His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. – 2Peter 1:3-4.
Perhaps you remember Hamlet’s soliloquy of “To be or not to be, that is the question.” Hamlet was musing within himself as to whether it was better to be alive or dead since, on top of everything else, he had just lost the fair Ophelia. The problem in Hamlet’s mind was if one enters into death, then one might enter into dreaming:
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
We have a similar problem. Our problem is not a death issue, ours is a Living-Issue. You and I already are an eternal people walking around in defeated flesh. Hamlet is musing about his circumstances because his world is falling apart. In our world, the fingers of God have already reached into our soul, rescuing us from the consequence of living in the flesh of a Hamlet. Our challenge is walking in the resurrection Life of Jesus!
We are now provisioned to escape from the corruption of sinful desire by choosing to be partakers of His divine nature. It is a choice of faith through grace!
God has already granted us all things pertaining to life and Godliness. Our problem is Living in His glory and excellence. His Life, in us, including His resurrection power, is ours because He created us new in Him; Christ is in us! His resurrection power makes our redemption possible. Our “to be” question is: “to be or not to be whom He has created us to be!” His “way” needs to be our “path.”
By grace we are saved thru Faith. Our failures are in making non-faith choices after being created new; these choices, we need to examine and discern, so that, we may live in His fulness! To be or not to be living in Him, is our question! We are in Him, are we living in Him?
If we focus only on faith choices, we may easily become religious about our salvation. We may discipline ourselves to make right choices but at the same time neglect Jesus on a personal basis. God is a spirit but He is also a person.
When we observe the relationship depicted between God and Israel in the Old Testament, we see God as a person with feelings like us! This is because we are made in His image. We were created originally for the purpose of fellowship with God and He with us!
The Westminster shorter catechism puts it this way:
Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
There is a love issue which is implied but generally overlooked. God’s glory in man is seen as allowing Jesus to change us into His own likeness. This indeed happens as we grow in Him through His agape love. We are given His resurrection power to experience and employ in our own life. God is Love; as we mature in Christ we are also growing into His agape Love.
As His resurrection power is manifested in us, we become meek, wise, patient, longsuffering, in short, the fruit of His Spirit becomes who we are. This is our sanctification!
We can talk about making faith decisions as we discipline ourselves, but to make good choices, we must bring our heart into the equation … and our mind.
Our Lord redeemed our soul, including our heart, mind and spirit. Making decisions becomes a structure we set up for ourselves. Structure is the order we put into our life to reach our goals. Our spiritual structure is intended to purify us into the image of Jesus. Our Lord Jesus gives us the legs we need to turn our justification into sanctification. We live Spiritually so that we might see more clearly how to separate our finite righteousness from His purity.
By using His resurrection power, He guides us into purifying our humanity just as God has already sanctified our whole soul. God has joined our spirit to Himself by a new creation within us. We can have this discussion without talking about love and this is why it often does not work. If we omit His love working within us, we turn our salvation into religion ceasing His resurrection power; we turn our pathway into our path and omit His way. “I AM the way.”
Soon we will be seeing Him face to face! We are now stewards of His grace. He now is providing His resurrection power! Our stewardship in us of His Life determines our heavenly reward or loss of reward.
There is relationship accountability for the grace His love is providing; it is our gain vs. our loss when we come into our eternal home. Our time on earth, in His grace, is our eternal investment! Make this an object of serious prayer!
Being partakers of His divine nature needs to be our intentional, fulltime choice! Feeding ourselves Spiritually within His provisions of a divine relationship is what we are called to do!! We need to be rooted (organic love) and grounded (spiritual structure) in love.
Growing in grace and knowledge of Him is our new fulltime career. His divine life in us is the resurrected life of Jesus Himself. His resurrection power within each “born again” person is what Peter is discussing in the above passage and what Paul exhorts below to the Corinthians:
“For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” – 2Corinthians 4:6-7.
We experience and display God’s surpassing power in our lives when making faith choices. There is no easy answer for making faith choices. It is not like turning on a switch in our heart or mind.
“Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” – Hebrews 5:14.
When we are created new in Jesus, we receive both access into the eternal sanctuary of God the Father’s own presence and a capacity to exercise our new divine status as a child of the King; it depends upon our Spiritual maturity.
Have you noticed who Jesus chose to be with Him during much of the Biblical narrative of His ministry. It was the two sons of thunder, James and John, and the clumsy, foolhardy Peter. The three most unlikely candidates are the ones Jesus chose to be with him on the mount of transfiguration and prayer in the Garden. Why? They probably had the most to learn! But they also had the most learnable hearts!!
We, like John, James and Peter, have to learn to shed our things if we are going to be qualified to move mountains. We are to set our earthly desires aside. We are to seek Spiritual things rather than earthly things. We are to be renewed in the knowledge of Jesus’ own image.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” – 1John 2:15.
This is a serious task! It requires dedication and daily intentional choices of prayer and faith. The kind of prayer talks to the Father about our weakness and His glory! It is all about Him, not about us, but He shares His all with us!
Glory belongs to God and not to us. Our task is making our path into His way. By changing our path into His way, we put them both together becoming our path-way; His way is our pathway!
His way is for us to crucify our fleshly desire while nurturing our New Life in Jesus. His Life is reigning over our condemned flesh with His power to implement His grace. Therefore, we need to cultivate our relationship with Him in a personal pathway. Prayer is important; feeding on Him in His word is important; Being who we already are is important!
We need to be intentional about our time and purpose. We need to consume His grace into our breathing here on earth, so that, we are energized by His breath rather than our own! This means prayer time, not only for our needy self, but for those we love and cherish as well.
“To Be,” for us, is Jesus being seen in our mortal flesh. For us, “Not to be” no longer exists! We are now eternally sealed, proclaimed “children of God” with an inheritance resting in Jesus and God Himself. We exercise resurrection power allowing Jesus to reign in and through our jar of clay. This is our glory, glorifying God within us.
Our Glorious God, Jesus our Savior, created us with this free choice; this Faith choice is in our hand effecting the entirety of our eternal Life! Think about it!!
To be or not to be, that is the question!
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lively, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” -Philippians 4:8.