Partakers of the Divine Nature — Make Every Effort

✦ Everything We Need — Already Given

Peter begins not with a command but with a gift. His divine power has given us everything we need. Not will give. Not promises to give if we earn it. Has given. Past tense. Already done. The resources for a godly life are not waiting somewhere ahead on the road — they are already in the motorhome, already packed, already present. Through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.

This is Luther's faith — God's work in us. This is Bowen's inseparable pardon and power. The calling came first. The gift came with the calling. The power for godly living is not something we generate after conversion — it is something that arrived with the conversion. When Father Joe James brought the gospel to that hospital at midnight, everything Le would ever need for a godly life came with it. The seed contained the entire tree. 🙏

✦ Made Like God — By Grace

Spurgeon does what Spurgeon always does — he uses Scripture like a surgeon. First the careful boundary: we do not become God. The essence of Deity is not for creatures to possess. Between Creator and creature there is always a gulf. He is precise. He is honest. He will not let us misunderstand the promise by inflating it beyond what Scripture means.

But then — then — he opens the door. By the renewal of the Holy Spirit, we are made in the image of the Most High in a yet diviner sense than even Adam was. Not by absorbing God's essence. By becoming like Him in character.

God is love — we become love. God is truth — we become true. God is good — He makes us good by His grace. This is Augustine's vision from three days ago: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, a hand through which Christ helps. Spurgeon is saying the same thing from Peter's side. We participate in the divine nature not by becoming God but by becoming what God is like. Love. Truth. Goodness. Purity. And all of it — by grace. Not by achievement. Not by moral effort. By the renewal of the Holy Spirit who makes it happen through faith. 🙏

✦ Make Every Effort — The Paradox of Grace and Will

Peter says make every effort. And Le felt it this morning: my will is a must. After days of hearing Luther say faith is God's work in us, after Bowen saying our own volitions cannot purify us, after Wigglesworth saying only believe — Peter says make every effort. Is this a contradiction?

No. This is the paradox at the heart of the Christian life. Luther said faith cannot help doing good works constantly — before anyone asks, it has already done them. The effort Peter commands is not the effort of the one climbing toward God. It is the effort of the one in whom God is already at work. You make every effort not in order to participate in the divine nature — you make every effort because you already do. The chain Peter builds — faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, love — is not a ladder you climb to reach God. It is the fruit of the divine nature already planted in you, growing outward in increasing measure.

And look where the chain begins and ends. It begins with faith — the foundation, the gift, God's work in us. And it ends with love — the crown, the outer garment that Colossians said binds everything together in perfect harmony. Faith to love. The 500 denari arithmetic: forgiven much, therefore loving much. The chain is the journey between those two. 🙏

✦ The Danger of Forgetting

Peter's warning is not that we might fail to be cleansed. It is that we might forget that we were. Nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. The danger is not the absence of grace. The danger is the amnesia of the graced.

The 500 denari soul can never afford to forget the size of what she was forgiven — because that memory is the engine of everything else. The woman with the issue of blood did not forget what twelve years of suffering had cost her. The woman at Simon's house did not forget why she was washing His feet with tears. The forgetting is the danger — because when you forget you were forgiven, you stop loving. When you stop loving, the chain breaks. When the chain breaks, you become ineffective and unproductive, not because the divine nature has left you, but because you have forgotten it is there.

This is why Le rises before dawn every morning. This is why the journal exists. To remember. Every entry is a remembrance — of Nahum 1:12, of the midnight hospital, of the 500 denari, of the hem touched and the word Daughter spoken. The journal is the daily act of refusing to forget. 🙏

✦ No Excuse on the Road

A motorhome in Provence. Italy ahead. New campsites, new views, new roads every day. And Le says: it's better to stay in touch with God than to use the excuse of travelling. The road is not a reason to pause the devotion. The road is the devotion. Every morning before dawn — in Caldas da Rainha, on the Canal du Midi, in Bellegarde, in Le Val — the discipline is the same. The rising is the same. The reading is the same. The reaching for the hem is the same.

Make every effort — with God's help. That is the paradox resolved in five words. Every effort. With God's help. My will and His power. Peter's command and Luther's faith. The effort is real and the grace is real and they are not in competition — they are partners. The divine nature at work in her is the reason she can make the effort at all. And the effort she makes is the proof that the divine nature is at work.

Thirty-two entries now. From Nahum 1:12 to 2 Peter 1. From affliction has a limit to make every effort. The pilgrim who began by receiving grace is now the pilgrim who works out that grace with fear and trembling — because it is God who works in her, both to will and to do, for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12–13). The Potter and the clay. The divine nature and the human will. Both. Always both. All the way to Italy and beyond. 🙏