Deify Media

Welcome to deify.media.

St Athanasius (ca 298–373 AD) once wrote a statement, a part of which is often translated “…God became man so that we might become God“. This seems to be some sort of heresy to modern day Christians. But to the churches of the first centuries after the resurrection, it was simply orthodoxy. With this thought in mind, that God became man so that we might become God, deify.fm, along with deify.media, are being developed.

Of course St Athanasius wasn’t the first to promote this concept. Almost two centuries earlier Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-202 AD) had written ‘He became what we are so that we might become what He is’. Irenaeus had been a disciple of Polycarp (c. 69-155 AD) who had been a disciple of John the Apostle of Jesus. John, an eyewitness of Jesus’s resurrection, died in 96 AD.

It was the Apostle John who had recorded Jesus’ prayer before his arrest and crucifixion in his Gospel:

John 17: 20-26. ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’

From the beginning of time, as recorded in the books of Moses, it has been known that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and that God created man in his image… male and female he created them.

John begins his story of Jesus in his Gospel with concept popular at the time:

John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Apostle echoes Jesus’ prayer in his final letters later in life:

1 John 1:3 We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

1 John 2:5-6, 24 but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father.

St Peter, another of Jesus’ disciples, understood this concept, and experienced the reality.

2 Peter 1:4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Acts 5:15-16 As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.

St Paul also wrote of this concept, and experienced the reality:

Colossians 1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

Colossians 2:9-10 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.

Ephesians 1:22-23, 3:19, 4:13 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all…. and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. …until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Philippians 2:5-7 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

Acts14:11 When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in human form!’

Acts 28:6 They were expecting him to swell up or drop dead, but after they had waited a long time and saw that nothing unusual had happened to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.

Why? St John tells us in the introduction of his Gospel.

John 1:12-13 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And again in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

There are no shortcuts to getting to heaven. It is a daily walk with our Saviour, our Creator himself, getting to know who he is, and who we now are. The verses above are only the briefest glimpse from scripture of a process is often referred to as ‘deification’. Becoming a Christian, part of the Church, the body of Christ, will take a lifetime, yours, and will cost you your life.

>