Those who flee to Christ for justification will also flee from sin in sanctification. But what does it feel like when you are being sanctified? In one of his sermons, Hugh Binning explores the blessings of both justification and sanctification. Justification doesn’t mean that we are changed on the inside — that’s what happens in sanctification. Yet as the inner graces are strengthened, this does not translate into any feeling of self-satisfaction. Instead, as Hugh Binning discusses in the following updated excerpt, what has prominence in sanctification is an awareness of our ongoing inner sinfulness, which makes us increasingly conscious of our own inadequacies alongside an increasing realisation of our absolute need of Jesus Christ, who is “made unto us [both] righteousness and sanctification …” Sanctification is not a flattering process but a humbling one which gives the glory to the Lord Jesus.

It is difficult to decide which is the greatest privilege of a Christian — that he is delivered from condemnation, or that he is made to walk according to the Spirit, and is made a new creature — whether we owe more to Christ for our justification or sanctification (for He is made both to us).

However, it is more necessary to conjoin them together than to compare them with each other. One is not more necessary than the other — to be delivered from wrath or to walk according to the Spirit. I think it could be argued that a soul escaped from condemnation should have the great stream and current of its affections and endeavours toward sanctification, not so that they would be accepted by God, but because they are accepted by God.

The escape from condemnation

It is not said that there is nothing condemnable in those who are in Christ, but that there is “no condemnation” to them. There is, in fact, a “body of death” and “law of sin” within them, a nature defiled with original sin, and many streams flowing from it, which the sprinkling of the blood of Christ in justification does not take away. If any man say there is no sin in him, he is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

But here is the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ — it removes the curse where the sin is, and takes away the condemnation where all is worthy of condemnation.

In this way, the soul’s justification is parallel to Christ’s condemnation. There was in Him nothing condemnable, no sin, no guile in His mouth. Yet there was condemnation to Him because He was in the stead and place of sinners. Our iniquities were laid “on him,” not “in him;” He who knew no sin was made a curse for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. So then, the soul that flees to Jesus Christ’s righteousness, though it has in it all that deserves condemnation, yet there is “no condemnation to it,” because His righteousness is laid on it, and Christ has taken away the curse. The innocent Son of God was condemned, therefore guilty sinners are absolved. The curse was applied to Him who had no sin, but only “was made sin,” or had sin “laid on him,” and therefore the sentence of absolution from the cures is applied to those who have no righteousness, but are made the righteousness of God by free and gracious imputation.

I say all this because of many unsavoury and unsound expressions that are currently in use, along the lines that there is no sin in the justified, that justification removes sin as if it had never existed at all. I say, as the condemnation of Jesus Christ did not blot out His innocence and holiness (but only justice considered Him on that account a transgressor, when He was yet in Himself the spotless Lamb of God), so likewise, the justification of a sinner before God does not remove or blot out the corruption and defilement of our natures, but only scrubs our names out of the list of debtors, and considers us as righteous before God on Christ’s account.

The endeavour towards sanctification

I’m saying this for you to put it to use, so that you may loathe and abhor yourselves, as much if you have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ as if you had not been. Indeed, you ought to remember all the more your sins which He does not remember as debt any more, and be ashamed and confounded because they are pardoned. I find it is ordinary for souls to look on themselves with more complacency when they see that God looks favourably on them. I don’t think that any soul can duly consider the gracious face of God in Jesus Christ to them without all the more loathing themselves. But I do think that slight and inconsiderate thoughts of pardon breed bright and breezy self-conceits in the heart.

Even God’s children sin in this way. Something is abated of our self-abhorrence when God speaks peace and pardon to us. But I beseech all who believe there is no condemnation for them to consider that in you there is everything that deserves condemnation, and in fact, nothing but what deserves it. Therefore, let this aspect of God produce self-loathing and self-detestation in you. The more you grasp that He is pleased with you, the more displeased you should be with yourself, because it is not yourself He is pleased with, but His own well-beloved Son. The day of redemption is coming, when there will be not only nothing condemnation to you but nothing condemnable either. That’s how it will be in heaven. Bu while you are here, this is a most important duty, to loathe yourselves, because of all your abominations, and because He is pacified towards you (Ezek. 16:63; see also Ezek. 36:31 and Ezek. 20:43–44).

A strange new thing is suggested by many, namely, that the highest advancement in religion is not in feeling or knowing or confessing sin, but in being dead to the sense and conviction of sin. Alas! This is putting godliness to death, crucifying repentance and holiness and the new man, but enlivening the old man in its lusts, and living to sin. It is that kind of “new gospel” which, even supposing an angel brought it from heaven, we ought not to believe. Lord, give the Spirit so that we would understand the things which have already been revealed! And save us from these new discoveries and new lights!

Sometimes it seems as though everyone claims a right to the privilege of Christians, to be pardoned and absolved from condemnation, and don’t even question it even though in the meantime their iniquities testify against them, and their transgressions say in the heart of the godly, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” This is why the apostle describes the one who is in Christ Jesus as someone who walks, “not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” In this way he not only guards against the presumptuous imaginings of those who live in their sins and claim to hope for heaven, but also stirs up everyone who is justified to pursue a new manner of life, since they are in Christ Jesus.

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Of all the places to turn for cold hard facts and undeniable reality, theology might seem the least likely. Yet science and technology, which some few decades ago were regarded as indisputably reliable, have not only let us down but, especially with the advent of AI, also make increasing numbers of people question what even is reality. Generations of scepticism about the reliability of the Bible have only cycled us through the failures of other competing sources of knowledge, and have not brought us to any better clarity or wisdom. Hugh Binning, the gifted Glasgow philosopher turned pastor, identified God as the one great reality. Furthermore, when God makes Himself known in the Bible His revelation is both reliable and, as Binning points out, relational. It’s not only that we can arrive at genuine certainty about God (and ourselves, and the way of salvation). It’s also that this knowledge draws out a response of devotion to God which expresses itself in very practical ways. Too much of theology as practiced by theologians is, Binning hints, abstract and irrelevant. The real point of finally recognising reality is not to congratulate ourselves on our new-found certainty but to consecrate ourselves to God. Binning explains more in the following updated extract from a sermon on 1 John 2:3.

The apostle John says that the designation of a true Christian is the knowledge of God, and the designation of true knowledge is obedience to His commands. “Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).

We should labour to bring our light to the lamp of the Word, and our knowledge to this testimony of unquestionable authority. When we have recourse to “the law and the testimony,” then we will find out if there is light in us, or as much light as people think they see. If we could only open our eyes to the shining light of the Scriptures, we would be able to see that much of the so-called light of this age is darkness and ignorance. I don’t mean only the errors that come out under the guise of “new light,” but especially the ordinary familiarity with the truth of the gospel, which, in comparison with the true metal of the knowledge of God, has been badly contaminated by the mixture of the gross darkness of our affections and lifestyle.

“Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.” Here then, in a narrow circle, we have all the work and business of a Christian. Our direct and principal duty is to know God and keep His commandments — which are not two distinct duties, but make up the one complete work of Christianity, which consists in conformity to God. Then the reflex and secondary duty of a Christian, which makes for his comfort, is to know that he knows God. To know God and keep His commands is a thing of indispensable necessity to the very being of a Christian. To know that we know Him is of great concernment to the comfort and well-being of a Christian. Without the first, you are as miserable as you can be without the sense and feeling of misery, because you lack the spring of all happiness. Without the second, a Christian is unhappy, for the present, though he may not be called miserable, because he is more happy than he realises, and only unhappy because he does not know his happiness.

Christians really know the real God

Knowledge is so natural to the human spirit that the desire for it is restless and insatiable. But since the fall, knowledge has taken a journey far from human nature and has not left any footprints behind it to be found out again. This is the case even in the things that are most obvious to our senses, but our darkness is much more increased in spiritual things, because of the dullness and earthliness of our spirits. God Himself should be the primum intelligible of the soul (the first and principal object, whose glorious light should first strike into our hearts), yet Job testifies, “How little a portion is known of him!”

In natural things, we have one veil of darkness in our minds to hinder us, but in the things of God, we have a twofold darkness to break through — the darkness of ignorance in us, and “the darkness of too much light” in Him, which makes Him as inaccessible to us as the other.

This is why those holy ones who know most of God think they know the least, because they see more to be known, but infinitely surpassing knowledge. Pride is the daughter of ignorance, for he who does not know his own ignorance, supposing he knows ever so much, is the greatest ignoramus.

Knowing reality has definite effects

The true knowledge of God does not consist so much in grasping points of theology, as in a serious grasp and conception of the divine majesty which kindles into flame the two affections of love and hatred toward their proper objects. It is a knowledge that carries the torch before the affection — a light that shines into the heart and transmits warmth into it until it burns in the love of God and the loathing of oneself.

As long as you only hear of God in sermons, or read of Him in books, you can maintain a good opinion of yourself, and your knowledge only “puffs you up” in vanity. Ordinarily, those who doubt least are not the ones most free from error and misunderstandings. And when you seriously reflect on the difficulty of knowledge, and the darkness of our minds, and the general curse of vanity and vexation on everything (so that what is lacking cannot be numbered, nor what is crooked made straight), then you can’t help seeing the dangers of excessive confidence on a par with a race being run at full speed on a dark night on a track full of pits and snares. Our level of confidence too often flows not from the evidence of truth, but from the ignorance of our minds; it is built not so much on the strength of reason as the strength of our emotions and the weakness of our judgment.

But if ever you come to see God and know Him in a living manner, then you see your own weakness and vileness in that light, and you cry out, like Isaiah, “Woe is me! I am a man of polluted lips!” Then you discern in that light the beauty and loveliness of God, and it ravishes your heart after it. Then, as Jeremiah says, you will not glory in riches, or strength, or beauty, or wisdom, but only in this, that you have at last got some sight of the only fountain of happiness. Then you don’t think so much of tongues and prophesyings and knowledge of controversies — gifts of body or mind, or the external appendages of providence, don’t much affect you. You would be content to trample on all of these to get into a fuller discovery and enjoyment of God Himself.

If we search the Scriptures, we find that they do not entertain us with many and subtle discourses on God’s nature or decrees or properties; nor do they spend much time on the many perplexed questions that are raised about Christ and His offices, about which so many volumes are churned out, to the infinite distraction of the Christian world. The Scriptures do not claim to satisfy your curiosity, but to edify your soul. That’s why they display God in Christ, clothed with all His relations to mankind, in all those plain and easy properties, which concern us everlastingly — His justice, mercy, grace, patience, love, holiness, and suchlike.

From this I gather that the true knowledge of God does not consist in comprehending all the conclusions that are deduced and controversies that are discussed, but rather in the serious and solid grasp of God as He relates to us, and consequently in order and with reference to our hearts being moved to love, and adore, and reverence Him. Scripture holds Him out to us only in those garments that are fit to move and affect our hearts.

It is possible for someone to know all these things, and yet not know God Himself, for knowing Him cannot be abstracted from loving Him. ‘They that know thy name will trust in thee,’ and so love thee and fear thee. For it is impossible but that this will be the natural result, if only He is known in reality, because there is nothing more attractive (and at the same time more terrible) and more eligible and worthy of our choice. Infinite beauty and goodness, and infinite power and greatness, and infinite sufficiency and fullness, are combined together with infinite truth, and so the soul that really grasps Him at all cannot but grasp Him as the most ravishing, and the most to be revered too. If someone doesn’t find their soul appropriately affected, it is a clear demonstration that they don’t really grasp God, but only an idol. The infinite Light, and the infinite Life, are simply one, and anyone who sees the one cannot but be warmed and moved by the other.

Real knowing leads to practical obedience

But everyone claims that they know God! The self-love in people’s hearts is such that it makes them blind in judging themselves. Therefore, the Holy Spirit not only designates a Christian by the knowledge of God, but also characterises knowledge by keeping the commandments. “Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.”

So religion is not defined by a number of opinions, or by a collection of articles of faith, but rather by practice and obedience to the known will of God. This is because knowledge is a duty in relation to something else — it is instrumental to something else — it is not principally intended for itself, but for obedience.

Some things that we study are entirely theoretical; others are practical. Perhaps some may think that Scripture, or theology, is mainly theoretical, as there are so many mysteries enfolded in it which don’t seem to concern our practice in any way. I accept that much that is drawn from the Scriptures is like that, but I rather think that all that is in the Scriptures themselves has the practice of God’s will as its objective, either directly or eventually. Either it prescribes our obedience, or else it engages our affections and secures our obedience. Those exalted discourses about God, His nature and properties, His works and the mysteries included in them, are all directed towards this end — further than the mere knowing of them, engaging the heart of a believer to more love and reverence and adoration of God, so that he may be brought more easily to a sweet compliance and harmonious agreement with the will of God in all His ways.

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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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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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When we plan for the future, we tend to overestimate both the stability of our circumstances and our ability to forecast accurately. The result is that we gain false optimism from the imaginary future which we have projected for ourselves. Much as we may flatter ourselves by giving ourselves the starring role in the unfolding story, the script is not ours to write. Long ago, the wise man advised, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1). In the following updated extract from a sermon on this saying, Hugh Binning exposes the dangers of boasting or glorying in an unpredictable, speculative future, and outlines a better way to live.

What is the way that most people take to mitigate and sweeten their present hardships? Only what the fool did in the parable (Luke 12). They either have something laid up for many years, or else their projects and plans reach to many years ahead. The truth is, they have more pleasure in the expectation of such things, than in the real possession, but even that pleasure itself is only imaginary also. How many thoughts and designs are continually turning in the heart — how to be rich, how to get greater gain, how to get more popularity? They build castles in the air, and fancy to themselves, as it were, new worlds of mere possible things. In this work of the heart, there is some poor evading of present sorrows, but at length they recur with all the greater force.

Everyone makes romances for himself, pretty fancies of his own fortune, as if he had the power to bring it about himself. We sit down, as it were, and write a series of forecasts in our own secret thoughts. We design our own prosperity, gain, advantage, and pleasures or joys. Then, when we have ranked our hopes and expectations, we begin to take satisfaction in them, and give our self-confidence a boost as if it was all really going to turn out like that, as if there were not a supreme Lord who regulates to our affairs, as immediately as He does the winds and rains.

A double consideration

But consider. “Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” The concurrence of inconstancy in all things, and ignorance in us, should itself be sufficient to check our folly of confident and presumptuous expectation from mere things, and of glorying in them. Whether we look around us to the things themselves, or within us to ourselves, all things proclaim the folly and madness of that which the heart of man is set on.

This double consideration the apostle James contrasts with our vain hopes and confident undertakings (James 4:13, &c.). In a perfect commentary on this text, James gives the example of the resolutions and purposes of rich men to amass gain by merchandise. By this we may understand all the various designs and schemes which are contrived and ordered and laid out in people’s hearts, either for more gain, or more glory, or more pleasure and ease.

Now, the grand evil that is reproved here is not simply people taking care and diligence in using lawful means for their convenience and comfort in this life, or even their wise and prudent foresight in ordering their affairs towards that end. Both these are frequently recommended and commended by the wise man (e.g., Prov. 6:6; Prov. 24:27).

Here, rather, is the great iniquity — that in all these contrivings and actings, people behave as if they were absolute independents, without any consideration of the sovereign universal dominion of God. No one at all, almost, reflects on that glorious Being who alone has the veto and the final say in all the motions and affairs of the sons of men. No one considers that it is not in man that walketh to direct his paths — that when all our thoughts and designs are marshalled and ordered, and the completest preparation made for reaching our intended ends, yet the way of man is not in himself, and all these things are under the higher and more absolute dominion of the most high God.

A deep forgetfulness

Whose heart regards the fact that “a man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps”? The Lord is not bound by any rule to conform His executions to our intentions. He works all according to the counsel of His own will, and not ours. Therefore, no wonder that the product of our actions does not correspond to our intentions and devices, because the supreme rule and measure of them is above our power, and beyond our knowledge. Supposing there were never so many devices in the heart of man, never so wisely or lawfully contrived and ordered, yet the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand (Prov. 19:21; 16:9).

That higher determination may either promote our best imaginations or drown them, for “man’s goings are of the Lord; how then can a man understand his paths?” (Prov. 20:24). Yet the majority, in all these things, lose the remembrance of this fatal and invincible subordination to God. They propose their own affairs and actions, as if they themselves were to arrange them, and when their own resolutions and projects seem probable, they begin to please themselves in them, in the forethought of what they will do, or what they may have or enjoy the day after. There is a present secret complacency and self-satisfaction, without any serious minding of the absolute dependence of all things on the will of God, and the independence of these things on our counsels.

Instead of forecasting and often ruminating on the perpetual fluctuation and inconstancy of human affairs, as if we were the supreme moderators in heaven and earth, we act and transact our own business in a deep forgetfulness of Him who sits in heaven, and laughs at all our projects and practices. That is why the Holy Ghost wants this secret but serious thought to season all our other purposes and consultations, “If the Lord will …”

A series of disappointments

Then, we know not what shall be tomorrow. Our life itself is a vapour. We lay out our designs for tomorrow, for a year, for many years, and yet we do not know if we shall even be tomorrow. How many people’s projects are mapped out beyond the time that is measured out on God’s counsel! And what a ridiculous thing that must be to Him, if it is not done with submissive and humble dependence on Him!

Every day, every hour, every moment is about to bring forth something which all the world is ignorant of, till they see it. If only they understood it even then! We do not know whether the morning’s or the next hour’s birth may be a healthy child, or a grotesque monster, whether it will correspond to the figure and pattern that is in our mind, or be misshapen and deformed by our reckoning. We form an inward image and idea within ourselves, to which we labour to make the product and birth of time conformable. When it matches our preconceived form, then we rejoice, but for the most part it is a monster as to our conception, an aberration from our rule. It is either mutilated and defective relative to what we desired, or superfluous or deformed, and either way it turns our expectation into vexation, and our boasting into lamentation.

But the truth is, time brings forth no monsters as to the Lord’s decrees, which are the only just measures of all things. His eyes see all the substance of every thing under the sun, even before it transpires, and in His everlasting book all their members are written. The portraiture of every thing is drawn there to the life, and these in continuance are fashioned just as they were written and drawn, and so they exactly correspond to His preconception of them. Whatever deformity they may have in our perception, yet they are perfect works, and beautiful to Him.

A better way

Therefore, if you want your souls to be truly established, and not hanging on tomorrow uncertainly, as the majority are, get a look beyond tomorrow, to the everlasting day of eternity, which has no tomorrow after it, and see what foundation you can lay up for that time to come. That is what Paul bids Timothy counsel the rich men in the world, who think that their riches and revenues, their offices and dignities, were a foundation and well-spring of contentment to them and their children, and who are ready to say with the man in the parable, “Soul, take thy rest, thou hast enough laid up for many years.” “Charge them,” he says, “that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17–19).

Oh, that is a charge worthy to be engraved on the tables of our hearts, and written on the ports of all cities, and the gates of all palaces! “You all want to have a foundation of lasting joy,” he says, “but why are you seeking lasting joy in fading things, and certain joy in uncertain riches, and solid contentment in empty things? Why not rather in the living God, who is the unexhausted spring of all good things?”

Therefore, if you want to have a valid boast of tomorrow, or to sing a solid lullaby to your own hearts, lay up a different treasure in store against the time to come — the only time worthy to be called time, that is, eternity. Study to do good, and be rich in good works, works of piety, of mercy, of equity, of sobriety.

This is a better foundation for the time to come! In other words, receive and embrace the promise of eternal life — that free and gracious promise of life in the gospel. In that way, you may supply all the needs and indigencies of your present enjoyments with the precious hope of eternal life which cannot make ashamed.

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The expectation of good in the future is a joyful feature of the Christian life, but only because the expectation is well-founded. Those who belong to Christ can confidently look forward to a bright future in glory because of who the triune God is and what He has done for our redemption. If, however, we place our confidence in the fickle things of this life, their sheer unreliability means that we are acting with the utmost folly. In just one week, the global news has included the sudden and shocking deaths of a UK politician, a pop singer, and a terrorist leader. It is rare that any of us go for long periods without some startling event upsetting some wish or expectation we had held. We are constantly being reminded of the unpredictability of life in ways that underline the immense tragedy of pinning our hopes of happiness and fulfilment on things in this life instead of on the Saviour. This is how Hugh Binning interpreted the words in Proverbs, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1). The following updated and abridged excerpt explores how cramped our vision is when we do not take eternity into account, and how precarious our happiness is when we expect to find it in temporal things instead of in God.

“Tomorrow!” This is the narrow sphere of poor man’s comprehension! All he can attain to is to make provision for the present time. These are the two great ruins and decays of the nature of man. One, he is degenerated from God to created things, and he seeks his joy and rest in them, when in them there is nothing but the opposite, i.e., vexation. And then, he is fallen from the apprehension of eternity, and the poor soul is confined within the narrow bounds of time. Now all his forethought is to lay up some perishing things for some few revolutions of the sun, for some few morrows. After this, an endless morrow ensues, yet he does not perceive it, and makes no provision for it, and all his glorying and boasting is only on some presumptuous confidence and ungrounded assurance that these things have stability for the time to come.

It is worth observing that, whatever the immediate and particular matter and occasion of our glorying in may be, yet self is the great and ultimate object of it. It is self that we glory in, whatever created thing be the reason or occasion of it. “Boast not thyself of tomorrow.” This is the crookedness and perverseness of man’s spirit since his departure from God. Self-love and pride have spread through the whole of mankind, and the whole in everyone. Every one is infected, and all in every one.

We are not self-reliant

Although we have this strange self-idolizing tendency, and a self-glorying disposition, yet we are such poor and beggarly creatures that we do not in reality have sufficient within ourselves to give satisfaction to our hearts. That is why we must borrow from external things. When we have any kind of ownership of them, or entitlement to them, then we glory in ourselves for them, as if they were truly in ourselves!

We are creatures by nature most indigent, yet most proud, which is unnatural. No man is satisfied within himself (except the good man, Prov. 14:14), but everyone goes outside of themselves to seek satisfaction at the door of every creature. When there are some plumes or feathers we can borrow from other birds, we begin to raise our crests, and boast ourselves, as if we had all these of our own, and were beholden to none. But just as things that are truly our own are not sufficient to feed this flame of glorying, without bringing in some outward things, so present things, and the present time, will not afford enough fuel for it, without the addition of “tomorrow.”

“Boast not thyself of tomorrow.” No man’s present possession satisfies him, without the addition of hope and expectation for the future. This makes apparent the poverty of our spirit, and the emptiness of all things we enjoy here. What we presently possess does not fill up the vacuums in the heart, without something being supplied by our imaginations about tomorrow. A prodigal and riotous waster cannot get by with his yearly income, but takes on more on his estate on the next year’s income, before it come. He begins to spend out of it before it actually comes, and then, when it comes, it cannot suffice. In the same way, the insatiable and indigent heart of man cannot feed its joy in complacency on even the whole world, even if it were now in its possession, without some addition of hopes and expectations for the time to come. The soul anticipates and forestalls the morrow, and borrows present joy and boasting from it, and yet when it comes itself, perhaps it will not so much as fill the hand of the reaper, never mind pay the debt of glorying that was taken out on in its name, or recompense the expectation which was in it (see Job 11:18, 20; 8:13).

Our circumstances are so changeable

There is such an infinite variety in the details of providence that it is folly for anyone to presume to boast of any thing. So many things fall between the cup and the lip, the chalice and the chin, as the proverb is. Nothing is certain, but that all things are uncertain.

All things are subject to perpetual motion, revolution, and change — today a city, tomorrow a heap of ruins. And there is nothing between a great city and a heap but one day, nothing between a man and no man but one hour. Our life is subject to infinite casualties. It may receive a fatal stroke from the slightest thing, and the most unexpected. It is a bubble floating on the water. So many poor, dying creatures rise up, and swim and float a while, and are tossed up and down by wind and wave, and the least puff of wind or drop of rain sends us back to nothing.

We are a vapour appearing for a very little time — a creature of no solidity — a dream — a shadow and appearance of something. This dream or apparition is but for a little time, and then it vanishes, not so much into nothing, for it was little distant from nothing before, but rather it disappears.

All human affairs are like the spokes of a wheel, in a continual circumgyration. A captive king in defeat was made to pull the chariot of Sesostris, an ancient king of Egypt, but he kept looking behind him. When Sesostris demanded the reason, he replied, “I am looking at the wheel, and musing on the vicissitudes and permutations of it, and how the highest parts are instantly the lowest.” This word repressed the king’s vainglory.

In this constant wheeling of outward things, which is the soul that enjoys true quiet and peace? The soul that is fixed, as it were, in the centre, on God. It is the soul that has its abode in God. Though the external parts are in a continual violent motion, yet the centre of the wheel is at much peace. It is not violently turned, but gently complies with the changes of the other.

We know so little

As there is no more in our power but the present hour — for to yesterday we are dead already, for it is past and cannot return, it is as it were buried in the grave of oblivion, and to tomorrow we are not yet born, for it is not come to the light, and we know not if ever it will come — so there is no more in our knowledge but the present hour.

The time past, though we remember it, yet it is without our practical knowledge, it admits of no change by it. The time to come is not born to us, which means in effect that we are not born to it.

And indeed, in the Lord’s disposing of all affairs under the sun, after this method, there is infinite wisdom and goodness both. God has made us so that we would not set our heart, nor terminate our eyes upon any thing here, but He has opened up and spread eternity before us in the Scriptures. There you may read and understand your fortune — your everlasting estate in it. He hides temporal things from us, and wills us to live implicitly, and give Him the trust of them without anxious foresight, but eternity He has unveiled and opened up to us.

Certain it is, that no one, till they are fully possessed of God, who is an all sufficient good (Psalm 4) can find any satisfaction in any present enjoyment, without the addition of some hope for the future. Great things without Him will not content. For what is it all, if you have no assurance for the time to come? Yet slight things with Him will make us content. Great things with little hope and expectation, fill us with greater vexation instead of joy, and the greater they be, this is the more increased.

If you really want to have solid reasons for glorying, and want to avoid being fooled into a golden dream of vain expectations of vain things, I would exhort you to labour to fill up the vacuums among present things with that great hope, the hope of salvation. This will be like a helmet to keep your head safe in all difficulties (1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 6:18–19; Rom. 5:5). It is true that people’s expectations of gain, credit, etc, do in some measure abate the torment and pain of the things we presently lack and need, but it is certain that such hope is not some panacea to the heart, so as to expel all grief. Instead, it leaves much vexation there.

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Prayer is the Christian’s heartbeat, pulsing continually. What keeps it going so constantly is the Holy Spirit, or as Paul calls Him, the Spirit of adoption, who has taken up residence in the believer. Life itself and all the signs of life come from the Spirit. In a sermon on Romans 8:15, “Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” the gifted young preacher Hugh Binning identifies three characteristics of Spirit-given prayer.

The chief principle and origin of prayer is the Spirit of adoption received into the heart. Many of you cannot be induced to pray in your family (or, even more seriously, on your own personally), because you say you aren’t accustomed to it, or haven’t been taught, or something like that. But, beloved! Prayer doesn’t come through education or learning — it comes from the Spirit of adoption. If you say you can’t pray, then it means you do not have the Spirit — and if you do not have the Spirit, you are not the sons of God. Please be aware of the logical conclusions of what you say.

But I hasten on to the characteristics of this divine work: fervency, reverence, and confidence, in crying, ‘Abba, Father.’

Spirit-given prayer is fervent

Unfortunately, fervency is usually spent on other things of less importance than prayer. Truly, what people are spirited and passionate about is all in the way of contention and strife, or high temper and misnamed zeal. Yet because the things that we are so earnestly contending about have some connection with religion, we not only excuse our vehemence but approve it!

Other people’s spirits are burned up on the pursuit of the things of the world. The sharp edge of their desires turns that way, with the inevitable consequence that it is blunted and dulled in spiritual things, so that it cannot pierce into heaven and prevail effectually.

Fervent like burning incense

As there were no sacrifices in the temple without fire, kept going perpetually, so there is no prayer now without some inward fire in the desires, kept blazing up and growing into a flame as those desires are presented to God.

As the incense that was to be offered on the altar of perfume (Exodus 30) had to be beaten and prepared, so, truly, prayer would do well to be made out of a beaten and bruised heart and contrite spirit (Psalm 51:17) — a spirit truly conscious of its own unworthiness and needs. That pounding of the heart will yield a good, fragrant smell, as some spices only do when beaten.

The incense was made of various spices, suggesting to us that true prayer is not one grace alone, but a compound of graces. It is the joint exercise of all a Christian’s graces, seasoned with all. Every one of them, whether humility, or faith, or repentance, or love, etc., contributes some distinctive fragrance. The acting of the heart in supplication is a kind of compendium and result of all these, just as perfume is made up of many ingredients.

But above all, as the incense was, our prayers must be kindled by fire on the altar. There must be some heat and fervour, some warmth, conceived by the Holy Spirit in our hearts, which will make our spices send forth a pleasant smell, as spices do when they are heated.

Fervent and unspoken and discerned by God

Let us commit ourselves to be more serious in our approaches to God, the Father of spirits. Certainly, frequency in prayer will greatly help us towards fervency, and help us to keep it when we have it.

Crying in the heart may be silent to others, but it strikes the ears of God. His ear is sharp, and the voice of the soul’s desire is shrill, and even if it cries in the depths, they will meet together. It is true that vehemence of affection will sometimes cause the voice to be lifted up, but yet that fervency will cry just as loud to heaven when it is kept internal. I am not insisting on such extraordinary degrees of vehemence that they affect the body — I would rather wish that we would accustom ourselves to a solid, calm seriousness and earnestness of spirit, which would be more constant than such raptures can be.

Spirit-given prayer is reverent

Another thing that prayer is composed of is reverence. And what is more suitable than reverence, whether you think of Him or of yourselves? “If I be a father, where is my honour? If I be your master, where is my fear?” (Mal. 1:6). When we call Him Father, or Lord, we proclaim this much — that we ought to know our distance from Him, and His superiority to us.

Reverent because God is our Father

And if worship in prayer does not have this characteristic, it lacks that congruity and suitableness to Him which is its beauty. Is anything more uncomely than for children to behave irreverently and disrespectfully towards their fathers, to whom they owe their beings? It is a monstrous thing even in nature, and to the light of nature. How much more abominable must it be, to draw near disrespectfully to the Father of spirits, in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways, to whom we owe not only this dust, but the living spirit that animates it, and “in whom we live, and move, and have our being (and wellbeing)”! — to draw near to worship this one, and yet to behave ourselves so unseemly and irreverently in His presence, that our hearts are not stricken with a sense of His glory, but lie flat and dead before Him! We scarcely have it in our thoughts, who we are speaking to.

Reverent because God is holy

O the wanderings of heart we have in the worship of God! While we are in communication with our Father and Lord, whose heart is fixed to a constant attendance and presence by the impression of His glorious holiness? Whose spirit does not continually gad about, and get distracted by every thing that occurs, and so mar that soul correspondence? O that this word was written in capital letters on our hearts, “God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him” (Psalm 86:7).

That one fact — God — affects everything. Either we must change Him into an idol, which is nothing, or, if we grasp that He is God, we must realise our infinite distance from Him, and His unspeakable, inaccessible glory above us. He is greatly feared and reverenced in the assemblies above, in the upper courts of angels. How much more then should He be greatly feared and had in reverence in the assemblies of His saints, poor mortals, whose foundation is in the dust and in the clay (Job 4:19), and who drink in iniquity like water (Job 5:16)? There are two points of difference and distance from us. Angels are pure spirits, but we have bodies, which is further removed from His nature. And then, angels are holy and clean, but we are defiled with sin, which His holiness has the greatest antipathy against.

Let us consider this, my beloved, so that we may carry the impression of the glorious holiness and majesty of God on our hearts whenever we appear before Him, so that we may serve and rejoice with trembling, and pray with reverence and godly fear. If we realise, indeed, our own condition — how low it is, how base it is, how we cannot endure the clear sight of our own consciences — we cannot look on ourselves steadfastly without shame and confusion of face at the deformed spectacle we present. Much less could we endure to have our souls opened up to the view of other people. We would be overwhelmed with shame if they could see into our hearts! Now then, realise seriously what God is, how glorious in holiness, how infinite in wisdom — and I am sure you will be brought to a reverent, humble, and trembling behaviour in His sight.

Spirit-given prayer is confident

Confident because God is our Father

At the same time, I must add this — that because He is your Father, you may intermingle confidence with your reverence. Indeed, you are commanded to do so, and this honours Him as much as reverence. For confidence in God, as our Father, is the best acknowledgement of His greatness and goodness. It declares how able He is to save us, and how willing, and so ratifies all His promises, and sets to our seal to His faithfulness.

There is nothing He regards Himself so honoured by, than a soul fully resigning itself to Him, and relying on His power and goodwill in all its necessities, casting its care on Him, as a loving Father, who cares for us.

Truly, there is much beauty and harmony in the conjoining of these two — rejoicing with trembling, confidence with reverence, asking nothing doubting, and yet conscious of our infinite distance from Him, and the disproportion between our requests and His highness. “Let us draw near with full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:22). There is much in Scripture, both exhorted and commanded and commended, about that liberty and boldness of pouring out our requests to God as one who will certainly hear us, and grant what is good.

Confidence is the opposite of unbelief

Unbelief spoils everything. It is a wretched and base-spirited thing, that can think no honourable thoughts of God, but only like itself. But faith is the well-pleasing ingredient of prayer. The lower thoughts you have of yourself, the higher and more honourable thoughts it will make you have of God. “My ways are not your ways, nor my thoughts as your thoughts, but as far above you as the heavens above the earth” (Isa. 55:8). This is the rule of a believing soul’s thoughts of God and expectations from Him.

Confident because of God’s faithfulness

In spiritual things which concern your salvation, which are absolutely necessary, you may take the boldness to be absolute in it, and say, like Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” and like Jacob, “I will not let thee go till thou bless me.” But in outward things (which have some usefulness in them, but are not always fittest for our chiefest good), or in the degrees of spiritual gifts, and measures of graces, the Lord calls us to pour out our hearts to Him — without anxiety, yet with submission to His pleasure, because He knows what is best for us. In these, we are not bound to be confident that we shall receive the particular thing we ask, but rather our confidence should fix on His goodwill and favour, that He will certainly deny us nothing that He knows is good for us. So, in these things we should cast ourselves absolutely and without anxiousness on His loving and fatherly providence, and give ourselves up to Him to do with us as He sees convenient.

There is sometimes too much limiting of God. This is ordinarily attended and followed with shame and disappointment in the end. On the other hand, there is intolerable remissness and slackness in many, in their laxness in asking for even the weightiest petitions of salvation, mortification of sin, etc. This certainly arises from the diffidence and unbelief of the heart, and the absence of the deeply rooted conviction both of the incomparable necessity and worth of the things themselves, and of His willingness and commitment to bestow them.

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Some people like knowing things just for the sake of knowing things. But this isn’t an option when it comes to Christianity, when everything the Bible tells us has a definite purpose in view — to make us honour God more in our lives. Hugh Binning preached a sermon on 1 John 2:3, “Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments,” in which he emphasises that if we truly know God, this will be evident by our obedience to God. Theology and controversy are never ends in themselves, and should not distract us from the true knowledge of God which brings us to love and worship Him. In the following updated extract Binning outlines some features of true knowledge.

True knowledge of God is essential

The words of the apostle give the designation of a true Christian to be the knowledge of God, and the character of his knowledge to be obedience to his commands.

“Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.” Here, in a narrow circle, we have all the work and business of a Christian. The Christian’s direct and principal duty is to know God, and keep his commands. These are not two distinct duties, but make up one complete work of Christianity, which consists in conformity to God.

Then the reflex and secondary duty of a Christian, which makes much for his comfort, is to know that he knows God. To “know God and keep his commands” is a thing of indispensable necessity to the being of a Christian, and to “know that we know him” is of great concernment to the comfort and well-being of a Christian.

True knowledge of God is hard for sinners to find

Knowledge is a thing so natural to the human spirit that the desire for knowledge is restless and insatiable. But this is the curse of man’s curiosity at first, in seeking after unnecessary knowledge, when he was happy enough already. For that wretched aim, we are to this day deprived of the knowledge which Adam once had, which was the ornament of his nature and the repast of his soul. The track of it is so obscured and perplexed, the footsteps of it are so indiscernible, and the way of it is like a bird in the air, or a ship in the sea, leaving us few helps to find it out, that the majority of people lose themselves in seeking to find it. In all their inquiries and searchings, at length nothing is found out remarkable, but the increase of sorrow, and the exposure of ignorance.

“But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?” The more people seek her, the more ignorance they find — the further they pursue, they see themselves at the further distance. That’s how it is in things that are obvious to our senses, and how much more is our darkness increased in spiritual and invisible things! For God himself should be the first and principal object of the soul, and his glorious light should first strike into our hearts. But of God, Job testifies, “How little a portion is known of him!” In natural things, we have one veil of darkness in our minds to hinder us, but when it comes to knowing about God, we have a twofold darkness to break through — the darkness of ignorance in us, and “the darkness of too much light” in him. God’s glorious majesty is all out of proportion to our low spirits.

Pride is the daughter of ignorance. “He that thinketh he knoweth anything knoweth nothing as he ought to know,” saith the apostle (1 Cor. 8:2.) For he who does not know his own ignorance, however much he knows, is the greatest ignorant.

It is a manifest evidence that people have only a superficial grasp of things, and have never broken the shell or drawn aside the veil of their own weakness and ignorance, when they do not apprehend deeply the unsearchableness of God and his mysteries, but think they have mastered them because they have made a system of theology, or set out some conclusions of faith and can debate them against adversaries, or because they have a model of theology, as of other sciences, in their mind.

True knowledge of God kindles both love and hatred

My beloved, holy Job attained to the deepest and fullest speculation of God, when he concluded, “Because I see thee, I abhor myself.” As Paul says, “If any man love God he is known of God, and so knows God” (1 Cor. 8:3).

From these testimonies of Job and Paul I conclude that the true knowledge of God consists not so much in the comprehension of all points of divinity, as in a serious apprehension and conception of the divine majesty which enkindles and inflames these two affections, love and hatred, towards their proper objects. It is the kind of knowledge which carries the torch before the affection, the kind of light which shines into the heart (as Paul’s phrase is, 2 Cor. 4:6) and so transmits heat and warmness into it, till it makes the heart burn in the love of God, and the loathing of himself.

True knowledge of God puts things in perspective

As long as you only hear of God in sermons, or read of Him in books, you keep a good conceit of yourself. That knowledge “puffeth up.” It blows you up full of wind and self-confidence, and commonly those who doubt least are not the freest of error and misunderstandings.

And truly, if you seriously reflect on the difficulty of knowledge, and darkness of our minds, and the general vanity and vexation of all things, you cannot but look at excessive confidence in the same way as people running a race at full speed in the dark night, on a route full of pits and snares. Often our confidence flows not from evidence of truth, but the ignorance of our minds, and is not so much built on the strength of reason, as the strength of our passions and the weakness of our judgments.

But when once you come to see God, and know Him in a lively manner, then you see your own weakness and vileness in that light, and you cry out with Isaiah, “Woe is me, I am a man of polluted lips!” You discern in that light the loveliness of God, which ravishes your heart. Then, as Jeremiah says, you will not glory in riches, or strength, or beauty, or wisdom, but only in this, that you have gotten some discovery of the only fountain of happiness. Then you will not think so much of tongues and prophesyings, and knowledge of controversies, nor gifts of body or of mind. Nor will external appendages of providence much affect you. You will be content to pass over all of these into a fuller discovery and enjoyment of God Himself.

True knowledge of God is plain

When we search the Scriptures, they do not entertain us with many and subtle discourses on God’s nature, and decrees, and properties, nor do they dwell on the many perplexed questions about which so many volumes are spun out, to the infinite distraction of the Christian world. The Scriptures do not claim to satisfy your curiosity, but to edify your souls.

That is why they hold out God in Christ, as clothed with all His relations to mankind, in all those plain and easy properties that concern us everlastingly — His justice, mercy, grace, patience, love, holiness, and such like. From this I gather that the true knowledge of God does not consist in comprehending all the conclusions that are deduced and controversies that are discussed, but rather in the serious and solid apprehension of God as He relates to us, and consequently in the moving of our hearts to love, and adore, and reverence Him. He is displayed to us only in those garments that are fit to move and affect our hearts.

You may know all those controversial things, and yet not know God Himself, for knowing Him cannot be abstracted from loving Him — “They that know thy name will trust in thee, and so love thee, and fear thee.” This is the only possible natural result, if He is truly known at all, because there is nothing and nobody more beautiful, more dreadful at the same time, and more worthy of choice. Seeing infinite beauty and goodness, and infinite power and greatness, and infinite sufficiency and fulness are combined together in Him with infinite truth, the soul that truly apprehends Him, cannot but apprehend Him as the most ravishing, and the most to be revered too. If you do not find your heart suitably affected, it is an evident demonstration that you do not truly apprehend Him, but an idol.

True knowledge of God wins our obedience

But everyone thinks they know God. So the Holy Ghost, as He designates a Christian by the knowledge of God, so He characterises knowledge by “keeping the commandments.” “Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.”

Religion is not defined by a number of opinions, or by a collection of certain articles of faith, but rather by practice — obedience to the known will of God. Knowledge is instrumental to something else. In Scripture, knowledge is not principally intended for itself, but rather for obedience.

Perhaps some may think that the Scripture, or theology, is merely contemplative, because of the many mysteries infolded in it, which seem irrelevant to our practice. I confess that it is a departure from the great purpose and plain intent of the simplicity and easiness of Scripture to use it with such industry and subtilty to discuss so many things of mere speculation and notion, dry and sapless to the affection, and unedifying to our practice, and to force these on people’s consciences as points of religion.

All that is in the Scriptures either directly intends us to practice God’s will, or is ultimately intended for that end — either it prescribes our obedience, or else it tends principally to engage our affections, and so to secure our obedience. Those elevated discourses about God, His nature and properties, His works, and all the mysteries infolded in them, are directed towards this end. Further than mere knowing, they are to bring the heart of a believer to more love, and reverence, and adoration of God, that so he may be brought more easily and steadily to a sweet compliance and harmonious agreement to the will of God, in all His ways.

True religion is an art

This shows us the notable art of religion — to extract affection and obedience to God out of all natural contemplations. True theology, engraved on the soul, is a kind of architectonic science, which gives structure to all other points of knowledge. Whatever they are, a holy heart can apply them to the divine uses of engaging itself further to God and obedience to God. “Who would not fear thee, O King of nations!” (Jer. 10:7) “Fear ye not me, who have placed the sand as a boundary (etc)?” (Jer. 5:22). That’s what extracts praise (Psa. 104:1) and admiration (Psa. 104:33), and submission and patience under God’s hand (Job). If we only seek to know things so that we will know them, and can discourse on them, we disappoint the great purpose of the whole Scriptures, and we debase and degrade spiritual things. We transform holy things into a carnal, empty, and dead letter, whereas true knowledge spiritualises earthly and carnal things into a holy use.

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It’s pleasing to God that we believe in Jesus Christ. It’s also the only way to obtain eternal life. Something that’s so much in our interest is also what God presses us to do – not just by giving us the basic information about the Lord Jesus but both inviting and commanding us to come to Him for life. According to John, “This is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment” (1 John 3:23). What does this actually involve though? In the following updated extract from a sermon on this text, Hugh Binning explains how far-reaching this commandment is. It takes in all of God’s commands, and it views them as broken by sinners, fulfilled by Christ, and obeyed by believers.

The Lord both invites and commands us to believe

People have different temperaments. Some who cannot be constrained by fear may be persuaded by love. With some a request will more prevail than a command. Others again are only emboldened by love and condescension, and therefore they must be restrained with authority.

In the administration of the gospel, the Lord accommodates Himself to people’s diverse dispositions.

God sometimes stoops down to invite and affectionately beseech sinners to come to His Son for life. He has prepared a marriage and banquet for us in Christ. He has made all things ready for receiving guests and for eating, and He sends His servants to entreat and invite to this wedding those who have no bread and clothing, and are poor and lame. He gives a hearty invitation to all who stand at an infinite distance from Him, and so are feeding on empty vanities outside of Him, to come and enjoy the riches of His grace, which runs as a river in Christ between these two golden banks, the pardon of sin, and the purification of our soul from its pollution.

And He comes yet lower, to request and plead with poor sinners, as if He could have advantage by it. He does not refuse to be a supplicant at any one’s door, to beseech him to be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:14, 19, 20). As if we could do Him a favour, He requests us most earnestly. Truly it is strange that this does not melt the heart, and make it fall down into the belief and obedience of the truth!

But because the heart of man is desperately wicked, and is now become stubborn and froward, like a wild ass, or as a swift dromedary traversing her ways, therefore the Lord also gives out his royal statute, backed with majesty and authority. “This is his command.” He hedges in our way with threatenings as well as promises annexed to the commandment: “He that believeth has everlasting life, but he that believeth not is condemned already, and shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

Truly it is a wonder that there should be any need either of an invitation, or a request, or a command, or a threatening. Why should we need to be invited, or requested, or commanded, or threatened to accept our own happiness? Might not a bare and simple proposal of Jesus Christ, His nature and offices, and of the redemption and salvation purchased by Him, suffice? What more should be needed, but to declare to us that we are lost and utterly undone by nature, and that there is a refuge and remedy provided in Christ? We would seek no other persuasion to go and dig for a treasure of gold, beyond someone showing us where it is hidden. How strange is the rebellious and perverse disposition of man’s heart!

In the text, this command of believing in Jesus is comprehensive, because it takes in all precepts, under a threefold consideration. It takes them all in (1) as broken and transgressed by men, (2) as fulfilled by Christ, and also (3) as a rule of righteousness, according to which the believer ought to walk.

Believe that we have broken all God’s commandments

The command to believe in Christ first of all means that a sinner should examine himself according to the law of God. We should lay out our whole life and course, our heart and ways, before the perfect and holy commandments. We should stop our own mouth with shame and silence, and find ourselves guilty before God.

Some speak of the work of the law as being preparatory to the gospel. But I conceive it would be more fitly expressed if it was put like this instead – that one of the essential ingredients in the bosom of believing, is that all sinners acknowledge their sin and misery, and discern their own abounding iniquity and danger of perishing by it, how guilty they are before God, and how subject to his judgment, that so finding themselves undone, they may have recourse to a Saviour.

Truly the Spirit’s work is to convince of sin, and then of righteousness, and when we are commanded to believe, the first part of our believing is crediting the law, and the justice and righteousness of God against us, and then believing and acknowledging the gospel. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.” But it only breeds misapprehensions, when the law is seen as a condition without which we shall not be welcome to the gospel. Truly, I think, both are proposed as essentials of saving faith; not in such a way as one procures a warrant to the other, but only in an order that is suitable to any reasonable nature, and that is all. In other words, conviction of sin is only required of you because fleeing for refuge to a Saviour is a rational action which necessarily includes the sense of misery without Him. But the sense of sin and misery is not a thing which you should go about to prepare, so as to fit yourselves for a greater welcome at Christ’s hand.

Here it is easy to understand how the command of believing belongs to all who hear it, even the vilest and grossest sinners, who are yet stout-hearted, hard-hearted, and far from righteousness (Isa. 46:12), those who are spending their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfies not, and those whose hearts are uncircumcised, and their lives profane. The commandment of coming to the Son and believing on Him for life, is extended to them all. All are invited, requested, commanded, and threatened to this duty. All are instructed to believe in Christ, that is, out of a sense of their own lost estate, to embrace a Saviour for righteousness and strength.

Neither is there any fear that people can come too soon to Christ. We need not set down exclusions, for if they are not conscious of sin and misery, they will certainly not come to Him at all. The command that enjoins them to believe on the Son, requires them also to believe that they are lost without him. If even the most presumptuous sinners would once give obedience to this commandment, really there would be no fear of presumption in coming to Jesus too soon.

A sense of sin is not set as a porter, to keep out any who are willing to come in, but rather to open the door, and constrain those who are unwilling to enter in, so that if the least measure of the sense of sin can do this, we are not to wait till we have more, but to come to the Prince exalted to get remission of sins, and more true gospel sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation from dead works. You should not therefore understand any promises in the scriptures as if there were any conditions set down to exclude any from coming, who are willing to come. The promises only declare the nature and manner of what they are invited to, so that no one may misunderstand what it is to believe, and take their own empty presumptions or fancies, which embolden them to sin more, for that true faith which is full of good fruits.

Believe that Jesus Christ has kept all God’s commandments

Once anyone has acknowledged the guilt and curse of all the commandments by believing the law, they also look on the Son, Jesus Christ, and find the law fulfilled, the curse removed, all satisfied in Him. Then you find all the commandments obeyed in Christ’s person, all the wrath due for the breach of the commandments quenched by His sufferings. And you give a cheerful and cordial approbation of all this.

We should rest on Christ’s obedience and suffering as that which pacifies the Father’s wrath to the full. This is what gives the answer of a good conscience, and pacifies every penitent soul, and secures their title to heaven. This presents God with a full atonement and obedience to all the law, and He accepts this from a believer as if it were the believer’s own.

Faith takes in its arms, as it were, in one bundle, all the precepts and curses, and gives them over to Christ, putting them in His able hand, and then takes them all, as satisfied and fulfilled by Him, and holds them up in one bundle to the Father.

Believe that all God’s commandments direct us how to live

So, thirdly, believing on the Son includes all the commandments again, this time as the rule of walking and the mark to aim at. Finding such a perfect exoneration of bygones in Christ and standing in such favour with God, the soul is sweetly constrained to love and delight in the divine laws. And truly this is the natural result of faith.

I want you to rightly observe this conjunction, that what is inseparably knit with faith is love to God and others, delight to do His will, to love Him, and live to Him. Do not deceive yourselves with vain words. If you do not find the smartness of the gospel and the doctrine of grace laying this restraint on your heart, you are yet in your sins. This is the reasoning of a believing soul: “Shall I, who am dead unto sin, live any longer therein? Shall I not delight in those commandments, when Christ hath delivered me from the curse of the law?” The believer may fall, and come short, yet the pressure of their heart is that way inclined.

But then observe the order. You must first believe on the Son, and then love him, and live to Him. You must first flee to His righteousness, and then the righteousness of the law shall be wrought in you. Therefore do not weary yourselves to no purpose. Do not wrong your own souls by seeking to reverse this order, which was established for your joy and salvation. Know that you must first meet with satisfaction in all the commands of Christ, before obedience to any of them be accepted, and having met with that, know that the sincere endeavour of your soul, and the affectionate impulse of your heart to your duty, is accepted.

If you then find yourselves afterwards oppressed with guilt and an inadequate walk, know that the way is to begin at this again, to believe in the Son. This is the round you must walk, as long as you are in the body. When you are defiled, run into the fountain, and when you are washed, study to keep your garments clean, but if defiled again, get your hearts washed from wickedness. “These things,” says John, “I write to you, that ye (who believe) sin not,” but if any sin who desire not to transgress, you have a propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

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God is beyond us. However much we think we know about Him, He is an inexhaustible, unfathomable depth. He is not an object for us to scrutinise, or a challenge we can absorb, or something malleable which we can mould into a form of our own liking. Our basic starting point when we think of God is to realise that our minds simply cannot encompass Him. Yet He is knowable, when He makes Himself known. And when He makes Himself known, the knowledge of Him makes us not only realise our own littleness but also entrust ourselves to Him to be saved by Him and to live to His honour. These points are made by Hugh Binning in the following updated extract, where Binning reflects on God’s eternity and incomprehensibleness before insisting on the practical consequences for sinners like us coming to truly know God.

God is the unbeginning alpha and the unending omega

This is properly to be, and only this deserves the name of being – that which never was nothing, and never shall be nothing, which may always say, “I am.”

Man is, but look a little backward, and he was not, you shall find his beginning: and step a little forward, and he shall not be, you shall find his end. But God is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

But who can retire so far backward as to apprehend a beginning, or go such a leap forward as to conceive an end in a being who is the beginning and end of all things, but without all beginning and end? Whose understanding does it not confound? We cannot imagine a being, but we must first conceive it as nothing and in some instant receiving its being. Therefore, canst thou by searching find out God?

A man’s imagination may extend to suppose to itself as many thousands of years before the beginning of time as have been so far. Then let all the angels and people of all generations from the beginning be employed in nothing but calculating this. And then suppose a product to be made of all their individual sums of years. It would be vast and unspeakable, but yet your imagination could reach further. You could multiply that great sum as often into itself as there are units in it. Now, when you have done all this, you are never a whit nearer the days of the Ancient of Days. Suppose then this was the only activity of humans and angels throughout all eternity, all this marvellous arithmetic would not amount to the least shadow of the countenance of Him who is from everlasting. All that huge product of all the multiplications of humans and angels has no proportion to that never beginning and never ending duration.

Our lives are fleetingly brief

But O, where shall a soul find itself here? It is enclosed between infiniteness before and infiniteness behind, between two everlastings. Whichever way it turns, there is no outgoing, whichever way it looks, it must lose itself in an infiniteness round about it.

Though we vainly please ourselves in the number of our years, and the extent of our life, yet the truth is, we are still only losing as much of our being and time as passes. First we lose our childhood, then we lose our adulthood, and then we leave our old age behind us also, and there is no more before us.

But though days and years are in a continual flux about Him, and they carry us down with their force, yet He abides the same for ever. He is the beginning without any beginning, the end without an end, there is nothing past to him, and nothing to come. He is all, before all, after all, and in all. He beholds out of the exalted and supereminent tower of eternity all the successions and changes of the creatures, and there is no succession, no change in His knowledge, as in ours. He is never driven to any consultation on any emergent or incident. He is in one mind, and who can turn Him?

The being of God is beyond us

Now, canst thou by searching find out God? If mortal creatures cannot attain the measure of what is finite, O then, what can a creature do, what can a creature know, about Him who is infinite, and the maker of all these things? You cannot compass the sea and land, and how then can you comprehend Him who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand? (Isa. 40:10). You cannot measure the circumference of the heavens, and how then can you find out Him who metes out the heavens with His span and stretches them out as a curtain? (Isa. 40:12, 22).

Canst thou by searching find Him out? And yet you must search Him, not so much out of curiosity to know what He is (for He dwells in inaccessible light which no man hath seen, nor can see; 1 Tim. 6:16), or to find what we cannot know when we have found – not so much to find Him, as to be found of Him. But though you never find Him out, yet you shall not seek Him in vain, for you shall find blessedness in Him.

This all means that we must seek God

What shall we then do? Seek him, and search him indeed! If we cannot know Him [through and through], we must reverence, fear and adore what we do know. Enough of Him may be known as may teach us our duty and show us our blessedness.

Let then all our inquiries of Him have special reference to this purpose, that we may out of love and fear of such a glorious and good God, worship and serve Him, and compose ourselves according to His will, and wholly to His pleasure. Whatever you know of God, it is but a vain speculation, and a work of curiosity, if it does not lead to this end, to frame and fashion your soul to union and communion with Him in love. Whatever you know of God, it is but vain speculation if it does not reveal yourself to yourself in such a way that in the light of God’s glorious majesty you distinctly see your own darkness and deadness and utter impotency.

The angels that Isaiah saw attending God in the temple cannot behold His glory, but must cover their face with their wings from the radiant and shining brightness of His majesty. Yet they have two other wings to fly with. Being composed in reverence and fear to God, they are ready to execute His commands willingly and swiftly. What then does Isaiah make of this glorious sight? “We are all unclean, people and pastor.” The glory of God shining on Isaiah does not pull him up into arrogance and conceit of the knowledge of such profound mysteries, but he is more abased in himself by it.

So it was with Job. “I heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,” he said (Job 42:5), “but as long as it was hearsay, I thought myself something; I often reflected upon myself and my actions with a kind of complacency. But now since I have seen Thee by the seeing of the eye, I abhor myself in dust and ashes. Self-love made me loathe other people’s sins more than my own, and self-love covered my own sins from me, presenting me to myself in a feigned likeness. But now I see myself in my true shape. Thy light has pierced into my soul, and I cannot endure to look at myself.”

Here is the true knowledge of God’s majesty: it exposes within you a mystery of iniquity. Here is real knowledge of God: it abases all things beside God, not only notionally, but in affection. This knowledge attracts and unites your soul to God, and draws it away from yourself and all created things. Knowledge falsely so called is what puffs us up, but true knowledge empties a soul of itself, and humbles the soul in itself, so that it may be full of God.

Finding God has concrete practical effects in our life

This then is the first property of saving knowledge of God: it removes all ground of vain confidence (so that a soul cannot trust to itself), and then its real, proper intent is to bring the soul to trust in God, and depend on Him in all things.

For this purpose the Lord has called Himself by so many names in Scripture, corresponding to our various needs and difficulties. It is so that He would make known to us how all-sufficient He is, so that we would turn our eyes and hearts towards Him. This was His intention behind revealing this name, “I am” – it was so that Moses would have a support for his faith. If Moses had looked at the outward appearances of things, was it not almost a ridiculous thing to go to the king with such a message, that he would dismiss so many subjects? Was it not the attempt of some madman to think of leading so many thousands into another nation? “Well,” says the Lord, “I am: I who give all things a being, will give a being to my promise; I will make Pharaoh hearken, and the people obey.”

What is there that this name of God does not match? If He is what He is, then He can make of us what He pleases. If our souls had this name “I AM” constantly engraved on our hearts, O what power the divine promises and threatenings would have with us! “I, even I, am he that comforteth thee,” He says. If we believed that it really was He, the Lord Jehovah, how we would be comforted! How we would praise Him by His name JAH! How we would stoop before Him, and submit to His blessed will!

If we believed this, would we not be as dependent on Him as if we had no being in ourselves? Would we not make Him our habitation and dwelling-place? Would we not be reassured about our own stability, and the stability of His church, from His unvariable eternity (like the psalmist in Psalm 90 and Psalm 102)? How can we think of such a fountain-being, without at the same time acknowledging ourselves to be shadows of His goodness, and acknowledging that we owe to Him what we are, and so consecrating ourselves to His glory? How can we consider such a self-being, independent, and creating goodness, without having some desire to cleave to Him, and some confidence to trust in Him?

In sum, whatever you hear or know of God, realise that it is vain and empty unless it descends down into your heart to fashion it to fear and love Him, and unless it extends to your outward behaviour to conform it to obedience. “You are but vain in your imaginations, and your foolish hearts are darkened, while when you know God you glorify him not as God.” If glorifying God is not the fruit and end of your knowledge, that knowledge shall be worse to you than ignorance, for it both brings on judicial hardening here, and will be your solemn accuser and witness against you hereafter (Rom. 1:21, 24). The knowledge of Jesus Christ, truly so called, is neither barren nor unfruitful, for out of its root and sap springs humility, confidence in God, patience in tribulations, meekness in provocations, and temperance and sobriety in lawful things (2 Pet. 1:5–8).

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