The Restoration of Our Divine Nature

The scriptural account of the creation of man depicts man as the image of God, created in His likeness. As glorious as our pedigree is, one striking fact puts a damper on everything:

God is spiritual and immortal; man is carnal and mortal. Why this yawning disparity? Why this seemingly unbridgeable chasm?

The Adamic fall is our undoing! It brought in its wake carnality and mortality. God’s solemn warning against the eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil contained an ominous tone alright – “thou shalt surely die”- but Adam and Eve (under the spell of satanic deception) miscalculated the risks and ate the fruit.

Thus before man fell, he was originally like YAHWEH: Spiritual and immortal. This is the true sense of the scripture “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26). It must not be construed as describing the present carnal nature of man.

The original, express intent was to make mankind exactly like God (and His Son Yashsua) who is a Spirit.

However as soon as man ate the forbidden fruit in violation of God’s law, he became carnal (Gen. 3:10-11; 17-19; 22-24) according to the ‘rule’ of John 3:6:

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

It is no illusion that only those filled with the Holy Spirit of Christ are the true children of God (Rom. 8:16; John 1:12).

This means that those who live in the flesh are still outside the spiritual kingdom of God – outside Eden in a strictly spiritual sense (Gen. 3:24; 1 Cor. 15:50).

The process that will climax in the repossession of our divine nature involves repentance, faith in Christ and the observance of God’s spiritual law (Rom.3:31; 7:14).

Jesus will crown the process when He returns and resurrects the dead saints from the grave and restores our immortality.

Meanwhile, God expects us – as His spiritual children – to bear the fruit of the Spirit. (Gal. 5:22 -23).