Administrator’s Note: For example and understanding the third dispensation given to man from God is found in Genesis 8; human government. Which was dispensed, or dealt out in Genesis right after the flood and has been consistent with men throughout the ages.

The Dispensation of Grace

by Cornelius R. Stam

Many people have a mistaken notion that a dispensation is a period of  time. This is not so, however, for the word “dispense” means simply  “to deal out”. The word “dispensation”, then, means “the act of  dispensing or dealing out”, or “that which is dispensed or dealt out”.

There are medical dispensaries, for example, where medicines are  dispensed to the poor. Sometimes these dispensations are conducted on  a particular day of each week. Such a dispensation of medicine may  take a full twelve hours each week, but it does not follow from this  that a dispensation is a period of twelve hours! It is rather the act  of dispensing or that which is dispensed.

The word “dispensation” is used many times in the Bible,  although it is not always translated the same way. In Ephesians 3:2,  Paul writes of “the dispensation of the grace of God, which is  given me to you-ward”. God had committed to him wonderful message  of grace to dispense to others. Thus we read in Acts 20:24 his  stirring words, spoken in the face of persecution and death:

“But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear  unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, AND THE  MINISTRY WHICH I HAVE RECEIVED OF THE LORD JESUS, TO TESTIFY THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD.”

The “gospel” or “good news” of the grace of God: This was the  dispensation committed to Paul for us by the risen, ascended Lord.  This is always Paul’s message.

“Where sin abounded GRACE did much more abound…the forgiveness of  sins, according to the riches of His GRACE…justified freely  by His GRACE, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…by  GRACE are ye saved, through faith” (Rom.5:20; Eph.1:7; Rom.3:24; Eph.  2:8,9).