Household Rules

This article was guest authored by: 

“If ye have heard of the ‘dispensation’ of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward” (Eph. 3:2).

God’s Word must be understood in the way God revealed His will to mankind. Therefore, it needs to be understood dispensationally. There is the broad division in Scripture between God’s two programs, Prophecy (concerning the nation Israel) and “the Mystery” (concerning God’s secreted plan for having “the church, the body of Christ.” Then, there are dispensational differences between the dispensation.

The term “dispensation” is the Greek word, oikonomia,” which means “household law” or “household management.” At different times and stages in God’s Word, God dispensed to mankind a different and distinct rule of life.

Within each of our homes we have a certain set of rules that we expect our children to abide by. These are the house rules, the law of the household. Our house law may be different than your house law. For example, one time one of my kids came to me and said, “My friend’s family does it this way in their home, can’t we do this?” My response was “That’s their rules. We don’t do it that way in our house.” That’s likewise the case in the dispensations of God that have and will exist through the ages. They each have their own set of house rules that govern relationship with God. We shouldn’t try to live by the house law belonging to another time and dispensation.

Within each dispensation of God, God dispensed a new set of “house laws or rules” that are established and need to be followed, and it is the responsibility of those who lived under them to carry out and obey. God has given different commands to different people at different times throughout the Scripture.

It is also similar to presidential administrations. With the administration of our newly-elected president, there will be changes in how they govern and operate from the previous administration. It’s the same with the dispensations of God. God, according to His will, at different points of time in history, revealed a new administration in which there were changes in how man was to live and what was required to be “saved.”

Today, we are under “the dispensation of the grace of God.” This current administration is an administration of grace. Through the Apostle Paul, God the Son dispensed, and He now administers, His household to be managed by His grace principle.

Grace dominates everything about today’s dispensation under which we live. It is vastly different from the dispensation of “the Law” that was given to the Nation Israel. So, Paul writes; “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:14) Today, our salvation is by grace, our daily walk is a grace walk, we are blessed by grace. Thus, our speech is with grace, and we sing with grace in our hearts, etc. There are countless principles to be applied throughout God’s Word, but today, the letters of Paul provide us with a clear view of the “household rules” that we are to directly live by in this “dispensation of Grace.”