By Jerry Shugart

This study concerns itself with the beginning of the present "dispensation of grace." A "dispensation" is in regard to a "stewardship" that is given to man from God in order to carry out a specific task. Here are three quotes from the pen of Paul where he speaks of a "dispensation" that has been committed or given to him:

"If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me toward you" (Eph. 3:2).

"Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God" (Col.1:25).

"...a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me" (1 Cor.9:17).

The "dispensation" which was committed to Paul is in regard to "God's grace", a "ministry", and a "gospel." Here Paul sums up his dispensational responsibility:

"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" (Acts 20: 24).

In Bibliotheca Sacra, a journal published by Dallas Theological Seminary, Roy L. Aldrich quotes these three verses (Eph.3:2; Col.1:25; 1 Cor.9:17) and then says, "These passages use the word 'dispensation' (or 'stewardship') to describe the sacred commission or trust to preach the gospel" [emphasis added] (Aldrich, "A New Look at Dispensationalism," Bibliotheca Sacra, January-March, 1963, Vol.120, Number 477, p.43).

There can be no doubt whatsoever that the event which marks the beginning of the "dispensation of grace" is the preaching of the "gospel of grace."

The proponents of the idea that the present dispensation began on the Day of Pentecost admit that the "gospel of grace" was not preached until Paul. H.A. Ironside, a well known Acts 2 dispensationalist, says the following about the "gospel" which we are to preach today:

"All through those OT dispensations, the gospel was predicted, and when Jesus came, the gospel came with Him. When He died, when He was buried, and when He rose again, the gospel could be fully told out to a poor lost world. Observe, it says, 'that Christ died for our sins.' No man preaches the gospel, no matter what nice things he may say about Jesus, if he leaves out His vicarious death on Calvary's Cross" [emphasis added] (Ironside, God's Unspeakable Gift [London: Pickering & Inglis, 1908], Chapter 2).

The gospel which was preached on the Day of Pentecost said nothing about the "grace" of God nor anything about the "vicarious death on Calvary's Cross."

Acts 2 dispensationalist J.B. Hixson defines the gospel in the following way:

"Saving faith is the belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God who died and rose again to pay one's personal penalty for sin and who gives eternal life to all who trust Him alone for it" (Hixson, Getting the Gospel Wrong [Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2008], p.84).

Again, this gospel which Hixson describes was not preached on the day of Pentecost.

Charles Feinberg wrote in Bibliotheca Sacra that it was Paul who revealed these things:

"After the resurrection of Christ the disciples were reconciled to the fact of His death, but it was Paul who, far from conceiving of the death of Christ as an untimely end of His work, showed that it was the consummation of all God's purposes for the salvation of man" [emphasis added] (Feinberg, "Pauline Theology Relative to the Death and Resurrection of Christ" Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1938, Vol. 95, Number 379, p.292).

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