The Word of God Is Living and Active – Hebrews 4:12.

Christ Pantocrator (Ruler of All) - mosaic, 1148 AD, dome of Cathedral of Cefal, Palermo, Italy

The Stages of God's Plan
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by Steve Clark
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Christ tackled a question like this in Matthew 19:3–9, a question in the area of divorce. He gave a strong teaching against divorce. Then some of the Jewish teachers who did not agree with him asked how come God seemed to allow for divorce in the law of Moses. Christ’s answer is very interesting. He said, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

In effect, Christ taught that God has handled the matter somewhat differently at different times. “In the beginning”, that is, when God created the human race, he created human beings without allowing a possibility of divorce. Then, after the fall, when Moses was giving the law to the Jews in the wilderness who had shown themselves to be stubborn and disobedient, God prescribed a way that divorce could happen so that it would cause less harm. But now, in Jesus, God was offering grace to men and women and expecting that they should be able to live up to his original intention.

We are not interested here in the question of divorce. We are interested, however, in the changing way God has handled his teaching as illustrated by this case of divorce. We can notice two things. First, God’s intention has never changed in regard to divorce. He said through the prophet Malachi, “I hate divorce” (Mal 2:16), and he has hated it from beginning to end. He created marriage so that the couple would remain united all the days of their life.

Yet, he has handled the area somewhat differently at different times. At a certain point he made a concession. He treated the human race the way parents often need to treat children: he allowed them to live in a less mature way until he could train them out of it. Parents usually work to get their children not to fight with one another, but at a certain point, they simply expect them not to fight any more and to deal with their disputes in a more mature way.

In other words, God has had a plan for handling the different situations human beings have presented him with, and that plan has varied over time. He particularly has had an approach for the fact that he could not get his people to live up to his own standard for some areas of their lives. The goal has always been the same. The approach has been different, depending on the period of time. So God has had a plan for how he would save people and bring them to the place he always wanted them to be, and that plan has varied over time.

When we understand God’s plan, we can understand many things about scripture better, especially how various things God said and did go together. As Augustine of Hippo put it, “Distinguish the ages, and the scriptures harmonize”. Or, as we might say: understand the stages of God’s plan and you can see God’s work as a harmonious whole. The following chart summarizes the stages of God’s plan.

New farm managers or city managers, for instance, will often bring a new approach to getting their newly acquired responsibility handled. “Things change” when a new manager is appointed. The requirements of the job do not change, but the way the situation is being handled to “get the job done” often does change. To use the scriptural translation we could say the new manager comes with a new plan. 

In our case, God has a plan for how to govern human affairs and reach the goal for which he created the human race. The goal was present in his mind at the beginning. But his plan had to face an obstacle as a result of the situation caused by sin and the fall. “An enemy got in” (Mt 13:24), and consequently God had to come up with a new approach after the fall. Now step-by-step he is in the process of bringing the human race to be what it was supposed to be from the beginning. The word we are going to use for the main developments in the way God handles human affairs is stages. Each major new approach he takes is a different stage in his plan.

A scriptural word that often is used to speak about the stages of God’s plan is the word age. The Greek word for “age” can sometimes also be translated “era” or sometimes “world”. Modern English-speakers would be more likely to use the word “era”. They would most readily speak of, for instance, the “era” of industrialization, as in the sentence “the invention of the steam engine brought in a new era”.

When we use such a sentence, we mean several things by the word era. First, we mean that a new period of time that has begun. But we mean something different by “period of time” than when we speak of the Tenth Century as a period of time. The Tenth Century is nothing more than a convenient division of time, while an era is not only a period of time but also involves some important human development. A new era is a period in which things work in a new way. The era of industrialization is a period of time in which people handled life quite differently than previously.

It is helpful to note, moreover, another difference between a century like the Tenth Century and an era like the era of industrialization. The Tenth Century began everywhere in the world at the same time and ended everywhere at the same time. The era of industrialization did not. Historians have said that Japan entered the industrial era in 1853. But in 1853 Britain had been in the industrial era for quite a while. Two different eras or ages are even able to coexist in the same place. An anthropologist once said about living in a village in New Guinea, “I was living in the modern age, but they were still living in the stone age”.

The scriptural term “age”, then, refers to an era of God’s work. The New Testament often speaks of “this age” (1 Cor 2:6 RSV) or “the age to come” (Lk 18:30 RSV). These phrases concern the changes in the eras of human history introduced by the coming of Christ.

“Age” can sometimes also be translated in English world (Lk 16:8 RSV) because a new age creates a very different situation. Things are done so differently in the Stone Age and in the modern age that our Stone Age New Guinean and our modern anthropologist live in “completely different worlds”. Note, however, that most of the time “world” appears in the English scripture, it does not translate the Greek word for age but a different word, which is a synonym for universe or perhaps material creation.

Another word that can be used to describe an age or era is the word dispensation. This word too comes from the scripture. Paul speaks of the “dispensation of death” and the “dispensation of the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:7–9). To “dispense” means to “serve up” or “give out”. The age that came to us in Christ, then, is the age in which the Spirit is given out to God’s people instead of death being given out as a result of the sin of Adam.  In the old covenant, God has had a different plan of operation that brought about somewhat different results than he had in the new covenant.

Above we saw that “plan” means plan of operation. “Dispensation”, then, can be used to describe what happens in the different stages of God’s overall plan of operation. He “serves up” or “gives out” his grace in different ways during different eras of history. The main stages of God’s plan, therefore, can also be described as the different dispensations of God’s plan, and they correspond to the ages of God’s plan.

The various stages
Look briefly at the chart “The Stages of God’s Plan”. This chart may be printed as one long chart or as two pages, depending on the copy you have. It sketches the main stages. They are as follows:

1. The first stage, the stage of the sons of Adam, is that of the creation and fall. God’s plan, originally designed for human beings as he created them, became in this stage a plan for dealing with a fallen, sinful human race.

The second stage, the stage of the sons of Noah, is the one following upon the flood. The human race reached a point in which God judged it and then re-created it through Noah and in doing so took a somewhat new approach to fallen people.
The third stage, the stage of the Patriarchs is the one in which God worked with the Patriarchs and their descendants to form them into a special people among other peoples on the earth, a people that was ready to be the vehicle to move the human race forward spiritually, the old covenant people of God.
The fourth stage, the stage of the dispensation of Sinai, is the one in which God gave the descendants of Israel a law and a way of life so that they might be a priestly people. This is the second stage of the old covenant.
The fifth stage is the one in which the children of Israel were ordered as a kingdom under David and so would be ready to receive the king to come, the son of David. This is the third stage of the old covenant.
The sixth stage is the stage in which Christ comes to bring new life and salvation to those who receive him. This is the stage in which those of us who are Christians live.
The seventh stage is the last stage, the completion of God’s work after the second coming of Christ when the redeemed human race and all creation will be brought to the glory God has for it.

The people: those who are the vehicle of God’s purpose are described in this column. This is the central column, because the stages of God’s plan are the stages of God bringing human beings to fulfill his purpose for them.
The covenant: a covenant in this sense is an agreement to enter into a relationship of a certain sort. This column describes the various covenants God makes with people.
The father: most of the new stages begin with one human being, the “father of the age”, through whom God works to begin something new. This column lists those men.
The events: there are a few decisive events, actions of God, by which he establishes a new stage. This column lists some of those.
The inheritance: God provides for his people something that can be the source of life for them. This is their inheritance, sometimes material, sometimes spiritual. This column lists the changing form of the inheritance he gives people.

Access: God is present to people in various ways through history, and the form of his presence makes different kinds of access to him possible.
Worship: God allows people to interact with him and respond to him to establish a good relationship with him. This column lists the ways he allows people to enter into direct relationship with him.
Teaching: God teaches people, gives them wisdom and understanding about what he will do for them (his promises) and how they are to live (his commandments). His teaching becomes fuller and more developed as he moves human beings on.
Life: God gives people life by creating them and providing for them and then by recreating them through the gift of the Spirit and bringing them to glory.
Security: God protects people from dangers and their enemies in the course of history by helping them but also by fighting with them when they confront their enemies.

At each stage of the way, he has entered into a new relationship with human beings. He has saved them, and has blessed them with his presence and with true life in him. At the end, he will restore everything in Christ, and the glory of his everlasting kingdom will be manifest to all. As we understand God’s purposes and plan, we will learn to read all scripture in a way that applies to us as people who live in the new dispensation in Christ.

Alternate divisions
The chart on the stages of God’s plan gives seven stages. There are, however, various ways of dividing up God’s plan. One common way centers around the division between the two covenants. The old covenant includes stages III, IV, V; the new covenant VI and VII. The decisive change is the coming of Christ. In this view, the first two stages (I and II) are preparation or background to God’s work of restoration and are the stages for all humanity. This way of dividing up the stages of God’s plan highlights the importance of the two covenants, the old and the new.

A second common way of dividing God’s plan is the division between “figure”, “grace” and “glory”. Stages I, II, III, IV, and V are the stages of “figure” or “type” in which New Testament realities are prefigured. Stage VI is the age of grace. Stage VII is the completion of Christ’s work in glory. This way of dividing up the stages of God’s plan highlights the importance of what Christ has done for us when he was born on earth and will do for us when he comes again in glory.

These two alternate ways of dividing up the stages show us that the seven stages on the chart are not equal in importance. The change from stage V to stage VI, for instance, is more noteworthy than the change from IV to V. On the other hand, seeing all the stages helps us to observe the whole development more accurately.1 

There are also various theological views of how the stages go together. For the most part, we do not have to be concerned with the differences between them, because we only have a simple purpose in mind: we want to learn how to read the Old Testament as Christians.

• Some would see little difference between the stage of the sons of Adam and the stage of the sons of Noah and so make them one stage.
• Some would see little difference between the dispensation of Sinai and the kingdom of Israel, because the establishment of the kingdom just completed what Sinai began.
• Some, on the other hand, would divide the first stage into two, with the fall opening a new stage of God’s plan.
• Others would divide the fifth stage into two, beginning a new stage with the exile and diaspora as the gospel of Matthew does (Mt 1:17).
• While most would end up with seven stages, some would have eight and would see the last stage as the consummation of all the previous one and so outside the “week of ages”.
The different ways of dividing the stages of God’s plan are all legitimate and each can be helpful for different purposes.

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Steve Clark is a founder and former president of the Sword of the Spirit, founder of The Servants of the Word, and a noted author of numerous books and articles, and a frequent speaker.  This article is excerpted from the book, The Psalms: The Christian Prayerbook, A Course Workbook, copyright © 1989 by Stephen B. Clark. It was originally published by Servant Publications, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

• The Unity of the Scriptures, An introduction by Don Schwager
• Christ In All the Scriptures, by Dr. John Yocum
• How to Read the Bible, by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
• The Authority of Scripture, by Steve Clark
• The Scriptures Are One Book in Christ, quotes from early church fathers
• Approaching Scripture As God's Word, by J.I. Packer
• In the Bible It Is God Who Is Speaking to Us, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• You Can Understand the Bible, by Peter Kreeft
• Formational Versus Informational Reading of the Scriptures, by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.
• How to Silence the Scriptures, by Soren Kierkegaard
• Reading the Scriptures with the Early Church Fathers, by Don Schwager
• Scripture Study Course, by Don Schwager