Second Peter 1:4 states that God has “granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature.” The greatest blessing bestowed by God upon human beings is that we may partake of His divine nature! This post will consider what the divine nature is and what it means to be a partaker of this divine nature.
The divine nature refers to what God is. The writings of John reveal that “God is Spirit,” “God is love,” and “God is light” (John 4:24; 1 John 4:8, 1:5). Spirit denotes the nature of God’s Person, love denotes the nature of God’s essence, and light denotes the nature of God’s expression. God is life, love, and light and has many other attributes such as righteousness, holiness, kindness, and compassion. It is of this nature, these riches, that we have become partakers, and we partake of them by enjoying them.
The initial experience of partaking is a matter of birth, for the divine nature is contained within the divine life. Just as a newborn child receives the human life and nature at birth, so a believer receives the divine life with the divine nature through regeneration. However, God does not want His people to remain in this fundamental experience. He desires men who can be called “partakers of the divine nature,” that is, those who are continually enjoying and participating in His nature after their initial experience of regeneration.
By enjoying all the riches of God in a daily way, we participate in His nature and become constituted with the elements of His being. This is similar to the gradual constitution of our physical body with nutrients that we obtain by eating physical food (John 6:57b). Over time, the divine nature is wrought into our being and is mingled with our very human nature. This results in a marvelous oneness of God and man, ultimately fulfilling God’s original intention that man would become the same as God in the divine life and the divine nature, but not in the Godhead (Eph. 1:4-5; Heb. 12:10b; Matt. 13:43; John 10:10a; Rom. 8:2; Eph. 4:6).
Further Reading:
Witness Lee, The Conclusion of the New Testament, Message 7 (Print).
Witness Lee, The Conclusion of the New Testament, Message 389 (Print).
Witness Lee, Life-Study of 2 Peter, Messages 2-3, 5 (Nook, Kindle, iBooks, Print).
Holy Bible Recovery Version, all verses mentioned in this post and their corresponding footnotes (Nook, Kindle, iBooks, Print).
(Most references in the Further Reading can also be viewed on www.ministrybooks.org.)