God is love. 1Jn 4:8,16. The unique expression of the divine nature, which is the love of the Father, is multiplied within the offering fellowship of Yahweh Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 2Pe 1:2-4. This multiplication of love was expressed by predestining the name and works of a numberless company of sons of God who would be brought into being through Their offering work. The apostle Peter called this company of sons, ‘elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father’. 1Pe 1:1-2.

Revealing this Everlasting Covenant initiative of Yahweh, Jesus proclaimed, ‘God [the Father] so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.’ Joh 3:16. Everlasting life is the divine nature of the Father. The sons of God are born of this life, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit.

Peter summarised this process, explaining that we are born again, ‘not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever’. 1Pe 1:23. In this statement, Peter made a key distinction between the word and the seed. If Christ is the Word of God, what then is the seed which causes us to be born of God?

In the deepest sense, the Holy Spirit is the seed of the new birth because it is the Spirit who gives life. Through the Spirit, the life of the Father becomes the life of a son. Paul explained that this was the essence of the New Covenant, writing, ‘Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’. 2Co 3:5-6. The life that the Spirit gives is the divine nature.