DEFINING A DISPENSATION BY CORNELIUS STAM

Pastor Art Watkins of Coden Bible Church (Coden, Alabama)

April 24, 2018

This article was written By Cornelius Stam many years ago. He wrote: 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 the 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).

Brother Stam was a dispensationalist but he was not a hyper dispensationalist. What he says is true about the word dispensation. The word appears only four times in the Bible and the only time it refers to time, is the end of time when Jesus comes again to gather all saints unto himself in Eph. 1:10. The dispensation of grace of Ephesians 3:1-2 is the gospel and doctrines of grace that God dispensed to Paul to preach to both Jews and gentiles and especially gentiles.