Ephesians 3:2 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Dispensation’ means something like stewardship. The idea is a manager of an estate or a household, a large household, who pays the servants and distributes the bounty, the benefits that the household gives out, that the owner of the estate wishes to distribute. He is a steward, a dispenser – and Paul adopts this term marvellously. ‘I am like a steward. I do not own the estate. The resources are not mine, the bounty is not mine, but God has appointed me to distribute the bounty of his love, his grace, his message of salvation to the Gentiles.’ That was new. ‘If ye have heard of the dispensation’ of the undeserved, unearned ‘grace of God which is given me to you-ward.’ So Paul had that special office to the Gentiles.Of course, he was the last of the apostles, the one born out of time. That is to say he was not with the other apostles, and afterwards he was brought, converted by God and made an apostle and given revelation. At his calling on the road to Damascus, God spoke to him directly and also through Ananias, plus at other times too. He speaks of these revelations in 2 Corinthians chapter 12: ‘It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago’ – he speaks of himself of course, but indirectly – ‘(whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;).’ He had such an extraordinary experience he did not know whether he was taken bodily to heaven or just in spirit; he could not tell. ‘Such an one caught up to the third heaven’, that is, beyond the skies into the celestial region where God, as it were, dwells. There he heard unutterable words, things that he could not repeat on earth or tell. ‘Which it is not lawful for a man to utter’ – not only not lawful but probably impossible to put into words. ‘Of such a one will I glory, yet of myself I will not glory, but in mine infirmities.’He was given such privileges of revelation, even things he could not speak about, but also much he could speak about and did speak about. So you have the epistles inspired by God and the preaching of the apostle Paul. But he would deliberately glory in his infirmities. He was given infirmities for a purpose, and one particular infirmity which he mentions, a thorn in the flesh, an illness which we do not know the nature of but something which was a terrible burden and a painful burden for him to carry. It was given because he had such revelations that being a fallen human being he would be lifted up with pride. That must not happen; God could not allow that. The one he privileged with such divine revelation would have to be humble. So Paul would know limitations and pain and hardship, which he did, and he gloried in it because it was the sign that God had given him the privilege.