True servants of Jesus, the children of God, are partakers of the divine nature.1 Just as true human sonship for children of the world means being a partaker of the human nature of Adam, true sonship for children of the Kingdom of God is to be a partaker of the divine nature of God the Father. Our Holy God is Spirit,2 Holy Spirit. The human nature of the sons of Adam is the flesh and the divine nature of the sons of God is the Spirit.
Those who are led by the Spirit of God's Son, these are sons of God. 3 They are people who worship God in Spirit and in Truth4 being led by the Spirit of Truth.5 These are the obedient followers of Jesus who have died with Christ and were begotten anew by the Spirit of the Living God.6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, Spirit gives birth to spirit. Our sonship begins when we are born of God according to God's own divine nature, born of the Holy Spirit. Our sonship begins when the Spirit comes into us so that we might walk according to that Spirit, so that we might walk as a child of God walks, according to the divine nature, the Spirit of God. We are reckoned as sons or daughters of God only if we walk according to that divine nature of God, the Holy Spirit.
It is only those who walk according to the divine nature of God who will inherit the divine nature of God. Only these are true sons of God and heirs of God.7 At the present time, our sonship is a matter of function. Our sonship is defined by what we do. And those who are led by the Spirit of God, those who walk according to the Spirit, who are the children of God. It is a verb thing not a noun thing. And those who have walked by the Spirit, the divine nature of God, will inherit that divine nature as their own in the resurrection of the body when they themselves will be bodily raised into a Spiritual body, life-giving Spirit,8 the divine nature of God. And when this occurs, those who were heirs having walked by the Spirit, children of God defined by what they did, then inherit their divine sonship, the divine nature of God, and they become children of God in what they are. They become natural sons and daughters of God and thus true sons and daughters9 of the Living God our Father.
Notes:
1. 2 Peter 1:4; cf. Col 2:9-10; Ephesians 3:19.
2. John 4:24
3. Romans 8:14; Galatians 4:6
4. John 4:23-24
5. John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13.
6. John 3:3-8
7. Romans 8:14-17.
8. 1 Corinthians 15:45,49; see 2 Cor 3:17-18.
9. 1 John 3:1-2.
