THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHRIST IN THE GLAD TIDINGS
D. B .Robertson
Romans 5: 1, 2, 11, 20, 21; Acts 9: 1–6
It would be right to say that the glad tidings and the preaching of them involves the greatest administration that has ever been known in the history of the world. It is a wonderful administration that has been set on by God Himself, and we live in the day when that administration is operating. It is called the day of the grace of God, in which God is proposing blessing for men on the principle of grace. That blessing is flowing richly and freely and is fully available to every man and woman, every boy and girl in the world. It is only possible because God has a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is in charge of this administration. As you will notice in Romans 5, everything is through Jesus Christ. That is the Man to whom God would call your attention, for He has none other of whom to speak. God speaks to all men, and He desires “that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2: 4), but He has only one Man to speak about and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that God has in the way of blessing for men comes through that Man, and He is exalted in the presence of God.
I suppose the nearest type to what I want to speak of tonight is Boaz, who is said to be a mighty man of wealth; the Lord Jesus Christ is the true Boaz and He truly is a mighty man of wealth. He is mighty, because in order that the administration of the glad tidings should flow to men, the moral question had to be settled, that is, the question of good and evil. Sin had come into the universe and the holiness and the righteousness of God had been challenged; that challenge had to be met before God could be free and in liberty to bless men. The Lord Jesus was mighty enough to accomplish that work. He accomplished the work of redemption at great cost to Himself; it cost Him His life. It involved the shedding of His precious blood; it involved the fact that He must bear the judgment of God against sin because God had been offended by the incoming of sin. We have often referred to that cry of Christ on the cross, (and how it touches the heart, always to repeat it) “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” What a cry it was, we might say in the universe! Another has said that it is like the wail of the lost. But He was not lost. He was the unique One without sin, holy, blameless and yet vicariously suffering at the hands of a holy God that sin might be judged and judged totally.
That cry was wrung from His precious lips, from His holy lips, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Well might we say, Why? There was no reason in Him; the reason was in you and in me, the reason was in men. The reason was in the fact that sin had come into the world, and men had been affected by sin. God felt the incoming of sin.
By that He had lost His creature, and if the creature was to be regained he must be regained through the administration of a righteous blessing; that required that sin must be dealt with and dealt with totally, and it was so by the mighty One, the true Boaz.
And not only has the Lord Jesus accomplished the work of redemption on the cross, but He has totally removed the man who sinned by going into the grave. The whole question of sin has been dismissed, taken out of God’s sight. The guilt of man has been fully met in the shedding of His precious blood, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”, 1
John 1: 7. The full effect of sin is dismissed from the sight of God, and the Lord Jesus has been raised from among the dead “by the glory of the Father” and He is now exalted, a glorious Saviour at the right hand of God; He is the mighty Man of wealth. Not only has He been mighty to accomplish the work of redemption, but all the wealth of the blessing of God has been committed to Him and this administration is in His hands. The blessing is being dispensed on the basis of divine righteousness and on the principle of grace, that men might benefit from it in an eternal sense, for if God blesses you through the glad tidings you can be sure of this, you are blessed eternally. It is a full blessing.
Now I want to speak about this chapter and three of the effects of sin upon man. The first great effect was that it brought in distance between man and God, a terrible thing. An awakened sinner has the most awful sense of distance from God. That is the first consequence of sin, but God has operated through the Lord Jesus, through redemption’s work, and now through the wonderful outflow of the administration of divine blessing, in order that that consequence might be completely met and the distance might be removed. That takes me to verse 11 where it says, “And not only that, but we are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the reconciliation”. Reconciliation simply means that where the distance was there is nearness. Distance has been removed by the One who has gone into the distance. Now in this great administration of blessing, God is proposing that you should be completely conscious that the distance has been removed between yourself and God. How can it be? It is through this blessed Man, our Lord Jesus Christ. What do you know about it? Are you still at a distance from God or are you conscious it has been met? Has the distance been removed in your soul’s history? It is arrived at through repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I feel that we could do with a little more stress on repentance in the glad tidings. If you want to come into the blessing you must repent; that is your side of the glad tidings. As the scripture says, “repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ”, Acts 20: 21. Repentance means that you simply acknowledge in the sight of God, what God already knows, that you are a poor guilty hell-deserving sinner at a distance from Him, and you need blessing. God will assure you there is blessing for you through our Lord Jesus Christ. It will come no other way. It is not by good works, it is not by appearances, it is not by putting on a religious kind of dress or reformation, it is not by social or moral reformation, or whatever men may say. The blessing comes through our Lord Jesus Christ, and what God would say to you is to put your trust in that blessed Man; accept Him as your Saviour, own Him as your Lord and you will find there is blessing flowing. That blessing is sufficient to meet this consequence of sin which is distance from God, so it says you will receive the reconciliation; not just reconciliation but the reconciliation. It means there is no other equal to meeting the sinner’s need as at a distance from God. O that you might be consciously in the joy of that today as a person who has received through our Lord Jesus Christ the reconciliation.
Now going back to verse 1, another of the effects of sin is that disturbance has been brought in, dislocation between man and God and between man and man; it has never been more apparent than it is today. If you take account of the state of this world, the moral state of men in the world, what disturbance and what dislocation there is. Everything is out of joint, everything is out of gear, marriage is out of gear. It is old-fashioned to be married now. It is really just the proof that what has come in through sin is dislocation and disturbance. It is a terrible thing. You find that men at work are against each other. It is so in every society and in every part of life. Where the glad tidings have not been received and where men have not been affected by them, you will find that there is nothing but disturbance, dislocation; everything is out of gear. It is like the herd of swine that ran down the hill. They could not stop, they rushed down the precipice. Another of .the features that Paul speaks of in that list belonging to the last days is headlong, and that surely marks the world today. How is it to be overcome? It is to be overcome through the administration of the glad tidings. There is only one hope for man and that is the glad tidings. Men might in their honest endeavours bring in many things, and I have known men who have laboured all their life to effect social reformation. Many are in great earnest on the wrong road, trying to bring in advantages and blessings for man in ways that will not work because they are working with the wrong material. They are working with men under sin and are trying to reform man under sin; God has removed that man in the death of Christ, and God now blesses on a different platform altogether; he blesses in relation to another Man in another world.
So what God proposes instead of disturbance is what we get in verse 1, “peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. Do you know that peace? It is a wonderful blessing to know peace in your soul that is the result of the completed work of Christ. Does everyone here have it? There is only one way you can get it; that is through our Lord Jesus Christ, “Therefore having been justified on the principle of faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”, it is not reformation, it is a complete change of outlook. It is a wonderful thing to have the outlook of faith, to have a prospect in view that no man and no power from man can give you. You can have it only through the blessed Man who is in God’s presence, our Lord Jesus Christ, know of nothing greater than having the blessed knowledge in your soul that you have “peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. The conscience is completely satisfied because it is resting on the solid foundation that Christ has established in His work of redemption. You are standing on solid ground and your outlook is untroubled. No matter what happens you “have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. What a blessed thing it is; my soul is quickened to think of it and to speak to you of it.
The next thing that came in as a result of sin was death. There are these three great consequences; disturbance, distance and death. What is God’s answer to death? He brings the believer into the joy and light of eternal life. How do you come into that? it says, “so also grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5: 21). Many believers used to confound eternal life with eternal security, but it is something quite different from that. I have eternal security in Christ, and as a result of Christ’s work. I am in the perfect understanding that my sins will never rise against me.
Eternal life is different from that; eternal life involves an environment where the love of God is enjoyed. Do you know anything about that? It is to be enjoyed down here in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a blessing that is to be known now and I will tell you where it is known; it is known in the circle of the saints, that is where it is enjoyed. It is an environment and God would have you live in that environment. You have no fear of death in that environment, you are delivered from the fear of death, “in order that, even as sin has reigned in the power of death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Have we not enjoyed a little of eternal life today? I think we have; you could hardly explain it. It is something to be enjoyed in the power of the Holy Spirit, but it is all through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is all a wonderful provision of this great and glorious administration of God Himself. There is nothing like the glad tidings, and wrapped up in the glad tidings there is another blessing to be proved. You find as you progress in the joy of the glad tidings that there is another blessing, and that is the blessing of the mystery, the truth of the assembly. God would lead you from one blessing to another until you are in the full joy of Christianity, and that really involves knowing your place in the assembly.
So that Paul, when he was converted in Acts 9, had a wonderful conversion, but no more real than your conversion. I read recently in Mr. Raven, where he said that the conversion of a sinner was as real as any miracle that the Lord Jesus ever accomplished. If you look into your own history, and know what you have been as constituted a sinner, you will know that conversion is really a miracle. Only God can accomplish it. Man’s answer to the breakdown and the confusion that is in the world is reformation—God’s answer is conversion, a complete change in a person’s history. It is a change through and through. Paul proved that on the road to Damascus, and then he was put in touch with another feature of the divine administration. It was said to him, “rise up and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do”. Paul found not only the administration was coming from Christ in heaven, the glorious administration of the grace of God, involving all these great, eternal blessings that I have tried to set out, but there is an administration down here, which God has established in cities, towns and villages. He has placed it in this city. There is an administration working, the administration of the local assembly; it is a city in that sense, an orderly matter. It is not now only that God is thinking of man’s blessing, but it is that men are thinking for God’s satisfaction.
That is what operates in the local assembly, and Paul was put in touch with it. The Lord said, “rise up and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do”. I think the saints would instruct Paul in the order of things that worked amongst them in view of the pleasure of the heart of God. What a blessed answer! God considering for men, establishing an administration to remove the effects of sin, bringing men into the joy of these wondrous blessings; but then also establishing for Himself, among a circle of men and women, an order of things where His own interests are cared for. The Lord Jesus is very much in control of that too; He is the Head of the assembly. It involves the presence and power of the Holy Spirit and His operations in persons.
We have a meeting on the first day of the week which is never announced; it is the only meeting that is not announced, but that meeting is the result of the maintenance of order in the local assembly. It is called the Lord’s supper, and flowing out of the Lord’s supper is the service of God. That meeting is never announced; it is constantly in the hearts of the saints.
All their activities are related to it. It is in their minds each day of the week. We gather by motive for the Lord’s supper, not by announcement. I wonder if we are all gathering that way? I wonder if we have all answered to the Lord’s request, “this do in remembrance of me”, 1 Corinthians 11: 24. What a word. It is the One who has done so much for you who says, “this do in remembrance of me”. As you do that you will find that the Lord Jesus comes in and sets you in relation to the service of God. He is not only considering for men in this glorious administration of blessing and wealth in the glad tidings, but He is considering for God. That is the operation that the Lord blesses in the local assembly. That is the exercise we maintain constantly; we do not need to announce it, it takes place week by week. It is because it lies in the motives in the hearts of the saints, as under the touch of Christ, we consider for God. May God bless the word.
Preaching at Dundee
17 March 2002