ISB ~ 2 Peter 1 v4

escape:The aim of Christian living is to rise above the sinful and decaying world toward an imperishable life with God (2:20).

partakers of the divine nature:This does not mean that believers are made deities or come to stand on an equal footing with God. Similar expressions were used in the Hellenistic world to say that man was made in the likeness of divine immortality (Wis 2:23), that a king could imitate the divine nature by governing men as God does (Philo, On Abraham 144), or that some had come to share in the divine nature by possessing extraordinary wisdom and foresight (Josephus, Against Apion 1, 232). Here it denotes human participation in the divine life of God, a mystery of grace that Paul describes as the indwelling of the Son (Rom 8:10; Gal 2:20) and the Spirit (Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 6:19). Believers thus become sons and daughters of God by sharing in the divine Sonship of Christ (Rom 8:14-16; Gal 4:4-7). This doctrine of “deification” or “divinization” is grounded on the truth that Jesus Christ assumed our humanity in order to fill it with his divinity (CCC 460).

• Participation in the divine life is a gift that comes to us through the sacraments (CCC 1692). It is especially in the Eucharist that we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity (CCC 1129, 19962000).

• Since he granted us his image and his Spirit, and we failed to guard them, he took to himself our poor and weak nature in order to cleanse us, to make us incorruptible, and to establish us once again as partakers of his divinity (St. John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith 4, 13).