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XXVI. The Mystical Union with Immanuel
“Christ in you the hope of glory.” —Col.i. 27.
Theunion of believers with Christ their Head is not effected by instilling a divine-human
life-tincture into the soul. There is no divine-human life. There is a most holy Person, who
unites in Himself the divine and the human life; but both natures continue unmixed, un-
blended, each retaining its own properties. And since there is no divine-human life in Jesus,
He can not instil it into us.
We do heartily acknowledge that there is a certain conformity and similarity between
the divine nature and the human, for man was created after the image of God; wherefore
St. Peter could say, “That we become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter i. 4); but, ac-
cording to all sound expositors, this means only that unto the sinner are imparted the attrib-
utes of goodness and holiness, which he originally possessed in his own nature in common
with the divine nature, but which he lost by sin.
Compared with the nature of material things, and with that of animals and of devils,
there is indeed a feature of conformity and similarity between the divine and human natures.
But this may not be understood as obliterating the boundary between the divine nature and
the human. And, therefore, let this glorious word of St. Peter no longer be abused in order
to justify a philosophic system which has nothing in common with the soberness and sim-
plicity of Holy Scripture.
What St. Peter calls “to become partaker of the divine nature" is called in another place,
to become the children of God. But altho Christ is the Son of God, and we are called the
children of God, this does not make the Sonship of Christ and our sonship to stand on the
same plane and to be of the same nature. We are but the adoptedchildren, altho we have
another descent, while He is the actualand eternal Son. While He isessentially the eternal
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Son, partaker of the divine nature, which in the unity of His Person He unites with the
human nature, we are merely restored to the likeness of the divine nature which we had lost
by sin.
Hence as “to be adopted as a child,” and “to be the Son forever” are contrasts, so are also
the following: “to have the divine nature in Himself,” and “to be only partakers of the divine
nature.”
The friend who shares a bereaved mother’s mourning is not bereaved himself, but
through love and pity he has become partaker of that mourning. In like manner, accepting
these great and precious promises, believers become partakers of the divine nature, altho
in themselves wholly devoid, of that nature. Partaker does not denote what one possesses
in himself, as his own, but a partial communication of what does not belong to him, but to
another.
XXVI. The Mystical Union with Immanuel
XXVI. The Mystical Union with Immanuel
