Our partaking of the divine nature is a real thing. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." All are born of God. Christ is become our life. He is that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. Hence it can be said, "Which thing is true in Him and in you." But that life was the light of men. Christ was the image of the invisible God.
This life was a true, moral, subsisting thing which could be communicated. There is a divine power in it which contains and unfolds all things that pertain to life and godliness. It is faith which lays hold, by the power of the Spirit of God, on that which is life—that is. Christ. We are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Christ is the Word—the expression and revelation of all that is in God, and we, in knowing Him, are renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us.
The Word, as a testimony, is the seed of life when brought into the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, because it is the revelation of Christ and the bringing in by that power of Christ living there. It is Christ, by the word, by faith, in the power of the Holy Spirit, the operation being the operation of God. But it is by the revelation of Christ. Hence, we are said to be begotten by the incorruptible seed of the Word (1 Peter 1:23.) "Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." James 1:18. And so it is expressed here.
Grace and peace are to be multiplied "through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature." 2 Peter 1:2-4. Calling them to walk rightly where man already was is not a law to the flesh, but a call by glory and virtue to get on to this new place of peace in which Christ is. And to get there by the revelation of Him glorified, and the assurance of our portion in it.
By divine power it is livingly communicated to the soul. This is the glory of the divine nature in a man, into which we are to be formed. We are livingly formed by its revelation in the power of the Holy Spirit now. It is the real communication of the divine nature. Peter looks at it even in its affections, desires, and qualities as under the impress of the revelation of Christ rather than as the simple fact of life. But all Scripture tells the same truth. Every nature has its own character and knowledge by which it lives and is formed, its tastes, spirit, and objects which make it what it is. Its existence is the first and wonderful truth. Bible Treasury, Vol. 3