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Scripture Reading: John 1:13; 1 John 3:9; 1:2-3, 1:5-7; 4:8, 16; 2 Pet. 1:3a, 4-7
We all need to remember that the New Jerusalem has a base, and this base is pure gold, which in typology refers to God’s divine nature. We believers have all been made partakers of this divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). It is a very hard task to define the divine nature. Simply speaking, the divine nature is what God is, just as the nature of anything is what that thing is. We have seen that the Bible tells us that God is Spirit (John 4:24), that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and that God is light (1:5). Then in a total way the Bible tells us that God is life (John 1:4; 5:26; 14:6). These four items of what God is are very basic. Spirit, love, and light are the very constituents of God’s being, and life is God Himself. God Himself, God’s being, is our life, and He is constituted with Spirit, love, and light. Spirit is the nature of God’s person, love is the nature of God’s essence, and light is the nature of God’s expression.
God is Spirit in person, God is love in essence, God is light in expression, and God is life in love as its essence and in light as its expression. When we touch God, we touch Him as Spirit in His person, as love in His essence, and as light in His expression. After touching God, we walk, we live, we have our being, in His Spirit as our person, in His love as our essence, and in His light as our expression.
Since we have defined the divine nature, we need to see how to partake of it. Second Peter 1:4 is the only verse in the Bible which tells us directly that we are partakers of the divine nature. We do not merely partake of the divine nature; we need to be partakers. We do not merely eat, but we are eaters. The Christian life is a life of enjoying the divine nature.
We may have had some experiences of enjoying the divine nature without realizing it. Two hundred years ago people enjoyed vitamins without having any knowledge concerning them. Today, however, even many little children know what vitamins are. My hope is that one day even our children would know what the divine nature is and that this would be common knowledge. This is why we are burdened to see the basic element of gold in the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is God’s building, and gold, which is the very symbol of His divine nature, is the base of His building. In fact, the divine nature is the base of all of God’s building through all the generations.
We can see the partaking and enjoying of the divine nature in John’s line and in Peter’s line. These are the two lines of writings concerning the enjoyment of the divine nature. In Paul’s fourteen Epistles there are some implications concerning the enjoyment of the divine nature, but there is no clear word because Paul’s ministry is not centered on the enjoyment of the divine nature but is altogether concentrated on the law of life. The divine nature, which mainly refers to the constitution of the divine life, the constitution of God, is constituted with Spirit, love, and light. Paul’s burden, however, is to show the working principle of the divine life, which is the law of life. The law of a certain life is deeper than the element of that life. John and Peter deal with the nature, but Paul deals with the law. In Romans 8:2 he tells us that the law of the Spirit of life sets us free from the law of sin and of death. This law is the natural principle of the divine working.
In 1 John we first see the eternal life, whom John had heard, seen, beheld, and handled as the Word of life. Then John testified and reported to us the eternal life, that we may have fellowship (1:1-3). John’s first Epistle is mainly to keep us living in the divine fellowship of the divine life. As believers, we have the divine life, and this life brings us into the divine fellowship. We all need to remain in the fellowship. If we remain in the fellowship, we touch God as light (v. 5) and as love (4:8-16). This is our enjoyment of God as light and love in our fellowship with Him. We have seen that love and light are the constituents of God’s divine nature. When we remain in the divine fellowship with God, we enjoy God directly as light and love, which is the enjoyment of the divine nature. To partake of the divine nature is to fellowship with God, to enjoy God as love and as light, because love and light are two constituents of God’s nature.
In John’s Gospel we see that Christ came with grace and reality (1:17). When we believed in Christ, we received Him as grace and reality. Grace is God in the Son as our enjoyment; reality is God realized by us in the Son. In John’s first Epistle we see that the divine love is the source of grace, and the divine light is the source of reality. When this divine love appears to us, it becomes grace, and when this divine light shines upon us, it becomes reality. John’s Gospel reveals that the Lord Jesus has brought grace and reality to us so that we may have the divine life (3:14-16); whereas his Epistle unveils that the fellowship of the divine life brings us to the very sources of grace and reality, which are the divine love and the divine light. In his Gospel it was God in the Son coming to us as grace and reality in order that we might become His children (1:12-13); in his Epistle it is we the children, in the fellowship of the Father’s life, coming to the Father to participate in His love and light. John’s Gospel is Christ coming to us bringing grace and reality to us, and John’s Epistle is that we go back in Christ to the source in our fellowship, and we touch God as love and as light. Love and light are deeper than grace and reality because they are the sources. This is a divine two-way traffic between God and us. To partake of the divine nature is to touch the source of grace and reality since the divine nature is the source of grace and of reality.
The way to touch this source is to remain in the fellowship with the source. We are in the fellowship already, but we need to remain, to abide, in the fellowship. Once electricity is installed into a building, there is an electrical current flowing, and that current is a good illustration of the divine fellowship. The divine fellowship is a heavenly electrical current. If the electric appliances remain in the current, they function. If they do not remain in the current, they actually are cut off from the enjoyment of the electricity. As believers, we do have a heavenly current of the heavenly electricity, and we need to remain in this current, to remain in the fellowship. When we remain in the fellowship, we touch God as the source; we touch Him as Spirit, as love, and as light. To touch God as Spirit, love, and light is to partake of the divine nature. This is not a vain theory or a mere teaching but something in our experience.
All of us have experienced partaking of the divine nature in different degrees. If you spend ten to fifteen minutes to contact the Lord and stay with Him and pray honestly and sincerely, confessing your failures, mistakes, shortcomings, defects, wrongdoings, and sinfulness, you touch God as the Spirit in His person. Deep within your being you sense the Spirit. At this juncture everything in your home, in your yard, on the street, in the heavens, and on the earth is so pleasant and lovely. This is the issue of partaking of love as the nature of God’s essence.
Before I received the Lord, I was easily disgusted with people. After I was saved, no one taught me, but I knew that I had to go to God in prayer and fellowship. After praying for a few minutes and repenting of and confessing my sins, I was joyful, and everyone and everything were pleasant and lovely to me. This was because I was partaking of the divine nature. Even though I did not have the knowledge concerning this, this was still my experience.
Once, when I was at my son’s home, I saw my three grandchildren working on their homework at the table. The two girls were seven and nine years old, respectively, and the boy was eleven years old. When I saw them, I asked, “Have you children all prayed today?” The two girls told me that they had not prayed yet, because their way was to pray before bedtime. Then the oldest girl told me that she saw her older brother praying and that while he was praying he was weeping. These two young girls are always watching their older brother to find some fault with him, but instead they found their older brother praying and weeping. If this young boy continues to contact the Lord in such a way, everyone and everything will be lovely to him. There will be no need to teach him to love his sisters, because love will be within him. In his prayer and fellowship with the Lord he is partaking of the divine nature.
All of us can testify, at least to some degree, that we have enjoyed the Lord in such a way. This is our partaking of the divine nature, which is constituted with the divine love in essence and with the divine light in expression. I believe that after my young grandson prayed in such a way, he was transparent and he was in light. Just by contacting God for ten to fifteen minutes, after we rise up from our knees, we become a person who is transparent and no longer in darkness or opaqueness. What we should say or do also becomes transparent to us. You may not even have the utterance or know how to explain a matter, yet within you there is the light. You know where you should be, and you know where you are. This is the issue of the partaking of the divine nature.
After having a time with the Lord, you sense that One is within you, living, acting, leading, and guiding you. This One is the divine person, who is the Spirit, and this Spirit is also one of the constituents of the divine nature. Everyone who has been genuinely regenerated has had this kind of experience at least once or twice. You touch the source of grace, which is the divine love, and the source of reality, which is the divine light, in your fellowship with the Lord, and both of these sources are the constituents of the divine nature for your enjoyment.
We all need to realize that God with His divine nature is for our enjoyment. Beef can never be our enjoyment unless we enjoy the nature of the beef. When we enjoy fish, we enjoy the nature of fish. This is why Peter according to his own experience tells us that we partake of the divine nature. To say that we partake of God is too general, but to say that we partake of the divine nature is particular.
Peter, who was an unlearned fisherman from Galilee, wrote this according to his experience. Even though he was unlearned, Peter could write such a marvelous Epistle, which includes many wonderful divine points. He says that we all have been allotted equally precious faith and that the divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness. Based upon this, Peter tells us that God has given us precious and exceedingly great promises that we might become the partakers of the divine nature. Furthermore, he tells us that in our allotted faith we have to develop virtue; in virtue, knowledge; in knowledge, self-control; in self-control, endurance; in endurance, godliness; in godliness, brotherly love; and in brotherly love, love (2 Pet. 1:1, 5-7). What Peter’s writing implies is much higher, even a thousand times higher, than the highest philosophy. Peter wrote this because he experienced this. When he was writing, undoubtedly, the Spirit was within him giving him the utterance and the proper expressions.
According to his experience, Peter says that God’s divine power has imparted to the believers all things which relate to life (v. 3a). Furthermore, he says that God has given to the believers precious and exceedingly great promises that the believers might become partakers and enjoyers of the divine nature through its development (vv. 4-7). First, God by His divine power has imparted into us all the things pertaining to life and godliness. Second, based upon this, He gave us His promises. The first part of 2 Peter 1:4 says, “Through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises.” Which refers to glory and virtue in verse 3. Through and on the basis of the Lord’s glory and virtue by and to which we have been called, He has given us His precious and exceedingly great promises, such as in Matthew 28:20; John 6:57; 7:38-39; 10:28-29; 14:19-20, 23; 15:5 and 16:13-15. All these are being carried out in His believers by His life-power as the excellent virtue, unto His glory.
Based upon what He has imparted into us, God gives us His promises. By these promises we can be partakers of the divine nature. This means that we can enjoy and know God in what He is, in Spirit, in love, and in light. Peter goes on according to his experience to tell us that there is a process of development. We all have the allotted faith, and from this faith we have to develop the virtues.
Faith is the substantiation of the substance of the truth (Heb. 11:1), which is the reality of the contents of God’s New Testament economy. The contents of God’s New Testament economy are composed of the “all things which relate to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3), that is, the Triune God dispensing Himself into us as life within and godliness without (see points 1, 2, and 5 and the last paragraph of footnote 11 in 1 Tim. 1, Recovery Version). The equally precious faith allotted to us by God through the word of God’s New Testament economy and the Spirit, responds to the reality of such contents and ushers us into the reality, making its substance the very element of our Christian life and experience. Such a faith is allotted to all the believers in Christ as their portion, which is equally precious to all who have received it. As such a portion from God, this faith is objective to us in the divine truth. But it brings all the contents of its substantiation into us, thus making them all, with itself (faith), subjective to us in our experience. It is like the scenery (truth) and the seeing (faith) being objective to the camera (us). But when the light (the Spirit) brings the scenery to the film (our spirit) within the camera, both the seeing and the scenery become subjective to the camera.
This allotted faith is the substantiation, the response, of the divine seed, the Triune God dispensed into us, which has been sown into our being, referred to in 1 John 3:9. We have to cooperate with this seed in order for it to have some development. In our faith, in the substantiation of the divine seed, virtue needs to be supplied and developed. Virtue denotes the energy of the divine life issuing in vigorous action to overcome all obstacles and to carry out all excellent attributes. This virtue with all things which relate to life has been given to us by the divine power, but it needs to be developed on the way to glory. When we contact the Lord, we have the sensation that something within us is energizing, stirring up, and rising up. This is the virtue, the life energy. Then in this life energy there is more development, and we begin to know the Lord much more, in knowledge.
Furthermore, in this knowledge, just by contacting the Lord, there is a realization that you need to restrict yourself. You begin to realize that you are too wild, too free, especially in the passions, desires, lusts, and in the self. This restricting of yourself is self-control. This is a kind of temperance. Then you develop further from self-control to endurance. Self-control is to restrict yourself, and endurance is to bear with others and with circumstances. Without contacting the Lord, you would be so wild and so free in doing things, and you would not endure anything or anybody. You may even feel that the entire earth is your world and your empire, and you might get angry with everybody. However, when you stay with the Lord in fellowship, the divine nature within you develops, and you restrict yourself, tolerate others, and endure any kind of environment.
Then in endurance godliness is developed. As the divine nature develops within us, we will spontaneously be persons who are like God and who express God. When we exercise control over ourselves and bear with others, godliness needs to be and is developed in our spiritual life so that we may be like God and express Him. In this godliness, the divine nature develops further in a love for the brothers. The consummation of this development is that in brotherly love the nobler love is developed.
Some sisters who live together may love one another when they contact the Lord. In this kind of love, however, one of the sisters will still complain. She might ask, “Why is it that I have to do all the dishes and that sister would never help me?” This proves that there is the need of further development. Our brotherly love needs to be developed further into a nobler, higher, and even super love, which in Greek is agape, used in the New Testament for the divine love, which God is in His nature (1 John 4:8, 16). By the time the divine nature within us has been developed to such an extent, we love everyone. We become like our heavenly Father who loves the ones who love Him and even loves the ones who hate Him. If we were God, we would send the rain only on the lovers and keep the rain from all the haters. God, however, “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). This is the super and nobler love, and this nobler love is the very basic constituent of God’s divine nature.
I hope that we all have seen that there are two lines which unveil to us the partaking and enjoying of the divine nature. John’s line is to remain in the fellowship, and Peter’s line is to develop the divine seed sown within us, until it reaches its consummation in the nobler love, agape, which is one of the constituents of God’s divine nature. We need to remain in the divine fellowship, and for the divine seed to develop itself, we need to cooperate. We should not resist or keep obstacles in the way of this development. We have to cooperate with the development of this basic divine blessing, which is the divine seed sown into us and substantiated by the allotted faith. Then we will reach to the top of the enjoyment of the divine nature, which is to partake of the nobler love. At this point, we not only love those who behave themselves in the brothers house but also love those who do not behave.
Ephesians 5:25 charges the husbands to love their wives. A certain husband may feel that since his wife is not so lovable, he could not love her. Furthermore, he may think that if his wife were like another sister, he would love her. Even if another sister were married to this brother, however, he would still not be satisfied. What he needs to experience is the nobler love. Our poor human love is always short. To say or to think that you cannot love your wife proves that you have not partaken of the divine nature to the extent that you are experiencing and enjoying the divine love. If you have partaken of the divine nature to such an extent, you would love any kind of wife. A nobler love does not exercise any kind of choice.
When we remain in the fellowship, we touch the source, and we enjoy the divine love as the essence and the divine light as the expression. This means that we partake of the divine nature. In this enjoyment we let the divine seed of the allotted faith develop to its consummation — the divine nobler love.
