The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning. Hugh Binning
since the eclipse of man's felicity in the garden. Adam was a living soul, but he lost his own life, and killed his posterity. Christ Jesus, the second common man in the world, is a quickening spirit. He hath not only life in himself, but he gives it more abundantly, and therefore you have it so often repeated in John, who was the disciple most acquainted with Christ, “in him was life, and the life was the light of men,” John i. 4. And he is “the bread of life, that gives life to the world,” John vi. 33, 35. He is “the resurrection and the life,” xi. 23, and “the way, the truth, and the life,” xiv. 6. The scriptures do not contain eternal life, but in as far as they lead to him who is life, and whom to know and embrace is eternal life and therefore, saith he, “these are they which testify of me.” Man lived immediately in God when he was in innocency, he had life in himself from God, but then he began to live in himself without dependence on God the fountain of life, and this himself being interposed between God and life, it vanished even as a beam by the intervening of any gross body between it and the sun. Now man's light and life being thus eclipsed and cut off, the Lord is pleased to let all fulness dwell in his Son Jesus Christ, and the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him bodily, Col ii. 9, that since there was no access immediately to God for life (a flaming fire, and sword of divine justice compassing and guarding the tree of life, lest man should touch it) there might be access to God in a mediator like unto us that we might come to him, and might have life from God by the intervention of Jesus Christ.
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Look then what is in the Holy Scriptures, and you shall find it but a letter of death and ministration of condemnation while it is separated from him. Christ is the very life and spirit of the scriptures by whose virtue they quicken our souls. If you consider the perfect rule of righteousness in the law, you cannot find life there, because you cannot be conformed unto it, the holiest man offends in every thing, and that holy law being violated in any thing will send thee to hell with a cure. “Cursed is he that abideth not in all things.” If you look upon the promise of life, “do this and live,” what comfort can you find in it, except you could find doing in yourselves? And can any man living find such exact obedience as the law requires? There is a mistake among many. They conceive that the Lord cannot but be well pleased with them if they do what they can. But be not deceived—the law of God requires perfect doing, it will not compound with thee and come down in its terms, not one jot of the rigour of it will be remitted. If you cannot do all that is commanded, all you do will not satisfy that promise, therefore thou must be turned over from the promise of life to the curse, and there thou shalt find thy name written. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that Jesus Christ be made under the law, and give obedience in all things, even to the death of the cross, and so be made a curse for us, and sin for us, even he “who knew no sin.” And thus in him you find the law fulfilled, justice satisfied, and God pleased. In him you find the promise of life indeed established in a better and surer way than was first propounded. You find life by his death, you find life in his doing for you. And again, consider the ceremonial law—what were all those sacrifices and ceremonies? Did God delight in them? Could he savour their incense and sweet smells, and eat the fat of lambs and be pacified? No, he detects and abhors such abominations! Because that people did stay in the letter, and went no further than the ceremony, he declares that it was as great abomination to him as the offering up of a dog. While they were separated from Jesus Christ, in whom his soul rested and was pacified, they were not expiations, but provocations; they were not propitiations for sin, but abominations in themselves. But take these as the shadow of such a living substance; take them as remembrances of him who was to come, and behold Jesus Christ lying in these swaddling clothes of ceremonies, until the fulness of time should come, that he might be manifested in the flesh, and so you shall find eternal life in those dead beasts, in those dumb ceremonies. If you consider this Lamb of God slain in all these sacrifices, from the beginning of the world, then you present a sweet smelling savour to God—then you offer the true propitiation for the sins of the world—then he will delight more in that sacrifice than all other personal obedience.
But what if I should say, that the gospel itself is a killing letter, and ministration of death, being severed from Christ? I should say nothing amiss, but what Paul speaketh, that his gospel was “a savour of death” to many. Take the most powerful preaching, the most sweet discourse, the most plain writings of the free grace and salvation in the gospel—take all the preaching of Jesus Christ himself and his apostles—and you shall not find life in them, unless ye be led by that Spirit of Christ unto himself, who is “the resurrection and the life.” It will no more save you than the covenant of works, unless that word abide and dwell in your hearts, to make you believe in him, and embrace him with your souls, whom God hath sent. Suppose you heard all, and heard it gladly, and learned it, and could discourse well upon it, and teach others, yet if you be not driven out of yourselves, out of your own righteousness, as well as sins, and pursued to this city of refuge, Jesus Christ, you have not eternal life. Your knowledge of the truth of the gospel, and your obedience to God's law, will certainly kill you, and as certainly as your ignorance and disobedience, unless you have embraced in your soul that good thing Jesus Christ, contained in these truths, who is the diamond of that golden ring of the scriptures, and unless your soul embrace these promises as soul-saving, as containing the chief good, and “worthy of all acceptation,” as well as your mind receive these as true and faithful sayings, 1 Tim. i. 15.
Thus ye see Jesus Christ is either the subject of all in the scriptures, or the end of it all. He is the very proper subject of the gospel. Paul knew nothing but Christ crucified in his preaching, and he is the very end and scope “of the law for [pg 022] righteousness,” Rom. x. 3. All the preaching of a covenant of works, all the curses and threatenings of the Bible, all the rigid exactions of obedience, all come to this one great design, not that we set about such a walking to please God, or do something to pacify him, but that we being concluded under sin and wrath on the one hand, and an impossibility to save ourselves on the other hand, Gal. iii. 22, Rom. v. 20, 21, may be pursued unto Jesus Christ for righteousness and life, who is both able to save us and ready to welcome us. Therefore, the Gospel opens the door of salvation in Christ, the law is behind us with fire and sword, and destruction pursuing us, and all for this end, that sinners may come to him and have life. Thus the law is made the pedagogue of the soul to lead to Christ, Christ is behind us, cursing, condemning, threatening us, and he is before with stretched out arms ready to receive us, bless us, and save us, inviting, promising, exhorting to have life. Christ is on Mount Sinai, delivering the law with thunders, Acts vii. 38, and he is on the Mount Zion in the calm voice, he is both upon the mountain of cursings and blessings, and on both doing the part of a mediator, Gal. iii. 10, 20. It is love that is in his heart which made him first cover his countenance with frowns and threats; and it is love that again displays itself in his smiling countenance. Thus souls are enclosed with love pursuing and love receiving, and thus the law, which seems most contrary to the Gospel, testifies of Christ. It gives him this testimony, that except Salvation be in him, it is nowhere else. The law says, “It is not in me, seek it not in obedience, I can do nothing but destroy you, if you abide under my jurisdiction.” The ceremonies and sacrifices say, “If you can behold the end of this ministry—if a veil be not upon your hearts, as it was upon Moses' face, (2 Cor. iii. 13) you may see where it is, it is not in your obedience, but in the death and suffering of the Son of God whom we represent.” Then the Gospel takes all these coverings and veils away and gives a plain and open testimony of him “There is no name under heaven to be saved by, but Christ's.” The Old Testament spake by figures and signs, as dumb men do but the New speaks in plain words and with open face. Now I say, for all this that there is no salvation but in him, yet many souls—not only those who live in their gross sins and have no form of godliness, but even the better sort of people that have some “knowledge” and civility and a kind of “zeal for God,”—yet they do not “come to him that they may have life,” they do not “submit to the righteousness of God,” Rom. x. 2, 3. Here is the march that divides the ways of heaven and hell—coming to Jesus Christ, and forsaking ourselves. The confidence of these souls is chiefly or only in that little knowledge, or zeal, or profession they have, they do not as really abhor themselves for their own righteousness as for their unrighteousness. They make that the covering of their nakedness and filthiness which is in itself as menstruous and unclean as any thing. It is now the very propension and natural inclination of our hearts, to stand upright in ourselves Faith bows