When the things that give us our deepest fulfilment and satisfaction are just things, we are missing the chief end of our existence. Our souls will always be empty and dissatisfied until we find our rest in God, the only one who has the attributes that our souls need for completeness and happiness. However, as Hugh Binning points out in the following updated extract, we cannot really find our blessedness even in God Himself unless we know that He is our God. Only once we have a saving relationship with God in Christ can we have a solid basis for rejoicing and glorying in Him.

Our capacity for joy is also our capacity for misery

There are some gifts that God gave uniquely to mankind in the first creation, enduing human nature with them, beyond other living creatures. When these are rightly ordered and used towards the right objects, they advance the human soul to a wonderful height of happiness, a height that no other sublunary creature is capable of.

But by reason of man’s fall into sin, these gifts are quite disordered and turned out of the right channel. So, just as the right use of them would make us happy, so the wrong employment of them loads us down with more real misery than any other creature.

I mean, God has given mankind two notable capacities beyond other things. One is, to know and reflect on ourselves, and to consider what goodness or advantage redounds to ourselves from any thing, and, in that reflection and comparison, to enjoy what we have. The other is, to look forward beyond the present time, and, as it were, to anticipate and get ahead of the slow motions of time, by a kind of foresight and ability to see ahead.

In a word, a human being is a creature framed to more understanding than others, and so capable of more joy in present things, and more foresight of the future. The human is made mortal, yet with an immortal spirit of an immortal capacity, which has its eye on tomorrow — that is, on eternity.

Now, in this consists either the individual’s happiness or misery — how he reflects on himself, what he chooses for his joy and glorying in, and what provision he has for the future. If these things are rightly ordered, all is well. But if not, then woe to him! There is more hope of an animal than of him.

Human nature inclines to boasting — to glorying in something. This springs from some excellency or advantage that humanity can grasp, and so it originates in the human power of understanding, which is far above that of the animals. Animals find the things themselves, but they do not, they cannot, reflect on their own enjoyment of them, and therefore they are not capable of such pleasure as humans. For, the more distinct knowledge we have of things in relation to ourselves, the more delight follows from it. Many creatures have unique qualities and virtues, but they are none the happier for it, for they do not know them, and have no use of them, but are wholly destinated to the use of mankind. Only mankind is said to “enjoy” them, because only mankind is capable of joy from them.

The absoluteness of God is not enough to boast in

This, I suppose, gives us a hint about the absolute incomprehensible blessedness, self-complacency, and delight of God. It cannot but be immeasurably great, seeing the knowledge of Himself and all creatures is infinite. He encompasses all His own power, and virtue, and goodness, and therefore He has a corresponding delight and rejoicing.

There is, then, a glorying and boasting that is good, which man is naturally framed to have. This is what David expresses in Psalm 34:2, “My soul shall make her boast in God,” and Psalm 44:8, “In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever.”

When the soul grasps that all-sufficiency and self-sufficient fullness of God, and what infinite treasures of goodness, and wisdom, and power are in Him, and so how suitable and convenient He is to the condition of the soul, and what a sweet correspondence there is between His fulness and our emptiness — His mercy and our misery — His infiniteness and our unsuitableness — and how there is enough in Him to fill and overflow the soul — it cannot but perfume the soul with delight.

You find how each of your senses is refreshed, when it meets with a suitable object — how a pleasant scent refreshes the sense of smell, how vivid and beautiful colours are delightful to the eye. But much more here, God is the proportioned object of the immortal spirit. He corresponds to all its capacities, and fills it with unconceivable sweetness.

We must possess God before we can really glory in Him

But, my beloved, boasting and glorying in God does not arise only from the proportionableness and suitableness of Him to our spirits. Something else must be superadded — propriety in him.

We love things, either because they are excellent in themselves or because they are our own, but we glory in nothing but because it is both excellent in itself, and ours besides. It is the realisation that a thing belongs to us that makes the soul rise and lift up itself after this manner, “To have such a one to be mine — such a Lord to be my God — one so high and sublime, one so universally full, to be made over to me!” Here is the immediate rise of the soul’s glorying.

And let me tell you, as there is nothing that can be so suitable a portion, so there is nothing that can so truly be made ours as God. Of all things a believer has, there is nothing so much his own as God — nothing so indissolubly tied to him — nothing so inseparably joined. See Paul’s triumph on that account, in Romans 8. Nothing can truly be said to be the soul’s own, but that which is not only contemporaneous with it, and survives mortality, and the changes of the body, but is likewise inseparable from it.

What a poor empty sound is all that can be spoken of Him, till your souls be once possessed of Him! To possess God cannot but make your heart leap within you. It cannot but stir up a believer’s heart.

Now there may be a lawful kind of glorying, or rejoicing, in the works of God, consequent to glorying in God Himself. This is a little stream from that greater river which runs out from it, and flows into it again.

A soul who truly apprehends God will take delight to view the works of God, which make such an expression of Him, and are a part of the magnificence of our heavenly Father. But this is all in reference to Him and not to ourselves, for it degenerates and loses its sweetness when once it turns the channel towards the adorning of the creature.

True boasting in God has necessarily conjoined with it a humble and low esteem of oneself. “The humble shall hear thereof, and be glad (Psa. 34:2).” Just as humility and self-emptiness made David go out of himself, to seek satisfaction in God, and having found it, he boasts and triumphs, so nobody was capable of understanding his triumph, or partaking with him in his delights, but the humble souls.

The true boasting which we were created to has a sufficient foundation, even one that will bear the weight of triumph. The boasting which our spirits are now naturally set on, cannot carry such glorying. That is why this boasting makes people ridiculous. If you saw a man glorying in rags, showing himself off to be admired in them, or boasting in some vain, despicable, and base thing, you would pity him, or laugh at him. The truth is, the natural man is mad, since the fall — he has lost his sense, and is under the greatest distraction imaginable. Since sin entered, the soul is wholly turned away from God, the only true object of delight, in which only there can be solid glorying. The mind of man is blinded, and his passions are strong, and so they are now spent upon empty vanities, and carried headlong without judgment. Oftentimes he glories in that which is his shame, and boasts in that which is his sin, and which will cause nothing but shame, the more weight is laid on it.

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