The Unashamed Christian: Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15)

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CHAPTER 1

Biblical Dispensations

Introduction

When we read the Scriptures, it becomes evident that God has always had purposeful ways of working with people. Each way was time-, place-, and person-specific. By studying God’s methods of administration, or dispensations as they are frequently called, we gain insight into how God brought about His eternal plan and purpose.

The word dispensation refers to a certain order, system, arrangement or administration. Over history, God has dealt with people through seven dispensations. The first five operated prior to the Day of Pentecost and included: innocence (Gen. 2:8–17, 25), conscience (Gen. 3:8–10; Rom. 2:11–15), human government (Gen. 9:6; Rom. 13:1), promise (Gen. 12:1–3; 22:17–18), and law (Ex. 20:1–26; Gal. 3:19). A sixth dispensation, grace (Rom. 5:20–21; Eph. 3:1–4; Col. 1:25–27), is in process now, and the seventh, the millennium (Isa. 9:6–7; Isa. 11:1–9), will begin when the Church has been raptured from the earth. The Church consists of those individuals saved by grace.

A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested with respect to obedience to some specific revelation of God’s will. God chose to deal with individuals in different ways over time. Each way was predicated on a specific purpose. In order to identify the purpose of God’s dealings with mankind, our starting point must be correct. We begin by focusing on the prime Scriptures that establish God’s intention. The first prime Scripture is Ephesians 1:4, where Paul saidwe were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Have you ever stopped to think what a just God—who would not force love to come out of man—had to do to get the love He desired? He chose all of mankind, but His choosing is not our great consideration. We want to concentrate on what He planned to do with those He chose. He chose to put us in Christ, which would also mean placing Christ in us! That was the crux of His plan before the foundation of the world, and that is where we start to understand God’s dealing with man. He would take humans, already created in the image and likeness of Himself, and put them in Christ. That is what He actually did by taking personified love, manifested in the person of Christ, and putting that love in every believer. By this, the believer cannot help but be what God wants him to be. God was able to make him that way by the finished work of Christ on the cross. So a big question arises: How did God justify doing this while still allowing it to be pure love? The answer might be that He is a sovereign God. He can do anything He wants! But that is not the way you get meaningful love. We know this because some of us have been sovereign parents! That is a poor way to get love from a child. God also knew that.

The background for God’s plan is an interesting story found in Isaiah 14:12–15; Luke 10:18; and Revelation 12:9, where Lucifer’s self-serving spirit got him thrown out of Heaven. Lucifer failed God. If Lucifer—living in God’s house and having the power and authority of God at his personal disposal—could not and would not please God, how much more would finite man prove a failure. God would have nothing but continual failure from mankind, so He had a plan to place us in Christ. By that plan, He would have what He wanted. But His sovereignty and grace would not allow Him to arbitrarily do that. The only thing He could do and still be true to Himself was to allow man every possible way and means to work it out himself. So to enact the plan of God to get man in Christ, specific ways and opportunities would be offered to mankind. Each person would be given an opportunity to try to obey God and do what was right before God put him in Christ.

At this point we need to pause a moment and talk about Paul. Paul is the first to come along and say even before anything was ever created, God planned to put every man in Christ. If you do not start there, you will always have trouble with the Old Testament because it is a doer’s manual. We might say the Old Testament is a great book of faith. No, it is a great book showing man putting faith in his own doing! God allowed man to do his own thing and fail so that one day His original plan would be accomplished. All the saints in those ages were saved by the merits of shed blood, blood that came from an innocent substitute, an animal they offered themselves. It meant they would have faith in their own doing, but not faith in the shed blood of another’s doing, as it is today. God did not unfold His full plan of salvation until Christ died on the cross. By Christ’s complete and final work at the Cross, the Father was able to place a part of Himself—His Son, His incorruptible seed—in the believer. Now let’s take a look at these different dispensations.

The Dispensation of Innocence

The first way God dealt with man is called the Dispensation of Innocence (See figure one.). The first part of Genesis deals with this period of time. Innocence is a quality of being without consciousness of evil or any harm, freedom of all crime. An innocent person is one who is free from guilt or violation of any law. He is absolutely guiltless, sinless, pure, upright, and harmless. Now that is exactly the way Adam was when God put him in the Garden at Creation. Adam was the epitome of innocence. Looking at Genesis 2:25, in the Garden before the Fall, Adam and Eve were both naked and were not ashamed. That’s innocence! They had no sin or guilt; they had clean consciences. They had no motivating spirit-nature within them until they made a choice. They were innocent in their minds. If a man knows no wrong, he cannot commit a wrong. If a man knows what is right and does not do it, that is a sin (James 4:17). Here we have an innocent man who knows no wrong. He has only received God’s words. In this innocent stage, would man be able to accept what God said and obey it? That was God’s first way of dealing with man. Do you know how long man lasted? Do you have any idea how long Adam was innocent? About six days is all he lasted. This is the shortest dispensation we will study.

It was not the fruit Adam ate that made him a sinner; it was his disobedience to God. I must tell you the knowledge of good and evil is erroneous and cannot run the world, but it is not evil. I use the knowledge of good and evil to drive my car, to fix a flat, and to work on our house. So it is not evil, but it will not run the world. This erroneous knowledge flows, not from Christ, but from the forbidden tree which works death. It is not sin. Sin is not the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam and Eve ate, it brought death, but what actually brought death was their disobedience. Disobedience is the sin that invades innocence and destroys it. Disobedience also invades the Father-son relationship because the key thing about a father and a son is obedience. That is why all the way through the Old Testament we have God requiring obedience. In the Old Testament, people worked at trying to obey and failed. In the present dispensation we live in, the obedient one, Christ, is within us; and as we grow up into Him, we take on His obedience. The Father-Son relationship throughout the Scriptures is the strongest idea of obedience. John said, Beloved, now we are the sons of God (1 John 3:2) because that is the relationship whereby the strongest acts of reciprocal love are shown. It is shown by obedience, sons obeying the Father.

Adam started out with a favorable beginning. His life was perfect and without sin. God wanted a son who loved Him. Lucifer had not been able to give God that kind of love, and now Adam was before Him in the same position—on trial, on probation, unable to give God love.

I would like to put before you two words, trial and probation. These are the ways God deals with people. Adam was on trial and probation because the essence of making a son comes out of such testing. Evidence of this is when God birthed His only begotten Son in the body provided by Mary. The Scriptures call Jesus the last Adam and the second man (1 Cor. 15:45, 47). That is what God wanted. He wanted a Son who would please Him. Keep in mind Paul said, "Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men"(Rom. 5:12). Then he said, "By the righteousness of one [Christ] the free gift came upon all men" (v. 18). Do you understand that God really has just one Son? He has Him in many different expressions of believers, but God really has just one Son. I have the same life in me that you have, but it comes out of me as God created me. The life is in the Son. The Son is Jesus. It is Christ in me as me. He comes out of me like I am. He comes out of you as you are. What was God’s purpose in dealing with Adam in innocence? God wanted to show us that men would exalt themselves just as Satan did in the Father’s house! That would destroy his innocence.

How did God accomplish His purpose in dealing with Adam as He did? First, He put a restriction on the Tree of Knowledge of Good