Tuesday

Related Verses
2 Pet. 1:3
3 Seeing that His divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and virtue,

2 Cor. 12:9
9 And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly therefore I will rather boast in my weaknesses that the power of Christ might tabernacle over me.

Matt. 28:20
20 Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age.

Eph. 3:20
20 But to Him who is able to do superabundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power which operates in us,

1 John 3:1
1 Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and we are. Because of this the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

John 3:3, 5-6, 16
3 Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
5 Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that every one who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.

Related Reading
Peter…says that God has called us by His own glory and virtue…Knowing our need for assurance, encouragement, and strength, God has given us precious and exceedingly great promises. An example of these promises is the Lord’s word to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9…This promise was given to Paul to enable him to suffer the thorn in the flesh. In order to bear with a “thorn,” we need the Lord’s sufficient grace. This is an illustration of the fact that we need many promises to help us reach the goal of God’s glory and virtue. 

We cannot reach the high goal of God’s glory and virtue by ourselves. For this, we need the Lord. Because we do not know what lies ahead of us, God has given us precious promises. (Life-study of 2 Peter, pp. 40-41) 

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God has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises for a specific purpose. His purpose is that through these promises we may become partakers of the divine nature [2 Pet. 1:4]. Through the precious and exceedingly great promises, we, the believers in Christ, have become partakers of His divine nature in an organic union with Him. In Acts 2 and 3 Peter and the other disciples surely were partaking of the divine nature. It is no wonder then that when others looked at the disciples, they saw the expression of God. Because the disciples enjoyed God and partook of God, they were constituted of God. 

This should also be our experience today. If we enjoy God and partake of Him, we will be constituted of Him. Of course, we will never become God in the sense of attaining to the Godhead or becoming an object of worship. However, we may be thoroughly constituted of God’s nature. 

We all are constituted physically of the food we eat…In like manner, we may become so constituted of God that we express God in all that we are and do. We may even give off a divine fragrance. If we partake of God day by day, eventually, we will partake of Him unconsciously. When others contact us, they will see in us the expression of the Triune God. 

My desire is that all the saints in the Lord’s recovery would be fully saturated with the nature of God. The more we are saturated with God, the more we will express Him. 

To be a partaker of the divine nature is to be a partaker of the elements, the ingredients, of God’s being. When we partake of God, the aspects of what God is become our enjoyment. We partake of His righteousness, holiness, kindness, love, and compassion. This is to enjoy the constituents of the divine nature. God’s purpose in giving us the precious and exceedingly great promises is that we may become partakers of the divine nature. 

In 2 Peter 1:4 there is a condition for becoming partakers of the divine nature: it is “having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust.” The more we escape this corruption, the more we will enjoy the nature of God. Likewise, the more we partake of the divine nature, the more we will escape the corruption that is in the world by lust. This is a cycle…I can testify that because this cycle of partaking and escaping works within me in a strong, rapid way, it is difficult for me to take in any of the corruption of the world. I partake of the divine nature, and this divine nature strengthens me to stay away from corruption. Then the more I stay away from the corruption of the world, the more I enjoy the riches of the divine nature. This is the experience of God’s economy. What we have in 1:1-4 is actually a full picture of our enjoyment of God’s economy. (Life-study of 2 Peter, pp. 42-43) 

Further Reading: Life-study of 2 Peter, msg. 5