While God Himself never changes, His methods do. He works in different ways at different times. We sometimes speak of the way God administers His affairs with man during a particular era as a dispensation. Technically, a dispensation does not mean an age but rather an administration, a stewardship, an order or an economy. Therefore, we think of a dispensation as a way in which God deals with men during any particular period of history. C. I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible, lists seven dispensations, as follows: Innocence, Conscience, Human Government, Promise, Law, Church, Kingdom.
While it is not important to agree on the exact details, it is quite important to see that there are different dispensations. The distinction between law and grace is especially important. Otherwise we will take portions of Scripture that apply to other ages and refer them to ourselves.
While all scriptures are profitable for us (2 Tim. 3:16), not all were written directly to us. Passages dealing with other ages have applications for us, but their primary interpretation is for the age for which they were written.
For example, Jews living under the Law were forbidden to eat the meat of any unclean animal, that is, one that did not have a cloven hoof and did not chew the cud (Lev. 11:3). This prohibition is not binding on Christians today (Mk. 7:18-19), but the underlying principle remains— that we should avoid moral and spiritual uncleanness.
God promised the people of Israel that if they obeyed Him, He would make them materially prosperous (Deut. 28:1-6). The emphasis then was on material blessings in earthly places. But this is not true today. God does not promise that He will reward our obedience with financial prosperity. Instead, the blessings of this dispensation are spiritual blessings in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3).
While there are differences among the various ages, there is one thing that never changes, and that is the gospel. Salvation always has been, is now, and always will be by faith in the Lord. And the basis of salvation for every age is the finished work of Christ on Calvary’s cross. People in the Old Testament were saved by believing God when He said that the patriarch’s seed would be as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15:5-6). Abraham did not know much, if anything, about what would take place at Calvary centuries later. But God knew. And when Abraham believed the Lord, He put to Abraham’s account all the value of the future work of Christ at Calvary. Someone has said that the Old Testament saints were saved “on credit.” That is to say, they were saved on the basis of the price that the Lord Jesus would pay many years later (that is the meaning of Romans 3:25). We are saved on the basis of the work which Christ accomplished almost 2,000 years ago. But in both cases salvation is by faith in the Lord.
We must guard against any idea that people in the Dispensation of Law were saved by keeping the law or even by offering animal sacrifices. The law can only condemn; it cannot save (Rom. 3:20). And the blood of bulls and goats cannot put away a single sin (Heb. 10:4). No! God’s way of salvation is by faith and faith alone! (Rom. 5:1).
Another point to remember is this: when we speak of the present age as being the Age of Grace, we do not imply that God was not gracious in past dispensations. We simply mean that God is now testing man under grace rather than under law.
It is also important to realize that the ages do not close with split-second precision. Often there is an overlapping or a transition period. We see this in the Book of Acts, for instance. It took awhile for the new Church to throw off some of the trappings of the previous dispensation. And it is possible that there will be a period of time between the Rapture and the Tribulation, during which the Man of Sin will be manifested and the Temple will be erected in Jerusalem.
One final word. Like all good things, the study of dispensations can be abused. There are some Christians who carry dispensationalism to such an extreme that they accept only Paul’s Prison Epistles as applicable for the church today. As a result they do not accept baptism or the Lord’s Supper, since these are not found in the Prison Epistles. They also teach that Peter’s gospel message was not the same as Paul’s. (See Galatians 1:8, 9 for a refutation of this.) These people are sometimes called ultra-dispensationalists or Bullingerites (after a teacher named E.W. Bullinger). Their extreme view of dispensationalism should be rejected.
Uplook Magazine, July/August 1999
Written by William MacDonald