As I was reading my Bible today, I was blessed by the following portion of Scripture: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” (2 Peter 1:3-4). What really struck me was the phrase, “you may participate in the divine nature.”
Imagine that God loved us so much that He chose by His divine power to give us everything we need to live a godly life. Clearly on our own, this isn’t possible because we are sinners, yet God chose to transform us by the power of the Holy Spirit, because of His own glory and goodness, so that we now can participate in the divine nature, and escape the corruption in the world that wages war against us.
God, according to these two verses from (2 Peter), because of His glory and goodness, has given us very great and precious promises that we can meditate daily on to help us conform more to His image. These promises, I believe, are our salvation, the abundant Christian life, and eternal life. With these promises we, in a sense, participate in the divine nature of God. And we will partake even more of this divine nature when we bear our glorified body like Jesus.
With the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we have everything we need to defeat sin at every turn and to live a holy life. As we meditate on these “very great and precious promises,” they should cause us to want to worship and praise Jesus and help us fall more in love with Him. When this happens our love for Christ will grow so strong that all of our desires should be to glorify our Savior and live holy. True love is a powerful motivating force and as our love for Christ grows our desire for worldly treasures will fade and be replaced by a desire for heavenly ones.
(2 Peter 1:3-4) is so rich that I challenge you to memorize and meditate on these two verses daily for the next month. I plan to and hope you will too!
Thank you Curt. Good thoughts.
Challenge accepted. Such beautiful verses!