We praise the Lord that, as believers in Christ, we have been brought into a third stage—the stage of God’s salvation. In God’s salvation the believers have a purified (renewed) nature. According to Titus 3:5, the believers have a purified nature “through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.” The Greek word for “regeneration” here (a word different from that for “born again” in 1 Peter 1:23) refers to a change from one state of things to another. To be born again is the beginning of this change. The washing of regeneration begins with our being born again and continues with the renewing of the Holy Spirit as the process of God’s new creation to make us a new man. It is a kind of reconditioning, remaking, remodeling with life. Baptism (Rom. 6:3, 5), the putting off of the old man, the putting on of the new man (Eph. 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9-11), and transformation by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23) are all related to this wonderful process.
The washing of regeneration purges away all the things of the old nature of our old man, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit imparts something new—the divine essence of the new man—into our being. The Holy Spirit washes and renews us in the divine element to make us a new creation with the divine nature to be heirs of God in His eternal life, inheriting all the riches of the Triune God. In this process of washing and renewing there is a passage from the old state we were in into a holy new one, from the old creation into the status of a new creation. Hence, both the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit are a continual working in us throughout our whole life until the completion of the new creation. The point we are emphasizing here is that the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit cause us to have a purified, renewed, nature.
In God’s salvation the believers also have a nature mingled with the divine nature. Second Peter 1:4 indicates this: “He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises, that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature.” We, the believers in Christ, have become partakers of the divine nature in an organic union with Him. We have entered into this union through faith and baptism (John 3:15; Gal. 3:27; Matt. 28:19). The virtue of the divine nature will carry us into God’s glory, into the full expression of the Triune God. Now, as partakers of the divine nature, we are partakers of the elements, the ingredients, of God’s being. When we partake of God, the aspects of what God is become our enjoyment.
The divine nature denotes what God is, that is, the constituents of God’s being. According to the New Testament, God is Spirit (John 4:24), love (1 John 4:8, 16), and light (1 John 1:5). The expressions, “God is Spirit,” “God is love,” and “God is light,” denote and describe the nature of God. In His nature God is Spirit, love, and light.
Spirit denotes the nature of God’s person; love, the nature of God’s essence; and light, the nature of God’s expression. Both love and light are related to God as life, which life is of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2). God, Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit, and Spirit is life. Within such a life are love and light. The divine nature, therefore, is a constitution of three items—Spirit, love, and light. To be a partaker of the divine nature is to be one partaking of God as Spirit, love, and light.
God is a person who has His essence and expression. The divine nature is the nature of God’s person, the nature of God’s essence, and the nature of God’s expression. Therefore, Spirit, love, and light are the constituents of the divine nature. To partake of the divine nature is to partake of the divine Spirit, the divine love, and the divine light. According to the New Testament economy, God is now dispensing Himself into us. Surely what God dispenses into us is what He is in His nature. When God is dispensed into us, His nature is also dispensed into us. Since God is dispensing Himself into us with what He is in His nature and since His nature includes Spirit as the nature of God’s person, love as the nature of God’s essence, and light as the nature of God’s expression, the more we are under God’s dispensing, the more we have of His Spirit, love, and light. Through this dispensing we enjoy the constituents of the divine nature.
Because the divine nature is dispensed into us for our enjoyment, we now have a nature mingled with the divine nature. This means that in the believers the purified human nature and the divine nature are not separate but are mingled to form a compound nature. This mingling may be illustrated by the grafting of the branch of one tree into another tree. As a result of grafting, the natures of the two trees become one mingled nature. In God’s salvation the human nature is purified, renewed, and mingled with the divine nature.