Two Natures

This is another Reason to embrace your identify in Christ as God sees you versus seeing yourself as a dirty rotten sinner as the Devil and his minions work to get you to see yourself as. (Link)

Through these things he has bestowed on us his precious and most magnificent promises, so that by means of what was promised you may become partakers of the divine nature, after escaping the worldly corruption that is produced by evil desire. (2 Peter 1:4)

What does the Bible specifically say about our nature?  The Greek word for nature is used in this way only twice in the New Testament – 2 Peter 1:4 and Ephesians 2:3

And although you were dead in your offenses and sins, 2 in which you formerly lived according to this world’s present path, according to the ruler of the domain of the air, the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest… (Ephesians 2:1-3)

When you came into spiritual union with God through your new birth, you didn't add a new, divine nature to your old, sinful nature. You exchanged natures. Salvation isn't just a matter of God forgiving your sins and issuing you a pass to heaven when you die. Salvation is regeneration. God changed you from darkness to light, from sinner to saint. There is a newness about you that wasn't there before. If God hadn't changed your identity at salvation, you would be stuck with your old identity until you died. How could you expect to grow to maturity if you didn't start as a transformed child of God? Becoming a partaker of God's nature is fundamental to a Christian's identity and maturity.

We are no longer in Adam, we are in Christ. We can still choose to walk according to the flesh, but why should we want to? "You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him" (Romans 8:9).

From: Dr. Neil Anderson, Daily in Christ a Devotional. (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, Inc., 1993), February 3.