What is a Dispensation?
"If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward:" - Ephesians 3:2
A good question, and one answered from the pages of scripture. Within the term "dispensation" is found its root word, "dispense". We often relate this term to machines or mechanisms that offer us items. Perhaps you've been to a hotel that serves breakfast and have gotten cereal from a dispenser, or perhaps you have partaken of candy from a dispenser.
When Paul speaks of a dispensation it simply means a dispensing of something from God. So it is that Paul tells us of, "the dispensation of the grace of God". A dispensing of grace from God to the world. Is this the only dispensation referenced in scripture? The answer, of course, is no. Paul speaks of another dispensation by name in Ephesians 1:10 referred to as the "dispensation of the fulness of times" which concerns God's will for the future.
Progressive Revelation
"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets," - Hebrews 1:1
A dispensation is closely related to the idea of progressive revelation. God has spoken, and what God spoke is written in a book. However, what God has asked a specific person or people to believe or do, may not be the same as he's asked you to believe or do. Likewise, what he promised to certain people may not be what he promised you. What are the most recent instructions from God on how a Christian should live his or her life?
Consider Romans Chapter 4, which explains that our salvation comes by believing what God has asked us to believe. This information being that Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection is a payment for our sins. Paul uses the example of Abraham to show that righteousness was imputed to Abraham because He believed God ("his faith is counted for righteousness"). Likewise our salvation does not come by works, but by belief in what God has told us.
But what was said to Abraham? Genesis 15:5-6 answers this.
"5 And he [the Lord] brought him [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. 6 And he [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness." - Genesis 15:5-6
In this instance the Lord's revelation to Abraham is that his seed would be as the stars. This was the information dispensed to Abraham. But we, today, do not find righteousness imputed to us by believing that our seed shall be as the stars.
What do you Believe?
"23 Now it was not written for his [Abraham's] sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. - Romans 4:23-25"
We learn from the case of Abraham that a man can be saved without the works of the law. Yet, Abraham could not have believed in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection as a payment for his sins. God had not yet revealed this. Nevertheless, God has asked us today to believe this. Clearly God has not promised each of us that we will have children numbered as the stars. We are to believe in Christ's death, burial, and resurrection as a payment for our sins.
So we can understand, that considering what God has dispensed over the course of history is very important. If we do not consider the dispensational context of passages in scripture, we are destined to make vital errors concerning our purpose and relationship to God. We may be waiting on promises that were not promised to us, we may preforming a mission that God did not ask us to preform, and worst of all, we may not be believing what God has asked us to believe - on which may very well hinge the matter of salvation.
Paul brings up the "dispensation of the grace of God", because he is concerned with preaching the "gospel of the grace of God" regarding Christ's finished work on the cross and the grace that God is offering to the world.
Have you heard of the dispensation of the grace of God?