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predestination to sonship, is "in harmony" with the good pleasure of His will (Eph. 1: 4,
5). If, as the Westminster Confession of faith declares:
"God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy council of His own will, freely
and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass,"
it is an evidence of uncertainty to say immediately "Yet so, as neither is God the author
of sin . . . . . nor is the liberty and contingency of second causes taken away", for that robs
the words "freely and unchangeably ordain WHATSOEVER comes to pass" of their
meaning. Instead, therefore of reading into the word "will" a fixed, unalterable decree,
we must see in it, His "desire" (Eph. 2: 3 thelo), and that this desire is in harmony with
His good pleasure and His purpose, and if God's desire is implemented by infinite
wisdom, power and love, who can think of failure or frustration? Why stretch out our
hand to stay the ark of God and speak of His "decrees", absolute, unconditional and fixed
as fate? This desire of God is in harmony with His good pleasure eudokia. This word is
translated "good will" (Luke 2: 14), "desire" (Rom. 10: 1), while eudokeo the verb, is the
verb "to please". The word translated "purpose" is prothesis, "something placed before"
the mind or, as in Matt. 12: 4, Mark 2: 26, Luke 6: 4 and Heb. 9: 2, it is the bread
that was placed before Him, called the shew bread. In Gal. 4: 2 prothesmia is the
time "appointed" by a father in his will for his son, and it should be remembered that
where Paul does introduce a human illustration to illuminate the character of God's
"will" he speaks after the manner of men to the Galatians concerning their own customs
(3: 15-18). So in Ephesians, we are dealing with no fatalistic decrees but the will of a
Father, with the inheritance and blessing of His children in view. This mystery, will,
good pleasure and purpose had a special dispensation in view.
"That in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one,
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him"
(Eph. 1: 10).
The Revised Version reads "unto a dispensation" which recognizes the presence of the
preposition eis, which indicates a goal. "With a view to", while rather a free translation,
is a good indication of the meaning of eis here. The word "dispensation" comes into our
language from the Latin, where it was used to translate the Greek oikonomia, which is the
word found here in Eph. 1: 10. It means the ordering, management, especially the
ordering of events by divine providence. In theology a religious order or system
conceived of as a stage in a progressive revelation, expressly adapted to a particular
nation or age, as the Patriarchal, Mosaic, Christian dispensation. It also came to mean
"the age" in writing of the period 1643A.D. Dickens speaks of the mysterious
dispensations of Providence ("Oxford English Dictionary"). As Paul not only speaks of a
dispensation of the fullness of times, but of a dispensation that had been given to him for
the Gentiles (Eph. 3: 2) we cannot limit the word to a period of time, or even to the
disposing of God independently and without the work of a steward, and this leads us to
the kindred word oikonomos.
In Luke 16: will be found three occurrences of
oikonomos rendered "steward", three occurrences of oikonomia rendered "stewardship"
and one occurrence of oikonomeo "be steward". The apostle Paul also uses the word
oikonomos in the same way "stewards of the mysteries of God", "it is required in
stewards that a man be found faithful", "blameless, as the steward of God", beside