Partakers of the Divine Nature

2 Peter 1:3-4
As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption and moral decay that is in the world through lust.

“Partakers of the divine nature” means we have escaped the corruption and condemnation in the world by the creation of the “new man” in the likeness of God, Eph. 4:24, which is created in no less the image of God than Adam was, except now without sin, 1 John 3:9 “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”

Simply put, when we are saved, we receive a new nature, in the likeness and righteousness of Jesus Christ by which we do not perish with the world.
“The righteousness of God is neither an attribute of God, nor the changed character of the believer, but Christ Himself, which is, by the act of God called imputation, 1 Corinthians 1:30 “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
The believer in Christ is now, by grace, shrouded under so complete and blessed a righteousness that the Law can find neither fault nor weakness therein.”
~ C.I. Scofield

The glory of Christ is the Presence of Christ in the fullness of His deity (Col. 2:9) – what the disciples experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration. (John 17:1-5)

To partake of the divine nature is to enter the glory of God and Jesus Christ. It is where we belong! And, while Jesus is always present with us, we are not always aware of His Presence. We do not partake of Him as we might. We are distracted and diverted, and frankly, not sufficiently engaged in the presence of the Lord, to the extent that we do not know how to enter into His glory. Jesus intends for us to share in His glory and to partake of Him by living in the Holy Spirit, in all the spiritual blessings which God in heaven has bestowed on us for life and godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)

 I am convinced that the reason the Churches’ ministry in the world is so ineffective, as evidenced by the corruption and godlessness in this age, is that we (the Church) have not truly partaken of Christ as fully or consistently as we can. We have reduced our "discipling" and "disciplining" to activities related to church, rather than to accessing the Presence of Christ in His glory by every available means. We have made of the work of ministry a check list of things to do rather than the edifying of the Body of Christ to the abounding of Grace in the saints.

2 Cor. 9:8
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

In Scripture, when people were confronted with the glory of God, they experienced something real and palpable, something that filled them with deep affections of longing and joy at the same time.

Like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, in the Presence of God’s glory we would experience something so utterly joyful and transcendent of our day to day lives, that it satisfies us in the depth of our being and fills us with a desire for more of the same. Or is this wishful thinking?

Living for His glory without knowing the glory of God,  will be next to impossible. And if we settle for anything less than partaking of Jesus, we will not have the power nor the motivation to proclaim Him to our neighbors.

Jesus led the disciples into the glory of God, and the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit and the spiritual excitement of Jesus, led the multitudes into the glory of God by their ministries of the Word. As Christians, we must settle for nothing less than to partake of the divine nature and to know God in His glory. Then we would proclaim Jesus and His glory by word and deed. Thus partaking of Jesus, the followers of Christ would live for and manifest the glory of Jesus, and demonstrate the hope that is within them...
Matt. 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

If we will seek the Lord in His glory, He promises that we will find Him...
Jer. 29:13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

We have been seated with Christ in heavenly places, and are surrounded by and suffused with His glory as our normal mode of being in the world
Eph. 2:6 But God made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus

Let us fix our minds on this glory...
Col. 3.1-3 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

...so that we are utterly transformed by it, and partake of Jesus in newer and more powerful ways...
2 Cor. 3:18  But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The greater our knowledge of God becomes, the more we will realize the magnitude of His promises. When God blesses us, he changes our very being so that whatever we were by nature is transformed by the gift of His Holy Spirit, so that we may truly become partakers of His nature.