In the midst of worries and fears for the future of society and the church, how can the believer still look forward with hope? Hugh Binning noticed Paul’s prayer in Romans 15:13, “The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” In a sermon on this prayer, Binning traces the connection between peace, joy and hope, and the necessity of believing for enjoying any benefit.

There is a threefold river, each part derived from a previous. The first in order of nature is peace, a sweet, calm and refreshing river. Then it runs in a stream of joy, the high spring tide. Ordinarily then it sends forth the comforting stream of hope, and does so in abundance. This threefold river has its origin high up, as high as the God of hope, and the power of the Holy Ghost, but its channel is situated low, i.e., believing in Christ.

Peace comes from reconciliation with God

Truly nothing can be spoken that sounds more sweetly in our ears than peace.

The foundation of all our misery is enmity between man and God. All our being, all our well-being, hangs on His countenance being favourable towards us. In His favour is all our life and happiness. Yet since the first rebellion, every man is set contrary to God, and now there is nothing to be seen but the terrible countenance of an angry God.

Now whenever a soul begins to apprehend his enmity and division in sad earnest, there follows a war in the conscience. The terrors of God raise up a terrible gang within a man’s self, that is, the bitter remembrance of his sins. They find that God writes bitter things against them, and makes them to possess their iniquities. He has numbered their steps, and watched over their sin, and sealed it as in a bag, to be kept on record. What a storm this will raise in the soul!

To calm this tempest is the business of the gospel. It reveals the glad tidings of peace and reconciliation with God, which can be the only ground of a perfect calm in the conscience. In the gospel the atonement and propitiation are set forth, that which by its fragrant and sweet smell has pacified heaven, and appeased justice. This is the only thing that is able to pacify the troubled soul, and quell the tumultuous waves of the conscience (Eph. 2:13–20; Col. 1:19–22).

The gospel is not so much God reconcile-able to sinners, as God in Christ reconciling sinners to himself (2 Cor. 5:19). Though some are always suspicious of God, yet they have more reason to suspect their own willingness. For what is all the gospel but a declaration of His love, and His laying down the enmity? Or rather, that He never had hostile affections to His elect, and so was all this time providing a ransom for Himself, and bringing about the way to kill the enmity?

Having done that by the blood of Christ, He will follow us with entreaties of reconcilement, and requests to lay down our hostile affections, and the weapons of our warfare. We have no more ado but to believe His love, while we were yet enemies.

This, I say, carried into the heart with power, gives that sweet calm and pleasant rest to the soul, after all its tossings. It is true that many only seek to gain time by their delays, but O! your latter end will be sad, when He shall arm you against yourselves! Would it not be better, now while it is today, not to harden your hearts?

Joy is the effect of peace

Now, joy is the effect of peace, and it is the very overflowing of peace in the soul, upon the lively apprehension of the love of God, and the inestimable benefit of the forgiveness of sins. Joy is peace in a large measure, pressed down, and running over, breaking out of its ordinary channel, and spreading itself out to touch and refresh of all that is in you. “My heart and my flesh shall rejoice.”

This is the very exuberance and high sailing-tide of the sea of peace that is in a believer’s heart. It swells sometimes on the full aspect of God’s countenance beyond its ordinary bounds, and cannot be restrained from its glorying and boasting in God. When a soul is so lighted up with the Holy Ghost as to make a kind of presence and possession of what is hoped for, it makes the soul enlarge itself in joy.

Now, truly this is not a Christian’s ordinary way of living. Joy is neither so universal nor so constant as peace. These fruits, joy and rejoicing, which are matured and ripe, are not always set on the table of every Christian, or even at all to some. It is enough that He keeps the soul in enough health that it is not completely cast down or discouraged through difficulties and infirmities. It is sufficient if God speak peace to the soul, even if that soul is not acquainted with the raptures of Christianity. Joy has so much of “sense” in it, that it is not fit to be our ordinary food, lest we should mistake our pilgrimage for heaven, and set to building tabernacles here. For certainly the soul would conclude it good to be here, and could not so earnestly long for the city and country of heaven, if they had anything more than just some tastes of that joy to sharpen their desires after the full measure of it. It is a fixed and unchangeable statute of heaven that here we should live by faith, and not by sense. Indeed, following God fully, in the ways of obedience, on the dim apprehensions of faith, is more praiseworthy, and has more of the true nature of obedience in it, than when the present sweetness of joy has such a predominant influence.

Besides, our vessel here is weak and cracked, and most unfit for such strong liquor as the joys of the Holy Ghost. Some liquors have such a strong spirit in them that they will burst an ordinary bottle; and as our Saviour says, “No man puts new wine in old bottles, for they will burst” (Matt. 9:17). Truly the joy of heaven is too strong for our old ruinous and earthly vessels to bear, till the body “puts on incorruption,” and is fashioned like Christ’s own glorious body; for it cannot be capable of all the fullness of this joy.

Certainly the wisest and most learned men cannot form any lively notion of the life of a Christian, till he find it. It is without his sphere and comprehension, therefore it is called “the peace of God which passes all understanding” (Phil. 4:7), a “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8). To use that comparison that the Lord made once effectual to convert a nobleman, if someone saw men and women in the distance dancing, and did not hear their music, he would judge them mad, or at least foolish. It is only when he comes near to hand, and hears the instruments, and perceives their order, that he changes his mind. Even so, whatever the world hears of the joy of the Spirit or the peace of conscience, and whatever the world sees of abstaining from the pleasures of the world, the natural mind cannot but judge it foolishness, or melancholy, because they do not hear the pleasant and sweet harmony and concert of the Word and Spirit in the souls of God’s children. If they heard the sweet Psalmist of Israel piping, they could not but find an inward stirring and impulse in themselves to dance too.

Joy and peace lead to hope

The third stream is hope. “That ye may abound in hope.” This is not the time nor place of possession. Our peace and joy here is often interrupted, and very frequently weakened.

The Christian’s table is not so full as their desire requires. Our present enjoyments are not able to mitigate the very pain of a Christian’s appetite, or to supply his emptiness. Therefore hope must be added to complete the feast and to pacify the eagerness of the soul’s desire, till the fullness of joy and peace come. If the believer has spare diet otherwise, yet he has an allowance of abundance of hope, to take as much of that as he can hold, and that is both refreshing and strengthening.

Truly there is nothing people have, or enjoy, that can please, without the addition of hope. Everyone’s eyes are forward to the future, and people often deprive themselves of their present enjoyments by the gaping expectation of things to come. But the Christian’s hope is a very sure anchor cast within the vail, onto the sure ground of heaven, and it keeps the soul firm and steadfast, not always entirely unmoved, yet kept from tossing or floating. Though it may fluctuate a little, yet his hope regulates and restrains it.

As a helmet, hope is a strong preservative against the power and force of temptations. It guards the main part of a Christian, and keeps resolutions after God untouched and unmaimed.

Now, my beloved, would you know the fountain and origin of these sweet and pleasant streams? It is the God of hope, and the power of the Holy Ghost. There is no doubt of power in God, to make us happy and give us peace. God is the chief object of hope, and the chief cause of hope in us too. Therefore we should look up to this fountain, for here all is to be found.

It is all by believing

I hasten to speak a word about what channel these streams run in. It is believing, not doing.

Indeed these streams once ran in the channel of doing. But since paradise was defaced, and the rivers that watered it turned another way, these streams have done so too.

It is true that righteousness and holy walking is a notable means of preserving this pure, and unmixed, and constant. For indeed the peace of our God will never lodge well with sin, the enemy of God, nor can that joy, which is so pure a fountain, run in abundance in an impure heart. It will not mix with carnal pleasures and toys. Yet the only ground of true peace and joy is found by believing in another.

Whatsoever you do to find this solid peace and surpassing joy — dispute and debate never so long about them, toil all night and all day in your examination of yourselves — you shall not catch them but by quite overlooking yourselves and fixing your hearts on another object, that is, Jesus Christ.

“Peace and joy in believing,” and what is that believing? Make no mistake. It is not particular application at first. I delight rather to take it for the cordial assent and consent of the soul to the promises of the gospel. Meditation and deep consideration of these truths is certainly believing, and believing brings peace, and peace brings joy.

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