Bible Dictionary
Dispensation
Dispensation means an administration or stewardship entrusted to someone. In Scripture it refers especially to Paul’s stewardship of preaching the gospel and to God’s ordering of His purposes in history.
Definition
Dispensation primarily means stewardship, management, or the administration of affairs entrusted to someone. It can also describe the successive stages by which God carries out His purposes toward humanity.
Biblical Usage
Paul speaks of a stewardship or commission entrusted to him to preach the gospel. The term is also used of God’s working and ordering of His purposes.
Historical Background
The commonly described Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian dispensations are stages in an unfolding scheme of grace, but the supplied material notes that Scripture does not use the word itself in precisely that later technical sense.
Scripture References
Historical Bible Dictionaries
Easton's Bible Dictionary
(Gr. oikonomia, “management,” “economy”). (1.) The method or scheme according to which God carries out his purposes towards men is called a dispensation. There are usually reckoned three dispensations, the Patriarchal, the Mosaic or Jewish, and the Christian. (See COVENANT, Administration of.) These were so many stages in God’s unfolding of his purpose of grace toward men. The word is not found with this meaning in Scripture. (2.) A commission to preach the gospel (1 Cor. 9:17; Eph. 1:10; 3:2; Col. 1:25). Dispensations of Providence are providential events which affect men either in the way of mercy or of judgement.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>dis-pen-sa'-shun: The Greek word (oikonomia) so translated signifies primarily, a stewardship, the management or disposition of affairs entrusted to one. Thus 1Co 9:17, the King James Version "A dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me," the Revised Version (British and American) "I have stewardship entrusted to me." The idea is similar in Eph 3:2 parallel Col 1:25 (the Revised Version, margin "stewardship"). In Eph 1:10 God's own working is spoken of as "dispensation."</p>