Angels were created before any of the progressive creation, " when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." The highest of creatures were first created and abide (as unfallen) in their estate; then the progressive creation as a general rule from inanimate to reptiles, beasts and man when moral responsibility now comes in and failure, and then the great truth of redemption, but this by the incarnation of the Son of God, God Himself coming into sorrow, both in Christ and by His Spirit, so as that man should have chords of divine harmony, which no angel could, and death—the power over the creature not created for death-being entered into, man in Christ is raised far above all principality and power, and we sit in heavenly places in Him. See Psa. 8, and use of it in the New Testament. And this angels have been contemplating from the beginning.
This beautiful, divine order (i.e., first, the highest creatures, angels, then (beginning from the lowest, yet Lamarckian or Darwinian development formally disproved both by the placoid early fishes and the superior Saurian class coming before existing Saurians) the classes continuing in order up to man—invertebrate, vertebrate, mammalia, " a little lower than the angels") shows also very distinctly the difference between eternal existence and eternal life. The angels have eternal existence as creatures, not eternal life through having Christ for their life; whereas Christ being the eternal life which was with the Father (an eternal life given us in Him before the world was), the incarnation, redemption, and resurrection set us in this life in risen glory far above principalities and powers. It is not creation order, but purpose, redemption, power of resurrection. An additional truth comes in by Christ's death. Not only He becomes life to us, but God has quickened us " together with" Him. This detail gives the special character of the Church or assembly. But the order of the divine ways is in all this exceedingly beautiful.