Identity (6) – Identity In Christ & Hugh Binning

~ Very recently I discovered a chap – a pastor – from the past named Hugh Binning. He is described as being a “minister of a most pacific temper.” Binning lived a very brief life from 1627 to 1653, dying at age 26. However for a man who died so early, he produced quite a bit of writing. You can see it here at Project Gutenberg.

All that said . . .

~  Of late, I have been thinking about Identity in Christ.  While surfing the net, I stumbled upon Binning’s work, GOD’S GLORY THE CHIEF END OF MAN’S BEING.  In this work, Binning says something that I think I might need to use in a future post on Identity in Christ. Here is the short blurb:

“But you may ask, What is it to glorify God? Doth our goodness extend to him? Or is it an advantage to the Almighty that we are righteous? No indeed! And herein is the vast difference between God’s glorifying of us and sanctifying of us, and our glorifying and sanctifying of him. God ‘calls things that are not,’ and makes them to be: but we can do no more but call things that are, and that far below what they are. God’s glorifying is creative,—ours only declarative. He makes us such,—we do no more but declare him to be such.“

~ One more sentence follows that is also worthy of thought:

“This then is the proper work that man is created for, to be a witness of God’s glory, and to give testimony to the appearances and out-breakings of it in the ways of power and justice and mercy and truth. “