October 2, 2020
FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
WE PARTAKE OF THE DIVINE NATURE IMPARTED THRU THE DIVINE POWER OF CHRIST’S HUMAN NATURE AS GOD IN THE FLESH
“To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our GOD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord, 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 that is in the world through lust [unholy, worldly, carnal desires and the lust of the eye and the flesh’].”
2 Pet. 1:1-4, NKJV.
The Incarnation: “Layon aside His royal robe and kingly crown, Christ clothes His divinity with humanity, that human beings might be RAISED from their degradation [caused by sin], and placed on vantage ground.
“Christ could not have come to this earth with the glory that He had in the heavenly courts. Sinful human beings could not have borne the sight. He veiled His divinity with the garb of humanity, BUT HE DID NOT PART WITH HIS DIVINITY. A divine-human Savior, He came to stand as the Head of the FALLEN RACE, to share in their experience FROM CHILDHOOD TO MANHOOD.
“That [fallen, sinful] human beings might be partakers of the divine nature, He came to this Earth, and lived a life of perfect obedience.” (E.G. White, Review & Herald, June 15, 1905, p. 8.
It is Because we know so little of the “mystery of godliness” of the Creator taking on our human nature, without ceasing to be God, that we deny ourselves of the promise that He will “impart His divine nature” to those earnestly seeking to follow His footsteps as their Example and Shepherd. Grace is “the power of God unto salvation” and imparted by the Holy Spirit to all who “ask, seek, and knock.” God bless all, NMF