Based upon His heart’s desire, God made a purpose (Eph. 3:11). God’s purpose was made according to His good pleasure. Ephesians 1:9 says God purposed His good pleasure. This means that according to what He desired, He made a plan. Since God had such a good pleasure, He made a plan. In Ephesians 3:11 Paul tells us again that God made a plan in Christ, a plan of the ages, an eternal plan, an eternal purpose.
Economy is an anglicized word from the Greek oikonomia. It means the law of a household, or household administration. In 1 Timothy 1:4 this word is used for arrangement, plan, administration, or management. In the Old Testament Pharaoh’s house was in need of some household management or arrangement, and Joseph was put into a position to take care of that management. What he did was mainly to distribute the rich food to the hungry (Gen. 41:33-41, 54-57), and that distribution was a dispensing. The management of Pharaoh’s house was an economy carried out to dispense the riches to the people. In the New Testament this word is mainly used by Paul. But the same word is used by the Lord Jesus in Luke 16:2-4, referring to the stewardship of a steward. Joseph might be considered as Pharaoh’s steward, and his responsibility as his stewardship. That duty, his stewardship, was to dispense the rich food that Pharaoh possessed to feed the starving.
In Ephesians Paul tells us that he was appointed by God as a steward, and that with this God gave him the responsibility, the duty, that is called the stewardship (3:2). The Greek word for stewardship is the same as the word for dispensation. Whether it is translated into stewardship or into dispensation depends upon the context. In Ephesians 3:2 Paul says God gave him the stewardship of the grace of God. Then the same Greek word, oikonomia, is found in 1:10 and 3:9, where it seems better to translate it as dispensation. This word “economy” mainly denotes a plan, an administration, a management, to dispense one’s riches to others.
Paul considered that God had a big family to supply with His riches. In Ephesians 3:8 he says that God appointed him to preach, to minister, to distribute, or to dispense the unsearchable riches of Christ. These riches are in God’s household. There is a store of the unsearchable riches of Christ, and God appointed the apostles (Peter, John, James, and Paul) to be stewards to dispense these riches to all God’s chosen people.
Stewardship is the same as dispensing. Joseph carried out his stewardship by dispensing food. His responsibility, his office, his duty, was to distribute the rich food to the needy ones. That distribution was a dispensing.
Some Bible teachers have taught that there are seven dispensations in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are the dispensations of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, and law. Then in the New Testament there is the dispensation of grace in this age and the dispensation of the kingdom in the coming age. In these seven dispensations, they say, God deals with man in seven different ways.
This may be correct, but do not forget that the dispensations are God’s household administration. God has a great family, and within this household He needs some administration, some plan, some management, for dispensing Himself into His household. God’s main thought, even from eternity past, was to have an arrangement throughout the ages to dispense Himself into His chosen and predestinated people. These He would make His sons by imparting Himself into them that they might have the divine life by being born again.
In Paul’s fourteen Epistles we can see that God had a good pleasure, according to which He made a plan, a purpose. He created man in His own image, and in the fullness of time imparted Himself into all these created and chosen ones that they might become His sons, expressing Him. This is God’s plan, and this is God’s dispensation for His dispensing.
In English the words dispensation and dispensing are both forms of the verb to dispense. When I use the word dispensation, I mean economy, arrangement, or management. But when I use the word dispensing, I mean the distributing of the divine riches into God’s people. Dispensation denotes the arrangement, the management, the plan, the economy. Dispensing refers to the distribution of God Himself as life and life supply into His chosen people in Christ.