Why did you become a Christian?
Theologically, the answer is because God, in his grace and mercy, ‘made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions’ (Ephesians 2.5). It is indeed by grace that we have been saved! But, at the level of our human perception, there are many different factors which bring men and women to repent and believe the good news. Of course, the expectations with which we became believers may have to be refined biblically, as we go on in the Christian life, and this can be a painful experience of adjustment to spiritual reality. Evangelists sometimes promise heaven on earth! What God promises, however, is the wonderful adventure of being transformed into the likeness of Christ, the perfect image of himself.
Divine nature
There’s an interesting section at the start of the apostle Peter’s second letter, where he speaks about God’s divine power and his ‘very great and precious promises’, enabling Christians to ‘participate in the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1.3-4). Of course, Peter is not saying that we mere mortals can become divine. Scripture is clear that there is only one Son begotten of the Father, and experience clearly explodes any pretensions we might be tempted to have about our divinity. We are still all too finite, weak, sinful and mortal. So what does Peter mean?
At the heart of the ‘divine nature’ is the mystery of the holy Trinity. This is not only the revelation that God is three persons in one undivided unity, but that the constant inter-relating of the three persons to one another is the definition of the dynamic we call ‘love’. So, when John says ‘God is love’ (1 John 4.8), he is saying more than that God loves, though, of course, he does. Rather, he is affirming that at the very heart of God’s being is the love between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that God is love, in himself. This is the essence of the nature of the divine being, in whom we ‘participate’, through Christ and the gospel. There is a deep sense in which Christians are sharers in the life of this God, who is love, as we are united to him by faith. All that God is, in his essential being, he is to us, his repentant and believing people.
