Become Everything You Are Meant to Be
Having
an intention and allowing it to motivate us truly benefits ourselves and many
others.
How did you find last
week’s post? Are you not excited to find
out more about God’s plan? Let us continue then from the same source (From
Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the
Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 1)
In the following pages,
not only will you discover the incredible vision God has for your life; you
will also come to see that the parts of yourself you like the least, the
temptations that tear you apart, the longings you seem never to be able to
satisfy, the desires you try to repress, can, through God’s grace, reveal the
path to the new creation God wants to make of you. Most important, you will discover,
step-by-step, how to transform the weakest, most broken, and even shameful
parts of yourself into the engine of your perfection.
First, we’ll explore the shocking truth about divinization, the ancient and
surprisingly orthodox Christian assertion that God truly intends to make you a
god and what that means, practically speaking, for your life today. Next, I will reveal how your desires, even
your darkest and most troublesome passions, expose the engine God intends to
use to work this amazing transformation in your life. Finally, I will present a step-by-step plan
for cooperating more effectively with the miracle God wants to work in you so
that you might experience the deep joy that comes from both satisfying the
seven divine longings of your heart and fulfilling your destiny to become the
god you were meant, by God, to be.
You Are Gods
Theologians use terms such as “deification,” “divine
filiation,” “theosis,” and, as I mentioned above, “divinization” to refer to
God’s incredible plan to make those who love him into gods. Although these words can be a mouthful, each
term is just another way of saying you are destined for a greatness beyond your
wildest imaginings! Whatever crazy
dreams you have for your life, God has you beat—hands down. By means of his epic and eternal love for
you, God intends to make you a god—perfect, whole, healed, fearless living
abundantly in this life and reigning forever by his side in the next.
The remarkable truth that God became a human being
so that human beings might become gods is revealed in Scripture. The Second Letter of Peter (1:4) says that
through Christ’s saving work we become “partakers of the divine nature.” Likewise, it was Jesus who said, “Be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
When we read that passage today, we often think it means, “Jesus wants
us to be really, really good,” but Christianity has always taught that this
verse means much more. Jesus told us so
when he reminded the Pharisees, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I have said,
“You are gods”’?” (Jn 10:34, in which
Christ quotes Ps 82:6).
C. S. Lewis notes the miraculous significance of
this passage when he writes in Mere
Christianity, “Be ye perfect” is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the
impossible. He is going to make us into
creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the bible) that we were
“gods” and He is going to make good His words.
If we let Him…He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god
or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creatures, pulsating all through with
such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright
stainless mirror which reflects back to Him perfectly (Lewis, 1952).
Early Christian leaders and saints wrote widely on
the topic of divinization. The authors
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church gathered some of their more prominent
reflections on this concept in their response to the question “Why did God become
man?”
The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt
1:4): “For this is why the Word became
man, and the Son of God became the Son of man:
so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving
divine sonship, might become a son of God” (St.
Irenaeus). “For the Son of God
became man so that we might become God” (St.
Athanasius). “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in
his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (St. Thomas Aquinas) (CCC, no. 460).
The Catechism isn’t cherry-picking random quotes
from fringe figures. These sayings come
from some of the greatest minds in the history of Christendom, all of whom are
universally respected by Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike for their
scholarship and their sanctity.
Moreover, these few quotes cited by the Catechism are only a small
sample of a much wider pool of similar quotes dating back to the earliest days
of Christianity. For instance, [In the
beginning, humans] were made like God, free from suffering and death, provided
that they kept His commandments, and were deemed deserving of the name of His
sons, and yet they, becoming like Adam and Eve work out death for themselves;
let the interpretation of the Psalm be held just as you wish, yet thereby it is
demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and of having
power to become sons of the Highest –St.
Justin Martyr, c. AD 100-165 (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 124)
[He who listens to the Lord, and follows the
prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the likeness of the
teacher—made a god going about in flesh. –St.
Clement of Alexandria, c. AD 150-215 [The Stromata, 7.16 (book 7, chapter
16)]
From the Holy Spirit is the likeness of God, and the
highest thing to be desired, to become God. –St. Basil the Great, c. AD 330-379 (De Spiritu Sanctu)
If we have been made sons of God, we have also been
made gods. –St. Augustine, c. AD
354-430 (Exposition on Psalm 50)
The idea that we are destined to become gods through
God’s love and grace was supported by the Protestant reformers as well. John
Calvin wrote, “The end of the gospel is, to render us eventually conformable to
God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us” (Wedgeworth, 2011).
Martin Luther also took up the theme of deification
when he preached, “God pours out Christ His dear Son over us and pours Himself
into us and draws us into Himself, so that He becomes completely humanified (vemzenschet) and we become completely
deified (gantz und gar vergottet,
‘Godded-through’) and everything is altogether one thing, God, Christ, and you”
(Marquardt, 2000).
Perhaps the most shocking thing about this promise
of God to make us gods is that it generated virtually no controversy within the
early Christian communities. This is
incredibly odd because the first few centuries of Christianity were rocked by
epic arguments even about the nature of Christ.
Despite this, there is no record of any first-century Christian seeming
the slightest bit put out by the idea that human beings are destined to become
divine through the saving work of Jesus Christ.
In the words of theologian Juan Gonzalez Arintero, “So common were these
ideas concerning deification that not even the heretics of the first centuries
dared to deny them” (1979). Indeed, Arintero goes on to say, “This deification,
so well known to the Fathers but unfortunately forgotten today, is the primary purpose of the Christian
life.”
As you can see, divinization is a foundational
teaching of mainline Christianity, but it is a lost treasure. Of course, there is only One True God. But we are made in his image and likeness
and, because of the saving work of Jesus Christ, we have been gathered up into
the life of God, and become partakers in that divinity.
Wow! That’s a good lot to consider in our quiet
moments of intimate dialogue with the Holy Spirit. I don’t need to add more. Have a good exciting week ahead.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may
you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care;
‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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