PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE

'He hath 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.'--2 Peter i. 4.

'Partakers of the Divine nature.' These are bold words, and may be so

understood as to excite the wildest and most presumptuous dreams. But

bold as they are, and startling as they may sound to some of us, they

are only putting into other language the teaching of which the whole New

Testament is full, that men may, and do, by their faith, receive into

their spirits a real communication of the life of God. What else does

the language about being 'the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty'

mean? What else does the teaching of regeneration mean? What else mean

Christ's frequent declarations that He dwells in us and we in Him, as

the branch in the vine, as the members in the body? What else does 'he

that is joined to the Lord in one spirit' mean? Do not all teach that in

some most real sense the very purpose of Christianity, for which God

has sent His Son, and His Son has come, is that we, poor, sinful, weak,

limited, ignorant creatures as we are, may be lifted up into that solemn

and awful elevation, and receive in our trembling and yet strengthened

souls a spark of God? 'That ye may be partakers of the Divine nature'

means more than 'that you may share in the blessings which that nature

bestows.' It means that into us may come the very God Himself.

I. So I want you to look with me, first, at this lofty purpose which is

here presented as being the very aim and end of God's gift in the

gospel.

The human nature and the Divine are both kindred and contrary. And the

whole Bible is remarkable for the emphasis with which it insists upon

both these elements of the comparison, declaring, on the one hand, as no

other religion has ever declared, the supreme sovereign, unapproachable

elevation of the infinite Being above all creatures, and on the other

hand, holding forth the hope, as no other religion has ever ventured to

do, of the possible union of the loftiest and the lowest, and the

lifting of the creature into union with God Himself. There are no gods

of the heathen so far away from their worshippers, and there are none so

near them, as our God. There is no god that men have bowed before, so

unlike the devotee; and there is no system which recognises that, as is

the Maker so are the made, in such thorough-going fashion as the Bible

does. The arched heaven, though high above us, it is not inaccessible in

its serene and cloudless beauty, but it touches earth all round the

horizon, and man is made in the image of God.

True, that divine nature of which the ideal man is the possessor has

faded away from humanity. But still the human is kindred with the

divine. The drop of water is of one nature with the boundless ocean that

rolls shoreless beyond the horizon, and stretches plumbless into the

abysses. The tiniest spark of flame is of the same nature as those

leaping, hydrogen spears of illuminated gas that spring hundreds of

thousands of miles high in a second or two in the great central sun.

And though on the one hand there be finiteness and on the other

infinitude: though we have to talk, in big words, of which we have very

little grasp, about 'Omniscience,' and 'Omnipresence,' and 'Eternity,'

and such like, these things may be deducted and yet the Divine nature

may be retained; and the poor, ignorant, finite, dying creature, that

perishes before the moth, may say, 'I am kindred with Him whose years

know no end; whose wisdom knows no uncertainty nor growth; whose power

is Omnipotence; and whose presence is everywhere.' He that can say, 'I

am,' is of the same nature as His whose mighty proclamation of Himself

is 'I AM THAT I AM.' He who can say 'I will' is of the same nature as He

who willeth and it is done.

But that kindred, belonging to every soul of man, abject as well as

loftiest, is not the 'partaking' of which my text speaks; though it is

the basis and possibility of it; for my text speaks of men as

'_becoming_ partakers,' and of that participation as the result, not of

humanity, but of God's gift of 'exceeding great and precious promises.'

That creation in the image and likeness of God, which is represented as

crowned by the very breath of God breathed into man's nostrils implies

not only kindred with God in personality and self-conscious will, but

also in purity and holiness. The moral kindred has darkened into

unlikeness, but the other remains. It is not the gift here spoken of,

but it supplies the basis which makes that gift possible. A dog could

not become possessor of the Divine nature, in the sense in which my text

speaks of it. Any man, however bad, however foolish, however degraded,

abject and savage, can become a partaker of it, and yet no man has it

without something else than the fact of his humanity.

What, then, is it? No mere absorption, as extravagant mystics have

dreamed, into that Divine nature, as a drop goes back into the ocean and

is lost. There will always be 'I' and 'thou,' or else there were no

blessedness, nor worship, nor joy. We must so partake of the Divine

nature as that the bounds between the bestowing God and the partaking

man shall never be broken down. But that being presupposed, union as

close as is possible, the individuality of the giver and the receiver

being untampered with is the great hope that all Christian men and women

ought consciously to cherish.

Only mark, the beginning of the whole is the communication of a Divine

life which is manifested mainly in what we call moral likeness. Or to

put it into plain words, the teaching of my text is no dreamy teaching,

such as an eastern mystic might proclaim, of absorption into an

impersonal Divine. There is no notion here of any partaking of these

great though secondary attributes of the Divine mind which to many men

are the most Godlike parts of His nature. But what my text mainly means

is, you may, if you like, become 'holy as God is holy.' You may become

loving as God is loving, and with a breath of His own life breathed into

your hearts. The central Divinity in the Divine, if I may so say, is the

amalgam of holiness and love. That is God; the rest is what belongs to

God. God _has_ power; God _is_ love. That is the regnant attribute, the

spring that sets everything agoing. And so, when my text talks about

making us all, if we will, partakers of a Divine nature, what it means,

mainly, is this--that into every human spirit there may pass a seed of

Divine life which will unfold itself there in all purity of holiness, in

all tenderness and gentleness of love. 'God is love; and he that

dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' Partakers we shall be

in the measure in which by our faith we have drawn from Him the pure and

the hearty love of whatever things are fair and noble; the measure in

which we love righteousness and hate iniquity.

And then remember also that this lofty purpose which is here set forth

is a purpose growingly realised in man. The Apostle puts great stress

upon that word in my text, which, unfortunately, is not rendered

adequately in our Bible, 'that by these ye might _become_ partakers of

the Divine nature.' He is not talking about a _being_, but about a

_becoming_. That is to say, God must ever be passing, moment by moment,

into our hearts if there is to be anything godly there. No more

certainly must this building, if we are to see, be continually filled

with light-beams that are urged from the central sun by its impelling

force than the spirit must be receiving, by momentary communication, the

gift of life from God if it is to live. Cut off the sunbeam from the sun

and it dies, and the house is dark; cut off the life from the root and

it withers, and the creature shrivels. The Christian man lives only by

continual derivation of life from God; and for ever and ever the secret

of his being and of his blessedness is not that he has become a

possessor, but that he has become a partaker, of the Divine nature.

And that participation ought to, and will, be a growing thing. By daily

increase we shall be made capable of daily increase. Life is growth; the

Divine life in Him is not growth, but in us it does grow, and our

infancy will be turned into youth; and our youth into maturity; and,

blessed be His name, the maturity will be a growing one, to which grey

hairs and feebleness will never come, nor a term ever be set. More and

more of God we may receive every day we live, and through the endless

ages of eternity; and if we have Him in our hearts, we shall live as

long as there is anything more to pass from God to us. Until the

fountain has poured its whole fulness into the cistern, the cistern will

never be broken. He who becomes partaker of the Divine nature can never

die. So as Christ taught us the great argument for immortality is the

present relation between God and us, and the fact that He is the God of

Abraham points to the resurrection life.

II. Look, in the second place, at the costly and sufficient means

employed for the realisation of this great purpose. 'He hath given to us

exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might become

partakers,' etc.

Of course the mere words of a promise will not communicate this Divine

life to men's souls. 'Promises' here must necessarily, I think, be

employed in the sense of fulfilment of the promises. And so we might

think of all the great and wondrous words which God has spoken in the

past, promises of deliverance, of forgiveness, and the like; but I am

rather disposed to believe that the extreme emphasis of the epithets

which the Apostle selects to describe these promised things now

fulfilled suggests another interpretation.

I believe that by these 'exceeding great and precious promises' is

meant the unspeakable gift of God's own Son, and the gift therein and

thereafter of God's life-giving Spirit. For is not this the meaning of

the central fact of Christianity, the incarnation--that the Divine

becomes partaker of the human in order that the human may partake of the

Divine? Is not Christ's coming the great proof that however high the

heavens may stretch above the flat, sad earth, still the Divine nature

and the human are so kindred that God can enter into humanity and be

manifest in the flesh? Contrariety vanishes; the difference between the

creature and the Creator disappears. These mere distinctions of power

and weakness, of infinitude and finiteness, of wisdom and of ignorance,

of undying being and decaying life, vanish, as of secondary consequence,

when we can say, 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' There can

be no insuperable obstacle to man's being lifted up into a union with

the Divine, since the Divine found no insuperable obstacle in descending

to enter into union with the human.

So then, because God has given us His Son it is clear that we may become

partakers of the Divine nature; inasmuch as He, the Divine, has become

partaker of the children's flesh and blood, and in that coming of the

Divine into the human there was brought the seed and the germ of a life

which can be granted to us all. Brethren! there is one way, and one way

only, by which any of us can partake of this great and wondrous gift of

a share in God, and it is through Jesus Christ. 'No man hath ascended up

into Heaven,' nor ever will either climb or fly there, 'save He that

came down from Heaven; even the Son of man which is in Heaven.' And in

Him we may ascend, and in Him we may receive God.

Christ is the true Prometheus, if I may so speak, who brings to earth in

the fragile reed of his humanity the sacred and immortal fire which may

be kindled in every heart. Open your hearts to Him by faith and He will

come in, and with Him the rejoicing life which will triumph over the

death of self and sin, and give to you a share in the nature of God.

III. Let me say, lastly, that this great text adds a human accompaniment

of that Divine gift: 'Having escaped the corruption that is in the world

through lust.'

The only condition of receiving this Divine nature is the opening of the

heart by faith to Him, the Divine human Christ, who is the bond between

men and God, and gives it to us. But that condition being presupposed,

this important clause supplies the conduct which attends and attests the

possession of the Divine nature.

Notice, here is human nature without God, described as 'the corruption

that is in the world in lust.' It is like a fungus, foul-smelling,

slimy, poisonous; whose growth looks rather the working of decay than of

vitality. And, says my text, that is the kind of thing that human nature

is if God is _not_ in it. There is an 'either' and 'or' here. On the one

hand we must have a share in the Divine nature, or, on the other, we

have a share in the putrescence 'that is in the world through lust.'

Corruption is initial destruction, though of course other forms of life

may come from it; destruction is complete corruption. The word means

both. A man either escapes from lust and evil, or he is destroyed by

it.

And the root of this rotting fungus is 'in lust,' which word, of course,

is used in a much wider meaning than the fleshly sense in which we

employ it in modern times. It means 'desire' of all sorts. The root of

the world's corruption is my own and my brothers' unbridled and godless

desires.

So there are two states--a life plunged in putridity, or a heart touched

with the Divine nature. Which is it to be? It cannot be both. It must be

one or the other. Which?

A man that has got the life of God, in however feeble measure, in him,

will flee away from this corruption like Lot out of Sodom. And how will

he flee out of it? By subduing his own desires; not by changing

position, not by shirking duty, not by withdrawing himself into

unwholesome isolation from men and men's ways. The corruption is not

only 'in the world,' so that you could get rid of it by getting out of

the world, but it is 'in the world in lust,' so that you carry the

fountain of it within yourself. The only way to escape is by no outward

flight, but by casting out the unclean thing from our own souls.

Depend upon it, the measure in which a man has the love of God in him

can be very fairly estimated by the extent to which he is doing this.

There is a test for you Christian people. There have been plenty of men

and women in all ages of the Church, and they abound in this generation,

who will make no scruple of declaring that they possess a portion of

this Divine Spirit and a spark of God in their souls. Well then, I say,

here is the test, bring it all to this--does that life within you cast

out your own evil desires? If it does, well; if it does not, the less

you say about Christ in your hearts the less likely you will be to

become either a hypocrite, or a self-deceiver.

And so, brethren, remember, one last word, viz., that whilst on the one

hand whoever has the life of God in his heart will be fleeing from this

corruption, on the other hand you can weaken--ay! and you can kill the

Divine life by not so fleeing. You have got it, if you have it, to

nourish, to cherish, and to do that most of all by obeying it. If you do

not obey, and if habitually you keep the plant with all its buds picked

off one after another as they begin to form, you will kill it sooner or

later. You Christian men and women take warning. God has given you Jesus

Christ. It was worth while for Christ to live; it was worth while for

Christ to die, in order that into the souls of all sinful,

God-forgetting, devil-following men there might pass this Promethean

spark of the true fire.

You get it, if you will, by simple faith. You will not keep it unless

you obey it. Mind you do not quench the Holy Spirit, and extinguish the

very life of God in your souls.