It is now time that we continue our Journey to Brideship by examining the rarified realm of the Spirit where the believer can be delivered from their own carnal degradation and be changed in the core of their being by being true partakers of God’s perfect Divine Nature.

The very prospect of having our very nature changed is impossible, even unimaginable, except when one believes in the miraculous power of the Grace of the Almighty, who by His Will and love for us can deliver yielded believers from their bondage to sin and lead them into the glorious light of His dear Son, Jesus Christ by the wisdom of the Holy Ghost.

This, no doubt is one of the great mysteries of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But, the Bible tells all those who have ears to hear, that it is for believers to know the mysteries of God, and that God keeps them hidden from the faithless world.

It is not God’s intent that people should just be born-again and live for themselves. All those who claim to love God with their whole being should strive for the highest things of godliness and love. What could be higher than to take God up on His offer to be freed from ourselves, to pick up our cross daily, walk with the Spirit and believe God for His promises of a life in the kingdom to come? What could be greater than His offer to allow us to be partakers of His Divine Nature?

Then we can understand why the three essentials of the wheel of perfection (the cross, the Spirit and belief in the Rapture) are indeed essential to our perfection; to partaking of His Nature.

The greatest proof of our adherence to the demands of ‘perfection’ will be our ability to enter into the exceeding great promises which allow us to shed the influence of our human nature, enabling us to become regular partakers of the Divine Nature of God itself. This of course, is a miracle of miracles for it is not possible to have our nature changed in any other way, but in Christ it is more than a possibility, it is an offer no serious, sober minded believer could reasonably refuse.

Granted, the transforming of our nature is a momentous and humanly impossible thing. It surely requires a moment to moment vigil, a living in the now, where yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is, as the scripture says, the Day of Salvation. It demands a vitality and dynamic life. The transformation is coaxed and generated only when we yield to faith and let the Holy Spirit direct the Divine Nature to trump our own frail and wispy nature. The rigors of 1. denying self 2. walking in the Spirit, and 3. believing God for all His personal promises to us, especially the Rapture are the focal points of a daily life that looks for the Divine Nature to dominate in our heart and soul.

A person can actually have the Divine Nature override the human nature which naturally opposes that of God. Point by point, our sub-section: entitled Partakers of the Divine Nature attempts to convey and instruct the believer on the finer points of each aspect of the Divine nature as outlined in the Book of 2 Peter chapter 1.

In the first section of the Bride Side (sanctified/perfect) we have taught that Christ resuscitates, invigorates and feeds His children with truth and faith, with the good things of God, so that He can build the child of God into a disciple of His, mature, spiritual, strong in knowledge, with understanding and wisdom, to perceive the difference between spiritual and carnal matters of the world from which He has extracted them.

Christ will fully equip any faithful believer with all the means to walk freely and humbly in this life, as long as that believer will consent to cleave to Him and depart from iniquity; not casually falling back to old ways, but walking upright in newness of life as befits the new creation that he has made them.

We have begun our new life and its ways by being born again. The believer, if paying due attention, will be introduced to the basic building blocks (the proteins of spiritual life if you will) the Word of God, the nature and truth of Church, and the relationship and inner workings of the Trinity (Godhead) which is the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. These three essentials, Word, Church and Trinity serve as the platform upon which the foundational and fundamental things of godly growth can be taught and built. Once a person becomes born again (and we teach, not until then) the maturing process can begin in earnest.

The Bible itself has given us an outline of six fundamental spiritual truths, or requirements, to which the believer must conform if that believer is to move on to higher states of freedom and spirituality in Christ. These foundational and principal concerns are depicted in Hebrews 6:1-3 as such:

“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
   Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
   And this will we do, if God permit.”

We have striven in the first section to go into detail describing the ‘nuts and bolts’ operation of each one of these six principles and foundational essentials with a handful of pages and articles on each to increase the believer’s knowledge and wisdom. The seven great areas where God has pleaded with Christians not to be ignorant have also been elaborated on so that the student of God’s Word can consider them in deeper private study as they peruse the Bible’s depths for themselves. We have described how these essentials come to be a part of the believer to aid in true discipleship and various ways in which they come alive in the believer so that a person can be led out of darkness and brought into the marvelous light of Christ, so that their walk to Brideship may be hastened along. It is now that we begin to move beyond the fundamental matters of Christ and in faith, we ask God to permit us and “let us go on unto perfection” – a purified/perfection.

The first article linked in The Divine Nature sub-section is somewhat of an introductory article itself and is entitled: Deliver Us From Ourselves. The article calls attention to one of the most critical mistakes that the children of Israel ever made when they rejected God’s leadership and demanded a king to rule over them so they could be like the other nations. It brings home the point that the perfection of being purified in our very nature must begin by being delivered from self and accepting God’s sovereign leadership and authority over our whole being, body, soul and spirit. This is the starting place for a higher perfection, where love, the promoter of reverence and duty to God, can find vigor and without which no proper perfection can be acquired or attained. As the section of being separated (or sanctified) began with new birth (born-again) this sub-section, Partaking of the Divine Nature also begins with a newness. It is the greater effervescence of God’s power to reign within a believer’s nature to subdue his carnal character and bring it under the sway of spiritual things with power. It is accomplished only when we have been willing to step fully into what we have termed the ‘wheel of perfection’.

Peter refers to the “exceeding great promises” in his second epistle which tips us off to the potential that we can be divested of our own earthly and sinful nature and actually be partakers of the Divine Nature. Primary among these “exceeding great promises” are the promises of the opportunity and reality of picking up our cross and denying self, living and walking in the Holy Spirit and having our hope pinned exclusively in the world to come (which is eminently represented in the abiding hope of the mystery of the Rapture.) 2 Peter 1:1-11 reports on the wonders of this high spiritual phenomenon offered to faithful believers in the following way.

“Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:
   Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
   According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
   Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
   And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
   And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;
   And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
   For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
   But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
   Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:
For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:1-11

This is the promise of perfection. By all diligence, by believing in these “exceeding great promises” we can become partakers of the Divine Nature by faith and thereby, “make our calling and election sure”.

How awesome a promise is this, given to those who strive to have their human nature regularly capitulate to the Divine Nature! How awesome that we can partake of the divine in our soul and spirit by striving to have built in us by the Spirit the Tower of Love; God patiently allowing us to have each attribute built by experience and trial one layer at a time by faith through His power to do so. God will work to add to our faith – virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness and finally, even love if we will be diligent in our concessions to His Spirit.

What a declaration of the Good News!

In this section: Partakers of The Divine Nature we hope to increase the understanding of these righteous characteristics of the Divine while also showing the contrasting difference between human and natural ways and the divine and perfect way. Divine love is not the same as human ideas and expression of love – far from it. The same holds true for virtue, knowledge, godliness and the all the rest of the declared attributes of Divine Nature.

Each of the subjects of Divine Nature observed and discussed on our pages can serve the disciple of Christ best as “food for thought” for exploring and pursuing the unfathomable depths of every aspect of the Divine.

The exploration is an inexhaustible mine deeper than the universe itself. Who can know the depths of the beauty and majestic glory of God; the pursuit is new every day, because His mercies are new each morning. They are applied in the daily toils, conflicts and adventures of life. Partaking of the Divine Nature demands prayer regularly and deserves the vigilance of an eagle eye. Those who enter into the belief that they can become partakers of God’s Nature will experience a death of self and the unspeakable exuberance of the resurrection of Christ in them.

There is no resurrection without a death.

We must have our nature die so that God’s may find freedom and release through our denial of self. (See:Pick Up Our Cross Daily.) The believer must have a constantly fertile ground for the Divine to spring to life. This is the field we must first till.