Continual Burnt Offering: Daily Meditations, October 31 (1:24-25)
“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church: whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the Word of God” — Colossians 1:24, 25.
A DISPENSATION is a stewardship or economy in God’s ways with men, in which He is dealing with them in a different way from that in which He has dealt with them before. Some people decry what is called “dispensational truth,” yet all Bible students believe in it to some degree. No one seriously contends that God is dealing with men today in the same manner as He dealt with them under law from Moses to Christ. And it is clear from Scripture that when the Church age is ended and the kingdom age has dawned, man’s responsibility will be different from what it is now. The word “dispensation” is found four times in the Authorized Version and five times in the Revision. It is a translation of the Greek word oikonomia, from which we get our word “economy,” and is translated also “order,” “administration,” and “stewardship.” It refers to the ordering if God’s ways with men.
―Gilpin.