The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
of majesty, Isa. lxvi. 1, 2, and lvii. 15.
Lecture II.
Union And Communion With God The End And Design Of The Gospel
Psalm lxxiii. 24–28.—“Thou wilt guide me with thy counsel, &c. Whom have I in heaven but thee? &c. It is good for me to draw near to God.”—1 John i. 3. “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”—John xvii. 21–23. “That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, &c.”
It is a matter of great consolation that God's glory and our happiness are linked together, so that whoever set his glory before them singly to aim at, they take the most compendious and certain way to true blessedness. His glory is the ultimate end of man, and should be our great and last scope. But our happiness—which consists in the enjoyment of God—is subordinate to this, yet inseparable from it. The end of our creation is communion and fellowship with God, therefore man was made with an immortal soul capable of it, and this is the greatest dignity and eminency of man above the creatures. He hath not only impressed from God's finger, in his first moulding, some characters resembling God, in righteousness and holiness, but is created with a capacity of receiving more of God by communion with him. Other creatures have already all they will have—all they can have—of conformity to him, but man is made liker than all, and is fitted and fashioned to aspire to more likeness and conformity, so that his soul may shine more and more to the perfect day.
There was an union made already in his first moulding, and communion was to grow as a fragrant and sweet fruit out of this blessed root. Union and similitude are the ground of fellowship and communion. That union was gracious—that communion would have been glorious, for grace is the seed of glory. There was a twofold union between Adam and God—an union of state, and an union of nature, he was like God, and he was God's friend. All the creatures had some likeness to God, some engravings of his power and goodness and wisdom, but man is said to be made according to God's image, “Let us make man like unto us.” Other creatures had similitudinem vestiga, but man had similitudinem faciet. Holiness and righteousness are God's face—the very excellency and glory of all his attributes, and the Lord stamps the image of these upon man. Other attributes are but like his back parts, and he leaves the resemblance of his footsteps upon other creatures. What [pg 009] can be so beautiful as the image of God upon the soul? Creatures, the nearer they are to God, the more pure and excellent. We see in the fabric of the world, bodies the higher they are, the more pure and cleanly, the more beautiful. Now then, what was man that was “made a little lower than the angels”?—in the Hebrew, “a little lower than God,” tantum non deus. Seeing man is set next to God, his glory and beauty certainly surpasses the glory of the sun and of the heavens. Things contiguous and next other are like other. The water is liker air than the earth, therefore it is next the air. The air is liker heaven than water, therefore is it next to it. Omne contiguum spirituali, est spirituale. Angels and men next to God, are spirits, as he is a spirit. Now similitude is the ground of friendship. Pares paribus congregantur, similitudo necessitudims vinculum. It is that which conciliates affections among men. So it is here by proportion. God sees all is very good, and that man is the best of his works and he loves him, and makes him his friend, for his own image which he beholds in him.
At length from these two roots this pleasant and fragrant fruit of communion with and enjoyment of God grows up. This is the entertainment of friends, to delight in one another, and to enjoy one another. Amicorum omnia communia. Love makes all common. It opens the treasure of God's fulness, and makes a vent of divine bounty towards man, and it opens the heart of man, and makes it large as the sand of the sea to receive of God. Our receiving of his fulness is all the entertainment we can give him. O what blessedness is this, for a soul to live in him! And it lives in him when it loves him. Anima est ubi amat, non ubi animat. And to taste of his sweetness and be satisfied with him, this makes perfect oneness, and perfect oneness with God, who is “the fountain of life, and in whose favour is life,” is perfect blessedness.
But we must stand a little here and consider our misery, that have fallen from such an excellency. How are we come down from heaven wonderfully? Sin has interposed between God and man and this dissolves the union, and hinders the communion. An enemy has come between two friends, and puts them at odds, and oh! an eternal odds. Sin hath sown this discord, and alienated our hearts from God. Man's glory consisted in the irradiation of the soul from God's shining countenance, this made him light, God's face shined on him. But sin interposing has eclipsed that light and brought on an eternal night of darkness over the soul. And thus we are spoiled of the image of God, as when the earth comes between the sun and the moon. Now then, there can no beams of divine favour and love break through directly towards us, because of the cloud of our sins, that separates between God and us, and because of “the partition wall,” and “the hand writing of ordinances that was against us,”—God's holy law, and severe justice, Eph. ii. 14, Col. ii. 14.
Then, what shall we do? How shall we see his face in joy? Certainly it had been altogether impossible, if our Lord Jesus Christ had not come, who is “the light and life of men.” The Father shines on him, and the beams of his love reflect upon us, from the Son. The love of God, and his favourable countenance, that cannot meet with us in a direct and immediate beam, they fall on us in this blessed compass, by the intervention of a mediator. We are rebels standing at a distance from God, Christ comes between, a mediator and a peace maker, to reconcile us to God. “God is in Christ reconciling the world.” God first makes an union of natures with Christ, and so he comes near to us, down to us who could not come up to him, and then he sends out the word of reconciliation—the gospel, the tenor whereof is this, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son,” 1 John i. 3. It is a voice of peace and invitation to the fellowship of God. Behold, then the happiness of man is the very end and purpose of the gospel. Christ is the repairer of the breaches, the second Adam aspired to quicken what Adam killed. He hath “slain the enmity,” and cancelled the hand writing that was against us, and so made peace by the blood of his cross, and then, having removed all that out of the way, he comes and calls us unto the fellowship which we were ordained unto from our creation. We who are rebels, are called to be friends, “I call you not servants, but friends.” It is a wonder that the creature should be called a friend of God, but, O great wonder, that the rebel should be called a friend! And yet that is not all. We are called to [pg 010] a nearer union—to be the sons of God, this is our privilege, John i. 12. This is a great part of our fellowship with the Father and his Son, we are the Father's children, and the Son's brethren “and if children then heirs, heirs of God,” and if brethren, then co-heirs with Christ, Rom. viii. 17.
Thus the union is begun again in Christ, but as long as sin dwells in our mortal bodies it is not perfect, there is always some separation and some enmity in our hearts, and so there is neither full seeing of God, for “we know but in part,” and we see “darkly,” nor full enjoying of God, for we are “saved by hope,” and we “live by faith, and not by sight.” But this is begun which is the seed of eternal communion, we are here partakers of the divine nature. Now then it must aspire unto a more perfect union with God whose image it is. And therefore the soul of a believer is here still in motion towards God as his element. There is here an union in affection but not completed in fruition—affectu non effecta. The soul pants after God—“Whom have I in heaven or earth but thee? My flesh and my heart faileth,” &c. A believing soul looks upon God as its only portion—accounts nothing misery but to be separated from him, and nothing blessedness but to be one with him. This is the loadstone of their affections and desires, the centre which they move towards, and in which they will rest. It is true, indeed, that oftentimes our heart and our flesh faileth us, and we become ignorant and brutish.