Seven Dispensations- Part 2
To understand today’s post, please be sure to go back and read yesterday’s blog post. We covered the seven dispensations of time, and today we will see how our spiritual walk parallels those dispensations. Through Christ and what He did, we can walk in the seven dispensations as our spiritual heritage.
To review, the seven dispensations are:
Innocence
Conscience
Human Government
Promise
Law
Grace
Reign of Christ
Man fell and lost his state of innocence, but when we are born again, through Christ we are made right and innocent again.
As a parallel to the second dispensation, our consciences are purged and purified. We have no more sin consciousness, and we are placed back in our spiritual garden. Now we are part of God’s kingdom and instead of being aware of sin, we’re aware of our righteousness in Christ. We’re more conscious of Christ; who He is and what He’s done, than we are of our sin and failures. Now we can feel good about ourselves, even when we mess up and sin, because God loves us and forgives us.
Similar to the Dispensation of Human Government, through Christ, we can govern ourselves, ruling over our flesh by allowing our spirit to dominate. It rules over our soul, which is our mind, will and enotions. This happens when our minds are renewed by the Word, our wills are submitted to Christ, and our emotions are stable by God’s Spirit in us. We act on God’s Word, thus our spirit governs us by the Holy Spirit and the Word. We have authority to rule over ourselves, sin, satan, etc.
In parallel to the Dispensation of Promise, we have been given precious promises through Christ that we might be partakers of God’s divine nature. The promises made to Abraham are now ours through faith in Christ. We have the blessing of Abraham, and we are blessed just as he was.
For the application of the next dispensation in our spiritual lives, the law, we see we are delivered from all bondage- like Israel was delivered from Egypt. God’s Word is His law, and we live by the Word of God. It delivers and sets us free and shows us how to live. It always points us to Christ.
The Dispensation of Grace in our lives is evident by what Christ has done for us. By His grace, we are saved through faith. We live by His grace, or His divine ability working in and through us. From salvation until the rapture, born-again man lives by grace through faith.
We see the Dispensation of the Reign of Christ evident in the fact that we can now reign as kings in this life by Christ Jesus. We are new creatures and we’ve been seated in heavenly places in Christ. Now we reign in life from a seated position of authority. We’re the head and not the tail; above only and not beneath. We reign in this life over sin, sickness, poverty, evil, the enemy…. As we enforce Christ’s victory that He has given to us, we remain victorious in this life.
Because of who Jesus is and what He has done for us, we can now enjoy all seven dispensations as benefits of our redemption.
By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. II Peter 1:3 (New Living Translation, NLT)
