Gen. 1:31—“God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”; Jude 6—“angels that kept not their own beginning”—ἀρχήν seems here to mean their beginning in holy character, rather than their original lordship and dominion.
(b) They had a probation.
This we infer from 1 Tim. 5:21—“the elect angels”; cf. 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... unto obedience.” If certain angels, like certain men, are “elect ... unto obedience,” it would seem to follow that there was a period of probation, during which their obedience or disobedience determined their future destiny; see Ellicott on 1 Tim. 5:21. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 106-108—“Gen. 3:14—‘Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou’—in the sentence on the serpent, seems to imply that Satan's day of grace was ended when he seduced man. Thenceforth he was driven to live on dust, to triumph only in sin, to pick up a living out of man, to possess man's body or soul, to tempt from the good.”
(c) Some preserved their integrity.
Ps. 89:7—“the council of the holy ones”—a designation of angels; Mark 8:38—“the holy angels.”Shakespeare, Macbeth, 4:3—“Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.”
(d) Some fell from their state of innocence.
John 8:44—“He was a murderer from the beginning, and standeth not in the truth, because there is no truth in him”; 2 Pet. 2:4—“angels when they sinned”; Jude 6—“angels who kept not their own beginning, but left their proper habitation.” Shakespeare, Henry VIII, 3:2—“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition; By that sin fell the angels; how can man then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?... How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!... When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again.”
(e) The good are confirmed in good.
Mat. 6:10—“Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth”; 18:10—“in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven”; 2 Cor. 11:14—“an angel of light.”
(f) The evil are confirmed in evil.