The Christian life is a life of friendship with God, ‘I have called you friends.’ More, we are called to share the divine life itself in fellowship with Christ and as members of God’s family; ‘God is faithful, by whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.’ He is our elder brother, ‘the firstborn among many brethren,’ and we receive the spirit of adoption of sons, and are joint heirs with Christ.

The fullness of the divine life is to be ours hereafter in the blessed, all-satisfying vision and love of God eternally possessed. Then ‘we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is-we shall see face to face, and know even as we are known. This life of eternal blessedness is indeed promised as a reward for a life well lived here below, but it will be only the full development of the divine life already begun in this world. ‘He that believeth in the son hath eternal life’; ‘we are now the sons of God.’ At Baptism the soul is born again to the higher life by adoptive sonship, and by this higher life, which we are accustomed to call sanctifying grace, we are ‘partakers of the divine nature.’