Week 3 – A Divine nature – who me?

When I was growing up, it was a common prank at Christmas to wrap boxes inside boxes inside boxes, so that your sibling would be tricked into picking your extra large gift to unwrap first, thinking it was the biggest and best. Come to think of it, that was a lot of wrapping for a very overplayed prank. But it reminds me of our verse because Peter just keeps adding more and more about the Father’s lavish gifts to us, his children. The difference of course is that none of God’s boxes are empty – each one holds a new and beautiful gift from Our Heavenly Father. 

The first box is “Through these…” referring to the glory and goodness by which he calls us.  

2 Peter 1:3 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. 

The next box contains the great and precious promises he’s given us. The promises to always be with us, and to enable us to understand and live out his truth. 

In the third box, we find that we get to become participants in God’s divine nature. And in the final box, we get to escape the corruption in the world.  Wow!  That’s a lot of boxes to unpack.

We’ve already unpacked the first couple boxes and now it’s time to look at the box containing the gift of getting to become participants. 

Last week, we talked about God’s divine power, which empowers us to understand his Word and embody his truth, and that’s pretty dang cool. I mean, who doesn’t love a little divine power in their back pocket? 

But our third box may be even more superhero-ish. Because now we get to participate. We get the chance to, actually experience God and become architects and builders of his kingdom. We are no longer on the sidelines, just watching the game, in other words. Now we’re on the field.

Now we get to slough off the chains of bitterness and hate that much of the world is burdened with and instead, walk around with qualities like goodness, self-control and love for one another. We have the unique capacity to rise up and be set free from the ugliness of the world through the Holy Spirit and God’s infinite power.  

And if we continue reading, we find out how we can do this.

2 Peter 1:5-7

5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

Think of these verses like a systematic game plan for how to participate in His divine nature. You notice it doesn’t tell us to just decide to believe in Jesus and wake up the next morning and voila! We’re divine!  

As Peter says, it is a process.  Participation in God’s plan means that we actively participate in our own transformation.

To to that, we incrementally add Godly virtues into our lives. Goodness is the first virtue. Then, add knowledge to that goodness, then self-control, then perseverance… the list goes on.  It’s kind of like adding ingredients to an ice cream sundae. If our faith in God is the ice cream, we then add hot fudge (goodness), then nuts (knowledge), a maraschino cherry (self-control), etc.…. Our sundae just becomes more and more delightful – We become more and more delightful, joyful and holy.  

This is the game plan for growing in Christ and becoming more and more fully, participants in God’s divine nature. It’s a slow but sure process of drawing near to him, allowing the Spirit to work in and through us and surrounding ourselves with a vibrant community of believers and being intentional in our actions. As we do these things, we grow.  We become more like Jesus, more sanctified and more removed from the corruption and sin of the world. Do we have setbacks? Yes? Does sin sometimes creep in?  Yes.  But less and less as we change and allow the Holy Spirit to work in us.

It’s a process.

As you go into this week, utilize the game plan outlined in 2 Peter 1:5-7.  Be deliberate and intentional. Remember that the process of participating in God’s divine nature is a way of growing your faith every day and that truly means every day.