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Scripture Reading: Rom. 1:20; Col. 2:9; Gen. 1:26a, 27; John 1:13; 1 John 3:9; 1 Pet. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:4; John 4:24; 1 John 4:8, 16; 1:5; John 1:4; Rom. 8:2
In all the messages that we have given, we have never touched in a thorough and adequate way the definition of the divine nature. This term the divine nature is mentioned only once in the entire Bible — in 2 Peter 1:4. This verse mentions the divine nature in a very particular way in that it says that we have become partakers of the divine nature. A partaker is different from a receiver. We have received the divine nature, but there is a question as to whether or not we are partaking of the divine nature. This is why Peter in his second Epistle tells us how to partake of the divine nature in the first chapter. We need to be the partakers of the divine nature in the same way that we are partakers of food every day. Not many of us have ever paid an adequate amount of attention to the matter of how to become an enjoyer of the divine nature.
It is not an easy task to define the divine nature. It would even be hard for any of us to give an adequate definition of the human nature. From our fellowship I hope that we all will be able to see the definition of the divine nature, how to partake of and enjoy the divine nature, which we have already received through our divine birth, and the issue of our partaking of the divine nature. In this chapter we will focus our attention on the definition of the divine nature.
When many Christians study the Bible, their first concern is for their welfare or for what blessing or profit they can get from the Bible. Their second concern is how to worship God, how to fear Him, how to please Him, and how to do things to glorify Him. Not many Christians even think about how to fellowship with God. They mostly would be concerned with how to have a time with God. The third real concern for many Bible readers is how to improve or better themselves. We all have the realization that we are not that good. Therefore, to many of us the Bible is a divine, heavenly book telling us how to improve ourselves. Finally, many Bible readers hope that the Bible could be an instruction book telling them what to do. Not many have really seen something concerning God’s interest, realizing that God intends to work Himself into us to be our life and to be our nature. A few persons whom I met talked a lot about how God is to be our life, but they spoke very little concerning how God’s nature could be our nature. For God to be our life is a deep subject, but for God’s nature to be our nature is an even deeper matter.
There are three verses in the Bible that puzzle many Bible students and translators — Romans 1:20, Colossians 2:9, and 2 Peter 1:4. Romans 1:20 refers to God’s eternal power and divine characteristics. Some translators translate divine characteristics wrongly into “divine nature.” The King James Version translates divine characteristics into “Godhead.” In Colossians 2:9 we are told that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily. The word for Godhead in Colossians 2:9 and the word for divine characteristics in Romans 1:20 denote different things concerning God and are two different Greek words. Then in 2 Peter 1:4 we see the divine nature. In the past we may have felt that these verses referred to the same thing, but we need a clear understanding in order to differentiate among them. Since gold signifies the divine nature of God for the base of God’s building, we need to have a clear vision concerning the definition of the divine nature.
In a note on Romans 1:20 Darby says that the Greek word theiotes means “what is characteristic of God”; hence, theiotes denotes the characteristics of the divine nature. For example, the nature of a piece of furniture may be wood, and the grain of the wood is a characteristic of the nature. According to Romans 1:20, the creation only shows the characteristics, the expressions, of God’s divine nature. In the creation you cannot see God’s divine nature itself.
The creation cannot show or exhibit the person of God. The person of God was exhibited and expressed by Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:9 says that in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, not the fullness of divinity but of the Godhead, the person. Because the creation is not a person, it can only show God’s characteristics, not God’s person. Only a person can exhibit or express a person, and the person that exhibits God’s person is Jesus Christ. The word Godhead in Colossians 2:9 refers to God’s person. The creation shows only the characteristics of God but not God’s person. Christ, as the embodiment of God, shows the Godhead, God’s person, and shows Him in full bodily.
We all need to see what characteristics of God are shown in creation. The universe as a whole is not dark but very bright. Because it is bright, it is very pleasant. If God had created a universe full of darkness, it would not be a very pleasant place in which to live. Light makes us pleasant and makes everything pleasant to us. The entire universe being so bright and full of light denotes that the Creator is also like this. Brightness is one of God’s characteristics. The entire universe is also full of beauty. No one can say that the universe is something ugly. This indicates that beauty is also one of the divine characteristics.
In addition to this, the universe is in a good order. Everything in the universe is orderly. Orderliness is another characteristic of God. Our God as the Creator is not One of confusion but One of orderliness. He keeps everything in order.
In the Lord Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, we can see the orderliness of God. He first ordered the disciples “to have all recline by companies on the green grass. And they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties” (Mark 6:39-40). After the feeding of the five thousand, there were many leftovers. Our thought might have been to forget about the fragments of bread and the pieces of fish that were left over. But when the crowds were fully satisfied, the Lord said to His disciples, “Gather the broken pieces left over that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12). The Scriptures record that the disciples took up twelve full handbaskets of the broken pieces of bread and of the fish (Mark 6:43). This shows us that the Lord performed a marvelous miracle, which signified the bountiful and inexhaustible supply of His divine life, but this miracle also shows us that one of the major characteristics of God is orderliness.
Also, in His creation we see the characteristic of love. “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45).
Light, orderliness, and love are some of the characteristics of God, and actually they are characteristics of God’s divine nature. Characteristics always come out from the nature. If there is no nature, no characteristics will be shown or exhibited. Romans 1:20 refers to the characteristics of the divine nature shown in God’s creation.
In Colossians 2:9 the Greek word for Godhead is theotes. The only difference between the Greek word for divine characteristics in Romans 1:20 and the Greek word for Godhead in Colossians 2:9 is the letter I. Divine characteristics in Greek in Romans 1:20 is theiotes. Theotes, however, in Colossians 2:9 refers to the Godhead, God the person. What dwelt in Jesus Christ was not merely the divine characteristics but God the divine person, the Godhead. As believers, we should have the divine characteristics of the divine nature and even the divine nature itself, but we cannot have the Godhead. In the Godhead, though, the divine nature is implied. In Colossians 2:9 the Godhead implies the divine nature because the divine nature is one of the constituents of God.
In God’s creation man was made only in the image of God, without the divine nature (Gen. 1:26a, 27). If you read the Bible carefully, you will see that the Ten Commandments were called God’s testimony (Exo. 16:34; 25:16, 21). God’s testimony simply means God’s description. The Ten Commandments were a description of God. The law that a person makes reflects the kind of person he is. If you were a bank robber, you might make a law legalizing bank robbing. When we read the Ten Commandments, we can see that God is love, that God is light, that God is holy, and that God is righteous. This describes the very Lawgiver, the Legislator in the universe, who made the Ten Commandments. Man was made in the image of God, in the image of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Unless God comes into man and becomes man’s contents, of course, man has merely the image with no reality. Love, light, holiness, and righteousness are the virtues of human morality. Every human being has a natural love and a natural tendency to seek after light; every human being is seeking to be something higher, something uncommon, which is holiness; and every human being seeks to be right and to do the right things with others. This proves that man was made in such a way.
As we have seen, God created man in such a morality of love, of light, of righteousness, and of holiness. These are the virtues of the human morality created by God, but in God’s created man there was no divine nature. Man had only the image, the form, of God. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, however, we received a person as our content and reality. Most Christian teachers would say that we received salvation, forgiveness, justification, reconciliation, and many other items, but very few Christian teachers stress that when we received the Lord Jesus, we received a person. After Peter preached the gospel at Pentecost, he told the ones to whom he was preaching to repent and be baptized upon the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, that they might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). This gift is the Holy Spirit Himself, as the realization of Christ, given by God to the believers in Christ. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we received Him, the person, as our salvation.
When this person entered into us, regeneration transpired, and we were born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). We all should praise the Lord for the divine fact that we have been born of God! The apostle John also tells us in his first Epistle that when we were begotten of God, a divine seed entered into our being (3:9). As believers in the Lord, God’s seed is now in us. This person whom we have received is the divine seed that has been planted in our inner being. This is not superstition but a marvelous divine fact.
With any seed there is life, and in that life there is the nature that is going to be developed. A grain of wheat is a seed of wheat. When this seed is sown into the earth, it develops in life with its nature. The full development of the life of the seed with its nature issues in a stalk with many grains, many seeds. The development of the grain of wheat comes out of the nature of that grain or seed. The same thing is true of a carnation seed. If a carnation seed is sown into the earth, it develops with its nature into a beautiful carnation blossom.
We have received the divine life through the divine birth, and this divine life has a nature, which is the divine nature of God. John 1:13 tells us that we have been born of God; 1 John 3:9 says that since we have been born of God, we have the divine seed in us; 1 Peter 1:3 says we have been regenerated by God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; and 2 Peter 1:4 indicates that since we have received the divine life, we are now partakers of the divine nature. We are not receiving the divine nature but partaking of, enjoying, what we have already received.
The problem is this: we all have received the divine nature, but we do not regularly enjoy what we have received. Not many of us can testify that all day long we are those who are partaking of the divine nature and that all day long we are enjoying the divine nature within us. We neglect this divine nature because we are wrapped up with four things: our welfare, how to please God, how to improve ourselves, and how to do things in a right way. We need to forget about these things and pick up one thing — how to enjoy and partake of the divine nature. In order to partake of and enjoy the divine nature we first need to see what the divine nature is.
The divine nature is what God is. The nature of a piece of furniture is what the furniture is. If the furniture is wooden, the nature of the furniture is wood. The Bible tells us emphatically and directly that God is Spirit (John 4:24), God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and God is light (1:5). All these items concerning what God is were written by the apostle John. The divine nature is a constitution of these three items — Spirit, love, and light. To be a partaker of the divine nature is to be one partaking of God as Spirit, as love, and as light. Spirit denotes the nature of God’s person, and love denotes the nature of God’s essence. God is a divine being with a divine essence. The essence is more intrinsic than the element of something. Within the element is the essence, and this divine essence has love as its nature. Furthermore, the divine light is the nature of God’s expression.
God is a person who has His essence and His expression. The divine nature is the nature of God’s person, the nature of God’s essence, and the nature of God’s expression. God is a divine being, a person, and the nature of His person is Spirit. This person also has an essence, and the nature of His essence is love. God is a constitution of love. Also, light is the nature of God’s expression, so Spirit, love, and light are the constituents of the divine nature. To partake of the divine nature is to partake of the divine Spirit, divine love, and divine light.
John tells us that the divine birth brought a seed into us (3:9). In this seed is the divine nature. Peter, furthermore, tells us that God has granted to us all things which relate to life (2 Pet. 1:3). Based upon this fact God gave us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these we might become partakers, enjoyers, of the divine nature. Now we all have to learn how to taste the constituents of the divine nature, which are Spirit, love, and light. In other words, when you partake of the divine nature, you enjoy God as the Spirit, as love, and as light.
To illustrate this, let us consider our set-apart time to fellowship with the Lord. In such a fellowship we realize and enjoy the Lord as the Spirit, and simultaneously we enjoy the nature of God’s essence, which is love. Love then saturates us and even becomes us. Before this time we may have been disgusted with many things. After this kind of fellowship, however, everything is lovable. We may have been disgusted with our wife before this fellowship, but afterward we are filled with love for our wife. This love has not only filled us but saturated us. The reason we Christians can love persons whom others cannot love is because we enjoy God as love. We enjoy the divine nature of this loving God. This is why John tells us in his first Epistle that if we love our brother, this means that we are born of God because God is love (4:7-8). When we love others, we are enjoying the divine nature. One who does not have God or who does not partake of God’s divine nature hates everything. Do not think that people love everything. They are just cultured and trained to be polite. Their kindness and loving are a kind of politics. The genuine love is the issue of the enjoyment of the divine nature. A supervisor or a boss may say something in a loving way to an employee. Unless what he has said is an enjoyment of the divine nature, he is actually playing politics. When the time comes for him to fire or lay off this employee, he will have no problem. Only those who partake of the divine nature love people genuinely. They are not taught to love others, but they have become love toward others. They are the partakers of the divine love, which is the very nature of the divine essence.
If we would spend an adequate amount of time in the morning with the Lord, we would be full of light inwardly, and we would not do things nonsensically or say things foolishly. Whatever we do and whatever we say would be full of light. This is the issue of our enjoying of the divine nature. This is because one constituent in the divine nature is light. If we would all spend time to fellowship with the Lord, we would have the sensation that we are enjoying the Lord as the Spirit, and we would become a person of love. Love would saturate us. Furthermore, whatever we would say would be light, and whatever we would do would be transparent as crystal. This is an evidence or proof that we are partaking of the divine nature.
The Bible also tells us that God is life. Love and light are related to God as life (John 1:4), and life is of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2). God is life to us mainly in love and light. If we are not saturated with love, we are not living the life of God. If we are not so transparently bright, we are not enjoying God as life. When we are enjoying God as life, we are full of love and full of light. Therefore, love and light are both related to God as life, and life is of the Spirit. God, the Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit, and the Spirit is life. Within such a life are love and light. In John’s Epistle we come to the Father to participate in His love and light in the fellowship of the Father’s life. This is further and deeper in the experience of the divine life. Love and light are God the Father Himself for our deeper and finer enjoyment in the fellowship of the divine life with the Father in the Son (1 John 1:3-7) by our abiding in Him (2:5, 27-28; 3:6, 24).
