that argument, and neither should we. An entire group can rightfully be said to belong to different levels of authority, so the fact that the angels belong to both God and Jesus does not prove anything. To understand what I mean, consider a baseball team. You can say that the team in some sense belongs to its captain, to its manager, and to its owner, but that does not imply that those are all the same person. Rather, we can do that because we can talk about the team belonging to different levels of authority.

Likewise, we can also talk about the heavenly army of angels belonging to Jesus and Michael, but that doesn’t imply that they are the same person. Rather, we can speak this way because that army can be said to belong to different levels of authority. It belongs to Michael as its general and to Jesus as its king, so once again, we see that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ argument for their distinctive belief about Jesus’ identity doesn’t hold up.

At the end of the day, there is simply no way that Jesus and Michael the Archangel are the same person. For one, Scripture teaches that Jesus is definitely not an angel, and secondly, the arguments, which the Jehovah’s Witnesses use to try to prove that he is Michael, don’t work. Consequently, we can be confident that Jesus and Michael are in fact two different persons, so on this question, traditional Christianity wins the argument decisively.