When this Person entered into us, regeneration transpired and we were born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). We all should praise the Lord for the divine fact that we have been born of God! The Apostle John also tells us in his first Epistle that when we were begotten of God, a divine seed entered into our being (1 John 3:9). As believers in the Lord, God’s seed is now in us. This Person we have received is the divine seed which has been planted into our inner being. This is not superstition but a marvelous divine fact.
With any seed there is life and in that life there is the nature which is going to be developed. A grain of wheat is a seed of wheat. When this seed is sown into the earth it develops in life with its nature. The full development of the life of the seed with its nature issues in a stalk with many grains, many seeds. The development of the grain of wheat comes out of the nature of that grain or seed. The same thing is true of a carnation seed. If a carnation seed is sown into the earth, it develops with its nature into a beautiful carnation blossom.
We have received the divine life through the divine birth and this divine life has a nature which is the divine nature of God. John 1:13 tells us that we have been born of God, 1 John 3:9 says that since we have been born of God we have the divine seed in us, 1 Peter 1:3 says we have been regenerated by God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and 2 Peter 1:4 indicates that since we have received the divine life we are now partakers of the divine nature. We are not receiving the divine nature, but partaking of, enjoying, what we have already received.
The problem is this—we all have received the divine nature, but we do not regularly enjoy what we have received. Not many of us can testify that all day long we are those who are partaking of the divine nature and that all day long we are enjoying the divine nature within us. We neglect this divine nature because we are wrapped up with four things: our welfare, how to please God, how to improve ourselves, and how to do things in a right way. We need to forget about these things and to pick up one thing—how to enjoy the divine nature and how to partake of the divine nature. In order to partake of and enjoy the divine nature we first need to see what the divine nature is.
The divine nature is what God is. The nature of a piece of furniture is what the furniture is. If the furniture is wooden, the nature of the furniture is wood. The Bible tells us emphatically and directly that God is Spirit (John 4:24), God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and God is light (1 John 1:5). All these items concerning what God is were written by the Apostle John. The divine nature is a constitution of these three items—Spirit, love, and light. To be a partaker of the divine nature is to be one partaking of God as Spirit, as love, and as light. Spirit denotes the nature of God’s Person, and love denotes the nature of God’s essence. God is a divine Being with a divine essence. The essence is more intrinsic than the element of something. Within the element is the essence, and this divine essence has love as its nature. Furthermore, the divine light is the nature of God’s expression.
God is a Person who has His essence and His expression. The divine nature is the nature of God’s Person, the nature of God’s essence, and the nature of God’s expression. God is a divine Being, a Person, and the nature of His Person is Spirit. This Person also has an essence and the nature of His essence is love. God is a constitution of love. Also, light is the nature of God’s expression, so Spirit, love, and light are the constituents of the divine nature. To partake of the divine nature is to partake of the divine Spirit, divine love, and divine light.
John tells us that the divine birth brought into us a seed (1 John 3:9). In this seed is the divine nature. Peter, furthermore, tells us that God has given us all things relating to life (2 Pet. 1:3). Based upon this fact God gave us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these we might become partakers, enjoyers, of the divine nature. Now we all have to learn how to taste the constituents of the divine nature which are Spirit, love, and light. In other words, when you partake of the divine nature, you enjoy God as the Spirit, as love, and as light.
To illustrate this, let us consider our set apart time to fellowship with the Lord. In such a fellowship you realize and enjoy the Lord as the Spirit, and simultaneously you enjoy the nature of God’s essence, which is love. Love then saturates you and even becomes you. Before this time, you may have been disgusted with many things. After this kind of fellowship, however, everything is lovable. You may have been disgusted with your wife before this fellowship, but afterwards you are filled with love for your wife. This love has not only filled you but saturated you. The reason why we Christians can love persons whom others cannot love is because we enjoy God as love. We enjoy the divine nature of this loving God. This is why John tells us in his first Epistle that if we love our brother this means we are born of God because God is love (4:7-8). When you love others you are enjoying the divine nature. One who does not have God or who does not partake of God’s divine nature hates everything. Do not think that people love everything. They are just cultured and trained to be polite. Their kindness and loving is a kind of politics. The genuine love is the issue of the enjoyment of the divine nature. A supervisor or a boss may say something in a loving way to an employee. Unless what he has said is an enjoyment of the divine nature, he is actually playing politics. When the time comes for him to fire or lay off this employee, he will have no problem. Only those who partake of the divine nature love people genuinely. They are not taught to love others, but they have become love toward others. They are the partakers of the divine love, which is the very nature of the divine essence.
If we would spend an adequate amount of time in the morning with the Lord, we would be full of light inwardly and we would not do things nonsensically or say things foolishly. Whatever we do and whatever we say would be full of light. This is the issue of our enjoying of the divine nature. This is because one constituent in the divine nature is light. If we would all spend time to fellowship with the Lord, we would have the sensation that we are enjoying the Lord as the Spirit and we would become a person of love. Love would saturate us. Furthermore, whatever we would say would be light, and whatever we would do would be transparent as crystal. This is an evidence or proof that we are partaking of the divine nature.
The Bible also tells us that God is life. Love and light are related to God as life (John 1:4), and life is of the Spirit (Romans 8:2). God is life to us mainly in love and light. If you are not saturated with love, you are not living the life of God. If you are not so transparently bright, you are not enjoying God as life. When you are enjoying God as life, you are full of love and full of light. Therefore, love and light are both related to God as life, and life is of the Spirit. God, the Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit, and Spirit is life. Within such a life are love and light. In John’s Epistle we come to the Father to participate in His love and light in the fellowship of the Father’s life. This is further and deeper in the experience of the divine life. Love and light are God the Father Himself for our deeper and finer enjoyment in the fellowship of the divine life with the Father in the Son (1 John 1:3-7) by our abiding in Him (1 John 2:5, 27-28; 3:6, 24).