10 Divine Rights for Every Believer to Participate in

As a believer in Christ do you realize that there is much more of God for you to experience and enjoy? God has given you at least ten divine rights as revealed in His word, the Bible.

Sadly, our superficial understanding of the Bible may actually frustrate us from knowing the divine rights that enable us to enter into the deeper spiritual experiences God intends for us.

So let’s consider some of the profound verses in the Bible that reveal our divine rights as believers. We’ll also focus on how we can apply these rights to our Christian experience.

10 divine rights that enable us to participate in God’s divinity

No, we will never become God in His Godhead. That would be a heresy. But God definitely intends for us to be the same as He is in His divine life and nature.

For example, our  little toe shares the same life as our head but will never become the head. In the same way, we can and must share God’s divine life and nature, yet never sharing in His Godhead.

Consider for a moment…How could we, as His believers, become the church, the “Body of Christ” without sharing that same divine life that is in Christ, the Head (Eph. 1:22-23)?

Thus, in order to fulfill God’s intention, we need to realize our divine rights and then participate in God’s divinity in ten aspects according to what is revealed in His word.

First, we have the divine right to participate in God’s life.

John 3:15 tells us,

“That everyone who believes into Him [God’s Son] has eternal life.”

At the moment we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior we exercise this first of  our divine rights. We participate in God’s life. This is not receiving a “ticket to heaven” for after we die. To participate in God’s eternal life is to have the divine, uncreated life of God dispensed into our human spirit to regenerate our spirit right now. By believing in Christ, we’re born of God to become children of God sharing His eternal life (John 1:12-13).

Just take a moment and say,

“Lord Jesus, I believe into You. I receive you as my Savior and life.  Come into my spirit and fill me with Your eternal life. Thank you, for my divine right to participate in Your eternal life.”

But don’t stop there. Exercise this divine right every day. Come to Christ who is the eternal life to continually eat, drink and breathe Him in (John 6:57; 7:37; 20:22; Col. 3:4).

Second, we have the divine right to participate in God’s nature.

In 2 Peter 1:4 Peter says,

“Through which He [God] has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature…”

We may consider the Bible merely a book of teachings, but it is much more than that.  God’s promises in the Bible convey His nature to us for our partaking. We need to daily read, pray-read, sing, and muse on the precious promises in God’s word in order to participate in God’s nature to be holy as He is holy (Eph. 1:4; 5:26).

You can claim this divine right by taking time each day to receive God’s word for your spiritual nourishment  (1 Tim. 4:6). The best time to do this is first thing each morning. Then God’s word can supply you throughout the day.

Third, we have the divine right to participate in God’s mind.

In Philippians 2:5  Paul exhorted the believers in Philippi to:

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

We need our thinking to be saturated with Christ, making His mind our own. To have the divine mind requires us to become one with Christ to such an extent that His divine thought becomes our own.

In Ephesians 4:23 Paul gives us a practical way,

“That you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

As we daily exercise to set our mind on the spirit (Rom. 8:6), by means of prayer with God’s word, we give our regenerated spirit–the Spirit mingled with our spirit–the way to spread into our mind, becoming “the spirit of our mind.”

It is in this way that we can exercise our divine right to participate in God’s mind.

Fourth, we have the divine right to participate in God’s being.

In Ephesians 3:8  Paul said,

“To me…was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel.”

Paul’s ministry was to minister Christ, to impart the unsearchable riches of what Christ is into us so that we could participate in God’s being.

In Romans 10:12 Paul gives us a practical way,

“…for the same Lord is Lord of all and rich to all who call upon Him.“

Now God wants us to receive all His rich being, but we must cooperate. We need to turn to our deepest part, our spirit, and cry out to the Lord–“O Lord! Lord Jesus!  Then continue to pray with an exercised spirit.  In this way the Lord Jesus becomes so rich to us and we participate in God’s rich being, another one of our precious divine rights.

Fifth, we have the divine right to participate in God’s image.

God wants us to bear His image so that we might express Him. That’s why He created us in His image. We can illustrate this by a glove created in the image of a hand to contain the hand (Gen. 1:26a).

Romans 8:29 says,

“Because those whom [God] foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers.”

Here we can see God’s heart from eternity was that we participate in His image. That is why He had to come in the Son, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15).

Then in 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul also gives us a practical way,

“But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.”

Whenever we turn our heart to the Lord, we’re unveiled to behold Him (2 Cor. 3:16). As we behold His glory in God’s word by means of prayer, we’re infused with the glory of the Lord, from the Lord Spirit. In this way we participate in God’s image to express Him.

May we learn to calm our inner being so that we can behold the Lord and be transformed into His image. Here is a hymn on beholding the Lord.

Sixth, we have the divine right to  participate in God’s glory.

Our  beholding the Lord issues in something further–God’s glory.

God’s destiny for every believer in Christ is His glory!  He planned this for us in eternity past and will complete it in us so that we might bear His glory as the New Jerusalem for eternity (Rom. 8:30; Rev. 21:11).

Romans 8:30 says,

“And those whom He predestinated, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.”

The seed of divine glory comes into our spirit at the moment we believe in Christ (Col. 1:27). As we cooperate with God’s transforming work, His  life of glory spreads throughout our soul (2 Cor. 3:18). Finally, at the time of our transfiguration (Phil. 3:21), God’s glory will saturate the our entire spirit, soul, and body, conforming us to the body of Christ’s glory.

Seventh, we have the divine right to participate in God’s sonship.

“Sonship”involves the life, position, and inheritance of a son. That’s why the use of the word “adoption” in many Bible translations leaves the reader with a mistaken understanding.

We’re not “adopted sons.” We’re “reborn sons.” John 1:12-13 says that as many as receive Christ are “born of God.”

In Ephesians 1:5 Paul speaks of the Father,

Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”

Footnote 2 on this verse in the Recovery Version says,

“…Sonship implies having not only the life but also the position of a son. God’s marked-out ones have the life to be His sons and the position to inherit Him. To be made holy—to be sanctified by God by His putting Himself into us and then mingling His nature with us—is the process, the procedure, whereas to be sons of God is the aim, the goal, and is a matter of our being joined to the Son of God and conformed to a particular form or shape, the very image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15), that our whole being, including our body (Rom. 8:23), may be “sonized” by God.”

Eighth, we have the divine right to participate in God’s manifestation.

Romans 8:19 says,

For the anxious watching of the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God.

Are we eager for God’s manifestation? Although the creation is anxiously watching and eagerly awaiting the revelation of the mature sons of God, we may be oblivious to it and live our life like common earth dwellers, neglecting our divine rights.

May we claim our divine right to participate in such a manifestation, by growing up into Christ in all things today (Eph. 4:15). Then at our Lord’s second coming we will enjoy our full designation as God’s sons–glorified in our spirit, soul and body to be God’s manifestation, His expression.

Ninth, we have the divine right to bear God’s likeness.

First John 3:2 says,

“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been manifested what we will be. We know that if He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.”

When our Lord Jesus, who is the very God,  is manifested in His soon coming, we will be like Him.  Note 1 on this verse in the Recovery Version says,

“Since we are the children of God, we will be like Him in the maturity of life when He is manifested….This indicates that the children of God have a great future with a more splendid blessing: we will not only have the divine nature but will also bear the divine likeness. To partake of the divine nature is already a great blessing and enjoyment, yet to be like God, bearing His likeness, will be a greater blessing and enjoyment.”

Tenth, we have the divine right to be Godkind—God’s species.

Finally, we need to see our divine right to participate in God’s species. As I said before, we will never be God in His Godhead, as an object of worship. Neither will we participate in His attributes of omniscience, omnipresence, or omnipotence. That is, we’ll never be all-knowing, all-present, or all-powerful.

But we must definitely say that as believers, we do have the right to share God’s species. We were regenerated of the incorruptible, divine seed (1 Peter 1:23). So as God’s many sons, born of Him, we do have His divine “gene” from the divine birth in our spirit (John 3:6).

John 1:12-13 tells us clearly,

 “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten…of God.”

Romans 8:16 confirms this by saying,

The Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God.

Hallelujah! Our faith is not merely in the objective truths of the Scriptures. Today, we as believers are God-men, having two births of two natures. By our first birth we participated in the human species. But by our second birth, we have participated in the divine species. Let’s thank God for this,

“Lord Jesus, thank you for showing us these ten awesome divine rights that enable us to participate in Your divinity. May these rights become a governing vision in our Christian life and church life until the day we meet You in Your glorious appearing.”

References and Further Reading:

The inspiration and outline for this post came from Incarnation, Inclusion, and Intensification, Chapter 4 by Witness Lee, Published by Living Stream Ministry.

The footnotes I referenced are from the Holy Bible Recovery Version, also copyright by Living Stream Ministry.