The Christian Dispensation

Robert F. Wall

Christ glorified in heaven and the Holy Spirit on earth

There are many features of the present Christian era that distinguish it from all the dispensations that went before. Two that we might first think of are: that redemption having been accomplished, the man Christ Jesus — and in Him all Christian believers — is seated in righteousness in the presence of God in heaven (1 Tim. 2:5; Eph. 2:6); and that God the Holy Spirit has been sent and has come down from heaven to indwell every Christian believer on earth — there never was such a thing before.

Every Christian believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit forever

The Holy Spirit came from heaven on the day of Pentecost to bear witness to Christ in glory and to announce what He accomplished on the cross (John 15:26; 1 Pet. 1:12; see also John 14:26; 16:7–13; etc.). When the Lord was here on earth He said to the disciples concerning Him, ‘And I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see him nor know him; but ye know him, for he abides with you, and shall be in you’ (John 14:16–17). Prior to the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit had not come to permanently indwell believers, though on occasion He did come upon both believers and unbelievers (e.g. Num. 11:25; Jdg. 14:19; 1 Sam. 9:27–10:13). This difference is made clear when Paul asked certain disciples of John the Baptist, ‘Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye had believed?’ They answered him, ‘We did not even hear if the Holy Spirit was come’ (Acts 19:2). They knew of the existence of the Holy Spirit, as any believing reader of the Old Testament would, but they were not Christian believers at this point and were not aware that the Holy Spirit had come to indwell Christians. They were immediately afterwards brought to Christ through Paul’s preaching and received the Holy Spirit by the laying on of his hands (vs. 3–7).

The Christian believer is never less than in Christ and in Spirit

Every Christian believer is ‘in Christ’. We have a perfect standing in Him before God which no failure on our part can affect. What corresponds to this in the sight of God is that the Christian believer on earth is never less than ‘in Spirit.’ ‘But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you’ (Rom. 8:9). Clearly this fact should exercise us so as to affect our spiritual state practically. These aspects of the truth are fully developed in the epistle to the Romans in which Paul unfolds what he refers to as ‘my glad tidings’ (16:25).

Our lives are practically to reflect this deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. In Romans 12 Paul writes: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God’ (vs. 1–2). In view of all that God has done for us this is the spiritually intelligent response and one that is acceptable to God. It is both inward (through the renewing of our minds) and outward (the presentation of our bodies as a living sacrifice), and a prerequisite to proving the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in our lives day by day.

Sealed unto the day of redemption

Where the glad tidings are believed, the Holy Spirit, by His indwelling, seals the individual as belonging to Christ (Eph. 1:13; 4:30; Rom. 8:9). This sealing is said to be with the Holy Spirit of promise and for the day of redemption. It looks forward to the redemption of the body at the coming of the Lord Jesus for His own. This first part of Christ’s second coming is God’s final redemptive act in relation to all believers that have lived from the time of the fall until the time of the rapture. The dead are raised and the living are changed. We will all then have bodies like Christ’s own body of glory ‘according to the working of the power which he has even to subdue all things to himself’ (Phil. 3:21).

1 Corinthians 15:51–58 shows that this change takes place on earth while 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 adds our being caught up together in the clouds to be forever with the Lord. It should be noted that Paul introduces the section in 1 Corinthians 15 with the words, ‘I tell you a mystery’ (v. 51), and the section in 1 Thessalonians 4 with the words, ‘For this we say to you in the word of the Lord’ (v. 15). The truth of the resurrection of the saints from among the dead and of their rapture to glory is something only fully disclosed in this Christian era.

The two epistles to the Thessalonians bring the two parts of the Lord’s second coming before us. They show that the Lord is our deliverer from ‘the wrath to come’ (the great tribulation) and that our Christian service is to be conducted in the energy and urgency that the hope of Christ’s coming instils in us. The truth of His second coming is to be continually before us, not merely as a doctrine with which we are acquainted but as a living hope that governs and guides our lives.

In Ephesians 4:30 we are exhorted not to ‘grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which ye have been sealed for the day of redemption’. We cannot grieve Him away, but we can ‘grieve’ or cause Him pain. The verses on either side of this exhortation clearly show some of the ways in which we can grieve Him. ‘Let no corrupt word go out of your mouth’ (v. 29), ‘Let all bitterness, and heat of passion, and wrath, and clamour, and injurious language, be removed from you, with all malice’ (v. 31). We can also ‘quench’ Him by not following His leading (1 Thess. 5:19). This leading is always in the path of obedience to Scripture in which we wholly follow the Lord. We are to take care neither to hinder His working in us nor to hinder His working by us.

He who restrains now until He be gone

At the beginning of 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul shows that three things must happen before the day of the Lord comes. The first is ‘the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him’ — the rapture of all the saints to Him.[1] When this happens the check on the manifestation of the antichrist will be taken away. In this connection there is both ‘that’ which restrains (v. 6) and ‘he who restrains … until he be gone’ (v. 7). The first is the government of God and the second is the Holy Spirit who is personally present in the assembly on earth. When the saints are taken up the Holy Spirit will go up with them. Those on earth who afterwards believe the gospel, which is to be distinguished in its terms from the glad tidings that are announced now, will be brought into blessing (Matt. 4:23; 24:14; Rev. 14:6). God will afterwards ‘pour out [His] Spirit upon all flesh’ (Joel 2:28–31). This will involve the activity of the Spirit as already seen in certain cases in the Old Testament but He will not indwell believers as He does now.

The gospel contrasted with the law

The Christian dispensation is further characterised by new covenant ministry as opposed to the ministry of the law. The contrast between these two is brought out in 2 Corinthians 3, where the law and the gospel are contrasted and shown to be very different in both character and result. The law required a righteousness from man that he could not produce, while the Christian gospel presents the justifying righteousness of God founded on the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus. 

The saints in Corinth had come to Christ because of the labours of Paul and those with him. They were their letter of commendation, known and read of all men, but also written in the hearts of Paul, Silas and Timothy because the believers there were dear to them. Furthermore, they were Christ’s epistle ministered by them. He was the author of the work in them and the one who was to be seen in their lives and so commended to others by them.

New covenant ministry

Paul contrasts this writing of the Spirit of God on the hearts of the believers with the writing of the law on tables of stone. The one was inward and connected with the imparting of life, while the other was an external demand that could only condemn those that failed to meet its standard. Paul and his fellow labourers had been made competent ministers of the gospel, which he calls here ‘[the] new covenant’ ministry. The definite article does not occur in the underlying Greek text, showing that it is the character of the new covenant that is being referred to. The new covenant is not made with the assembly or with Christian believers, but God in His grace is working now according to the spirit of it. Living in the power of the gospel Paul, Silas and Timothy were enabled by God to present the truth of the glad tidings without impairment.

The letter kills, but the Spirit quickens

Paul adds that ‘the letter kills, but the Spirit quickens’ (v. 6). He is emphasising that if our relationship with God is made to depend on an obligation we have to meet it is bound to break down (cf. Col. 2:14). Every blessing that God confers brings added responsibility, but our standing in grace is not affected by any failure on our part to live up to that responsibility. For example, we are called upon to follow in the steps of the Lord Jesus (1 Pet. 2:21). If this was something we had to do in order to obtain a standing in the favour of God the end will be no different from trying to keep the law: failure and death. It is by grace that we are saved and by grace that we stand, and not by our own efforts.[2] In writing that ‘the letter kills’, we must not suppose that Paul is in any way denigrating the Word of God. It is by the Word that the Spirit sovereignly imparts life and the Word feeds and directs that life. What kills is the legal principle (implying that we must meet a given standard in order to obtain life and be reckoned righteous by God).

Looking on the glory of the Lord

Verses 7 to 16 form a parenthesis. Passing over this section to verse 17 we read: ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit[3], but where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ The Spirit is here as the representative of the Lord Jesus and as such is fully identified with Him. He leads those in whom He dwells to the practical acknowledgement of Christ’s lordship and wherever this is the case Christian liberty is enjoyed. This contrasts with the bondage gendered by the law. Furthermore, ‘we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit’ (v. 18). Paul speaks of what is normal or characteristic of the Christian. If place is given to the working of the Spirit He will always turn the eyes of our hearts upon Christ. There is nothing to hinder this. There is no veil on Christ’s face, nor a veil on our hearts or faces that prevents our gazing on Him where He is. The result of this is that the Christian is transformed. An inward change is wrought in us which is manifested outwardly. What is then seen in the Christian believer is the life and character of Christ.

The law is a ministry of death and condemnation

The parenthetical section shows that the covenant of law was a ministry of death (v. 7) and condemnation (v. 9). In contrast the ministry of the gospel is a ministry of life (v. 6) and righteousness (v. 9). The law was given by God and is a perfect standard for those who are nominally the people of God but who are without life from Him. There is the need to curb the inclinations of the fallen nature and the law calls for this. However, it does not impart the new nature (and hence new desires), it does not give power and it does not give an object outside of ourselves in relation to which the new life which is ours in Christ can develop itself.

The glory of the gospel contrasted with the glory of the law

Paul acknowledges that the covenant of the law began with glory. Moses was the mediator of it, receiving it from Jehovah on the top of the mountain (Gal. 3:19; Ex. 34:1–28). At first Moses did not realise that the skin of his face shone through Jehovah’s talking with him (v. 29). When he later spoke with the children of Israel they were afraid to come near him and he had to wear a veil when speaking with them (vs. 33–35). Eventually this glory faded and both the covenant of the law and its glory have since been annulled. This was really done when God spoke of the new covenant in the days of Jeremiah as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews explains: ‘For if that first was faultless, place had not been sought for a second. For finding fault, he says to them, Behold, days come, saith the Lord, and I will consummate a new covenant as regards the house of Israel, and as regards the house of Juda’ (8:7–8).

It is not the law that failed but those who were under it. It cannot produce righteousness because of the material to which it is applied: a nature that is full of sin. Paul writes elsewhere, ‘Wherefore by works of law no flesh shall be justified before him; for by law is knowledge of sin’ (Rom. 3:20). For this reason it has been annulled as a means of life and righteousness for men which faith in Christ alone secures (10:4). The law itself continues to be ‘holy, and just, and good’ (7:12). It is legitimate to use it ‘lawfully’ as Paul writes elsewhere: ‘Now we know that the law is good if any one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that law has not its application to a righteous person, but to the lawless’, etc. (1 Tim. 1:8–9).

Moses’ face veiled, Christ’s face not veiled

The ministry of the gospel subsists and abounds in glory. In the next chapter Paul writes: ‘it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6). ‘Moses put a veil on his own face, so that the children of Israel should not fix their eyes on the end of that annulled’ (3:13). Here it is not the annulling of the law that the children of Israel could not see (though they could not see that either), but the glorious end that so many of the ordinances of the law presented typically. For example, the tabernacle system was ‘the figurative representations of the things in the heavens’ (Heb. 9:23). The actions of Aaron on the day of atonement were a figure of Christ entering into heaven itself, having found an eternal redemption (v. 12). In this picture the Christian is really looked at as gone in with Him into the ‘holiest of all’. At the time of His appearing Christ will come out again for the deliverance of His earthly people. Meanwhile, because of unbelief, the veil lies upon the hearts of the mass of the children of Israel. That part of the nation will come under God’s judgment but when the believing remnant of Israel turn to the Lord the veil will be taken away and they will enter into millennial blessing.

[1] The others are ‘the apostasy’, the falling away from all true acknowledgement of God, and the revealing of the antichrist, the man of sin, who ‘sits down in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God’.

[2] The believer on the Lord Jesus Christ stands in God’s favour and can never fall out of it. He is in Christ. Will Christ ever fall out of the favour of God? That is impossible. We do not seek to follow the Lord in order to obtain the favour of God but because we are in the enjoyment of it and want to please Him in all things.

[3] It should probably be ‘spirit’ here, i.e. not capitalised. It appears as such in Mr Darby’s French translation and in his commentary on the verse (Synopsis). It is an allusion to verse 6: Christ is the ‘spirit’ of the law, the true meaning of its figures (compare Rev. 19:10: ‘For the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus’).

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From: Truth and Testimony, 2021