Dispensations in Parenting

In my last post on dispensations I promised a follow-up on how this can apply to parenting.  So you will want to be familiar with that list in order to understand this article.  Click the link to read that.  I have inserted numbers here and there to indicate which dispensation I am referencing.


When children are born, they are innocent (1); they do not have a knowledge of good and evil. At some point they do learn of good and evil, right and wrong. This is a different time for every child. Sometimes you can see the 18-month old that knows not to touch the plant, by the look in their eye—you know that look. This is not to be confused with the "age of accountability", I believe that comes at an older age.  That is the age when a child realizes their sinfulness and their need for a Savior.  With the really young child we are talking about the conscience stage (2). At the point we begin to see that the child has a knowledge of right and wrong, we institute rules of the house. This is the government stage (3), family government. We institute consequences to help them choose right, because if left to their own devices, they will inevitably choose wrong.

As our children grow, we should be teaching our children about God’s promises (4)—His blessings, His favor, His grace, His character. We should be teaching our children about God’s principles, His laws (5) and why they were given, His standards and how we cannot measure up, His symbolism showing His plan for a Savior. Don’t present God’s law just as a back-up for your rules. This is manipulation. We should be teaching our children about God’s Spirit (6) and how He indwells us and enables us to meet His standards; how He works in us our whole lives to conform us to the image of Christ. And finally we should be teaching our children about the Kingdom of God (7), how He is returning to rule on the earth, how He is going to judge our works and reward us, and how we can rule and reign with Him. This gives them hope--hope that one day all will be made right in the world, good will triumph over evil.

If we leave any of these categories out, we fall out of balance. If we decide to use family government and God’s law, but leave out the aspects of God’s Spirit enabling us and His promises of blessing that He has for us (separate from our works), this is called legalism. Legalistic families produce children that are full of resentment, rebellion, self-righteousness, and possibly even end up rejecting the faith.

Conversely, some families want to disregard the government (3) and law (5) categories because they know that God loves them unconditionally and makes His grace abound toward us. They know that He does not pour out wrath and punishment on us (He already did that with Christ and He was our substitute). So the tendency is to be lenient with our children. God is merciful with us, so shouldn’t we be merciful with our children? We are no longer under the law, so why are we putting our children under it?  The tendency is not to discipline but just to try to convince kids through reasoning that they should behanve.  But if you leave out government and law, you will produce children with no godly character, and their lives will suffer because of it.

Too many of us just stop at the stage of government. We really just want to keep control of our children. But who are our children anyway? Why did God give them to us?

In this area as well as all others we need to take in the whole counsel of God. I believe that looking at God’s plan for man, these 7 dispensations, will help us parent more completely. The goal should be to teach our children that God loves them unconditionally, even though they are sinners. They need Christ, not only to save them, but to empower them to live their lives the way God planned, to be conformed to the image of Christ, developing godly character. They will never be perfect, but they can press on, as Paul put it. The earlier they learn these principles, the more peace they will have in their lives—with their siblings, with you, with teachers, coaches, with friends, eventually co-workers, a spouse, and their own children. And most importantly, we need to teach them how to know God and hear His voice. If they won’t receive correction from us, how will they receive correction from God’s Word as adults?

Please don’t think I have mastered this. I am learning, too. If you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp, and Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp.

Dispensations

I'm studying Ephesians right now and have come to verse 10.  In this verse we see the word dispensation.  What is a dispensation?  It is the Greek word is oikonomia.  It means the management of household affairs, or administration.  It's simply the rule of the house, the way things operate for this time.  It is used 4 times as dispensation (I Cor. 9:17, Eph. 1:10, 3:2, & Col. 1:25) and 3 times as stewardship (Luke 16:2-4).  Some translations will use the word stewardship rather than dispensation.  I use the NKJV, which is based on the Textus Receptus.  In Eph. 3:9 there appears a word for fellowship--koinonia.  But some translations are based on the Alexandrian text, which uses the word oikonomia in that verse instead  Just something to be aware of.  The NKJV reads, "fellowship of the mystery", the ESV reads, "plan of the mystery", and NASB reads, "dispensation of the mystery."

 

Heb. 1:1 – God works in different ways in different times. This does not mean that God tried one thing and it didn’t work so He tried something else. The reason for each of these periods is to lead man to the cross, until the final period where Christ will reign forever.

 

These dispensations help us understand the overall plan of scripture. They help us have a big picture perspective.  Understanding these dispensations particularly helps us understand how we are no longer under the law.

 

So, what are the different dispensations?  There are seven, here is a list.  I interpret them slightly differently than some.  You may ask, "who cares?"  Does this information really do us any good in our day-to-day life?  For one, I will use them to explain the Sheep and the Goats post.  And I see a very practical aspect applied to our parenting.  I will post about that soon.

 

1. Innocence (Gen. 1:28) – from creation to the fall. How long did it last? We don’t really know, but we do know it ended when they sinned. They were no longer innocent at that point.

 

2. Conscience/Moral Responsibility (Gen. 3:7) – from the fall onward. You now know good and evil, I will leave you to your conscience to choose between those. But man tends toward evil, so we get up to Gen. 6:5 and God says that ALL the purposes of man were evil continually.

 

3. Government (Gen. 8:15) – from the flood onward. After the flood there were consequences for evil. Man was still accountable to his conscience to choose between good and evil, but God added an incentive. He says that anyone that takes a human life will have his taken away. We see the value God is placing on human life here. If you can’t govern yourself, someone else will have to. See also Rom. 13.

 

4. Promise (Gen. 12:1) – from the call of Abram onward. This promise was not based on anything Abraham had done; it was unconditional. All Abraham had to do was believe. This promise is still available to us by faith, as well. So this dispensation, too, has not gone away. Gen. 12 & Gal. 3, 4. God is now teaching humans to trust in Him.

 

5. Law (Ex. 19:1) – from Mt. Sinai until Jesus (or specifically John the Baptist—Luke 16:16). Promise does not end and the Law did not bring justification. It brought a picture of the Savior. It brought many, many types and shadows to point us to the cross. You can study everything in the law, from the Sabbath, to the Feasts, to the elements of the Tabernacle, to the Dietary Laws, to the specific instructions to the priests on how to administer offerings, to the laws for declaring leprosy cleansed, and you will see Christ through and through. Beyond all the symbolism, the law was meant to frustrate man and show him he could never make it on his own, even with conscience and human government.

 

6. Church (Acts 2:1) – from Pentecost until the rapture. This is sometimes called the Age of Grace (I do not agree with this title) or the Dispensation of Faith (again, I don’t think this is entirely accurate), or the Dispensation of the Spirit. This is the mystery Paul is talking about, the secret that was hidden, not revealed in the OT, that Gentiles and Jews would be part of the same Body, and that the Spirit would indwell us. These were mind-blowing truths. This is one of the reasons Paul prayed for revelation for the people he was writing to. We need to pray this pray, too, that the Holy Spirit would open our eyes to these profound truths.

 

· Do we still have moral responsibility (#2)? Yes, but now we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, to give us the power to choose right and wrong, and our human spirits have been recreated in the image of Christ—it wants to follow after Him.


· Do we still have human government (#3)? Yes, we do, but if we walk according to the Spirit, we don’t have to be afraid of the government. If they put us to death for righteousness sake, the Bible says we’re supposed to be happy.


· What about the law? Does it still stand? I Tim. 1:8-10 says that the law is not for the righteous—we have been made the righteousness of Christ—but for the lawless, the ungodly, the sinners. The law still stands to point people to Christ, to show them their need. The law still stands as a standard in our world, that if people would follow it, our world would be a better place to live in. The law does not justify us, but it sets the standard and grace gives us the power to live it.

 

7. Kingdom (Rev. 20:4) – from Armageddon onward. The visible rule of the Lord Jesus Christ on the earth. We can see II Sam. 7:12-16, Is. 9:6-7, Luke 1:31-33, Rev. 3:21, and Matt. 25:31. He came once to die, the second to reign.

  

Now, the thread that is common throughout all these dispensations is grace. That is why I do not call the Church Age the Age of Grace. Every single age has been the age of grace. It was God’s grace that blocked Adam and Eve from the Tree of Life. He did not want them to live forever in their fallen state. It was grace that God had on Cain when He marked him and sent him away. It was grace that saved Noah and his family. Grace called Abram out of Ur. Grace redeemed Israel from their bondage to the Egyptians. Grace came and dwelt among us. Grace will rule on a literal throne forever and ever. The other side of this coin is faith. You can read about people of faith throughout all the past in Hebrews 11. Just like them, we are saved by grace, through faith, in whatever age we live.