True Life-Increase

“Participating in the Divine Nature” is “having this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus,” and is “hospitably receiving the implanted Word-Logos that is able to save your soul.”

Peter said, in 2 Peter 1:3-4, says everything we need comes through our firsthand knowledge of Jesus’s Person. And there is a divine power at work involving His Own glory and Higher Order excellency. Through this Higher Way that Isaiah 55:8-11 speaks about, there are effects of His Self-committals, so that through His Self-committals you may become partakers of the Divine Nature. The Divine Nature is not tied down to the desire and decay of this world with all its good and bad. Thus, partaking means having escaped all that.

Peter’s “participating in the Divine Nature” is also Paul’s “having this mind in you” in Philippians 2:5. Once again, Isaiah 55:8-11’s Higher Thought and Higher Way applies. God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and God’s ways are not our ways. We would be clueless unless He intervened somehow to show us, and allow us to participate and partake. That is what Philippians 2:6-11 intends to describe and depict. God has started a work in us in Philippians 1:6, and this work mirrors the mind and heart of Christ seen in this passage. What do we see?

Thanks to a recent scholarly publication entitled the Divine Heartset by Crispin Fletcher-Louis some gaps in prior research have revealed a key mistranslation in verse 6. In contrast to what you have typically read about this One not seeking something to grasp such as existing in the form of God, that something is actually of the flesh! It is grabbing hold of beautiful flesh for multiplying more flesh. Once all ancient references to the underlying word, harpagmon, are looked at, the word was used in the common cultural context of bride-knapping. It is what typical Greco-Roman gods did when they incarnated: see beautiful flesh and take it, and pour into it, so that more powerful flesh is made. Moreover, the term “god-equal,” likewise commonly referred to a dominate males’ ability to steal other men’s wives, procreate at will, etc.

The mind of Christ Jesus was to do the inverse of that with the flesh. Jesus did not incarnate in the familiar way that the first century church would have known of the god’s who incarnated. There was no taking and making powerful flesh; but rather hushing the flesh and giving in a different way. This way invoked a decrease and self-lowering. Instead of the typical Greco-Roman god making their demi-gods through seducing pretty flesh by looking like humans, Jesus became human in a different way that took His flesh into inaction and death, even by the excruciating cross!

At this low point where Jesus radically emptied Himself, God then hyper-exalts Him. Why, because this is The Higher Way and Higher Thought of Isaiah 55. God’s word, which leaves His mouth, does not fall into the lowly ground and remain void. Rather, like a seed, God’s Word accomplished the purpose to which His Word was sent, and there is a harvest. And now raised up, every tongue now “says the same thing out from themselves” as God’s Word that exited His mouth and went on this seed cycle. Do you hear that? The word commonly translated as “confess” in Philippians 2:11, really should be either “confess out from the midst,” or more literally, coming to the “same spoken conclusion out from the midst.” Sharing the mind of Christ Jesus is selflessly giving yourself away to the other members of the body of Christ, who also should be engaged in the same Divine Nature and Lifeblood circulation.

If other Christians are on track with the seed-cycle portrayal of the Diving Nature, then true Life-increase happens. There is a fleshly resistance to losing your own soul-life, because seeds do look like there are going into a hole to die and get buried. Adam and Eve’s kneejerk reaction to hearing the sound of God walking in the garden in Genesis 3:8, was to self-preserve, because the spirit of that sound was a call unto the death of the flesh-life that they had just been fooled into taking at the forbidden tree. But had they come out from their hiding place and its flesh-irritating attire, they would have learned how God breezes through all the trees alike, even the tree forbidden to Adam and Eve.

This is why James 1:21 tells us to welcome and hospitably receive the implanted Logos, often translated as “Word.” The implanted logos is this seed. Like a seed has DNA, a logos is an underlying matrix that accounts for all the factors. Jesus is This Logos-Word as John says in the opening words to his Gospel. This Higher Way, and Higher Thought of Jesus kept tightly in our hearts, defining the core reactions and responses, provides that Higher Power. Jesus’s Way and Thought becoming our way and thought saves our soul-life. If you want to save your soul-life, Jesus said to lose, ruin, and destroy it. You cannot keep your default soul-life that hides from God and doesn’t know what is good for it. Your best choice is to lose yours and gain congruency with His.

Thus, all these three passages, 2 Peter 1:3-4’s parking in the Divine Nature, Philippians 2’s having this same mind in you, and James 1:21’s “receiving the implanted Word-Logos” are all saying the same thing, just coming at it from different angles. Moreover, all leverage the seed-cycle imagery once you take Isaiah 55:8-11 into account. God has a way in Him that expresses out of His mouth like seed that follows the cycle of His Higher Way and Higher Thought. Or said another way, true life-increase looks like the seed cycle that continues to increase and increase life. Anything not that is not life increasing. Another word for this idea of “life not increasing” is death.