2 Peter 1:4

‘By which he has granted to us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.'

Because we have been called in His glory and in virtue of His powerful excellence, and because we have come to know Him in that glory and excellence, (compare 1 Peter 2:9), He has granted us certain hugely effective and precious promises, as a result of which we have become partakers of the divine nature. These great and precious promises were outlined in his first letter. It is through His resurrection that we have been begotten again of incorruptible seed (1 Peter 1:23) to a living hope (1 Peter 1:4). It is through His cross and subsequent victory that we have certainty for the future and can live unto righteousness (1 Peter 2:24; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:1). We do not have to distinguish here whether the ‘He' is God or Jesus Christ. For Jesus Christ has already been revealed as ‘our God and Saviour'. The ‘He' has in mind the whole of the Godhead inclusive of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

There may be in mind in the ‘divine begetting' mentioned here the claims of some Hellenistic religions which promised some kind of ‘divine begetting', but if so it has been taken over and given new content and a new perspective. The point is not that we become divine, but that the seed of the divine word has been implanted within us, so that we have been made one with the divine Christ (compare John 15:1). The result will be that as a result of the work of the Spirit within we will grow up to become trees of righteousness and the planting of the Lord (1 Peter 1:2). It is a totally Biblical idea. See for example Isaiah 61:13; and compare Isaiah 55:10; Isaiah 44:1; Ezekiel 36:26.

It should be noted that the Christian's partaking of the divine nature is not seen as resulting from emotional ritual acts (that was a later perversion), it is seen as being through ‘knowing Christ' and as a result of the activity of God through His word. It results from God reaching down to man in Christ, not man reaching up to God.

The ‘exceeding great and precious promises' relate to all the precious promises which link us with the precious ‘living foundation stone' (1 Peter 2:4). It is through His dying for us, and His power released through His resurrection, that we can be delivered from the corruption of the world (1 Peter 2:24; 1 Peter 3:18). It is through ‘knowing Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His suffering, being made conformable to His death, if by any means we might attain to the resurrection from the dead' (Philippians 3:10). In other words it is when we can each say, ‘I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, and yet it is not I who live, but Christ Who lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me' (Galatians 2:20).

And the result of participating in His divine nature through dying with Him and rising with Him in newness of life, is that we are delivered from the corruption that is in the world as a result of men's evil desires. We are lifted out of the filth and the morass of evil and worldly living (1 John 2:15), and made into citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3:20). This in stark contrast to the false teachers in chapter 2.