The Beza Briefing: Final Section on Jesus Christ

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the

Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, Michael Lee Abendroth here at the helm. Pastor Steve was in earlier today, and I thought

I�d do a couple more shows. We did the one with Steve on � you�ve probably already listened to it � some talk about justification.

Then I did a show on top 20 books that I have not written, but read. And today is

Beza Briefing. Back to Beza Briefing. I was encouraged the other day, my friend

R. Scott Clark wrote a little Heidel blog article on Theodore Beza, and I think the title was something like, �No

Co -Reads Beza.� And I said to Scott, �If I would have known you were going to post that, with links to all the shows so far,

I would have studied more.� But I�m simply reading the book and then making comments that I think are biblical, pertinent, and maybe interesting.

The book that I�m reading is a short book translated by James Clark, The Christian Faith by Theodore Beza.

My particular copy is printed in Crawford, Edinburgh, and it is 112 pages long.

Let�s see. Translator�s Preface, I have that. This bestseller, first published in Geneva, 1558, excels as a concise declaration of the

Christian faith. Think of it as Berkhoff�s Systematic Theology � obviously it�s pre -Berkhoff � but Berkhoff�s Systematic Theology, except much shorter.

Longer than Berkhoff�s summary of the Christian faith, which is included in the new banner of Truth, Systematic Theology, kind of white and red and black edition, that�s excellent as well.

But here we have The Christian Faith. I originally found out, to get back to Clark, I found out about this book because Scott has a rscottclark .org

or Heidel blog paper about books that every

Christian needs to read. Maybe it was for one of his classes or something.

This was on there. I just went down the list and the books that I didn�t have, I just tried to order unless they were hundreds of dollars, then

I didn�t order them. In aggregate they were hundreds, but if a particular book was $100,

I didn�t order. But I just thought I might as well just go down the list. I want to keep learning about the Lord and who

He is and what He does, and I got the Theodore Beza book. So far we have talked about the

Trinity, God the Father, and now we�re in section 3, and section 3 is

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Every section, for instance,

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has subsections. So 3 is Jesus Christ, the

Son of God, then 3 .1, the Divinity of the Son, 3 .2, the Son eternally established.

And if you�ve been listening to Elko, you�ll have already understood some of that. Today we�re up to 3 .25

in the section about Jesus, Theodore Beza, how Jesus Christ, having withdrawn into heaven, is nevertheless here below with His own.

And if I stop there for a second, remember I regularly say, okay, if somebody asked a question on a

Bible show in the old days when I listened to Walter Martin, Bible Answer Man, okay, I�d maybe turn off the radio or stop the cassette and then think if I could answer, would my answer match up?

Now these days my answer would be more Reformed than what they would say, especially Walter Martin in his

Pentecostal days and Hank Hanegraaff in his pre -Orthodox days.

What does this even make us think of? Okay, Jesus did go to heaven, remember, Acts chapter 1, literally, bodily, and He�s going to descend, you know, come back, literally, bodily.

How can He be with us now? Excuse me, answer. We understand that glorification brought immortality to the body of Jesus Christ, besides sovereign glory, but this did by no means change the nature of His true body, a body confined to one certain space and having bounds,

Luke 24, John 20, Acts 1. For this reason, He took away into heaven from our midst

His human nature, His true body, Acts 1, Acts 3, there

He shall remain until He comes to judge the living and the dead, the quick and the dead. But with regard to the efficacy of His Holy Spirit, as to His divinity, by which we are made partakers, not only of half of Christ, but all of Him and all

His goods, as will be said soon in the next chapter of the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge that He is and shall be with His own until the end of the world,

Matthew 28, 20, John 16, Ephesians 4. Remember what Jesus said in Matthew 28, �And lo,

I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.� So, how can that be if He�s in heaven?

And Beza is talking about how we have all of Christ and all of His goods, and He is with us, and we�re going to see how the

Holy Spirit relates to that very issue. This is what Jesus Christ said regarding Himself, �The poor you will always have with you, but me you will not always have ,�

Matthew 26. Again, after His ascension, the angels say to the apostles, �Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you saw

Him go away into heaven ,� Acts 1. And St. Peter says to the Jews that heaven must hold

Him until the time of the restoration of all things, Acts 3. For the same reason, St.

Augustine, following Scripture, has well said that it is necessary to guard oneself from stressing the divinity to the point of coming to deny the truth of the body.

The body is in God, but it is not necessary to draw the conclusion that it is everywhere as God is everywhere.

And I�m going to refrain myself from some

Lutheran discussion, and how we work through this, what�s going on with the natures, what about communion, consubstantiation, omnipresence of Christ, body, we�ll have to be very, very careful with that.

326, there can be no other true religion. In this mystery of our redemption, incomprehensible to human reason,

God has revealed Himself as true God, that is to say, perfectly just and perfectly merciful. Perfectly just, firstly, for He has punished all our sins with full severity,

Romans 3, 2 Corinthians 5. In the person of Him who made Himself surety and security in our place, that is to say, in Jesus, 1

Timothy 2, 1 Peter 2. In the next place, He receives us and acknowledges us as if we were covered and clothed with innocence, sanctification, and perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, 2

Corinthians 5, Romans 5, Colossians 2. Now, while I was trying to avoid the trap there with natures and Jesus, and is

His body omnipresent, etc., or do we have to regard to the efficacy of His Holy Spirit as to His divinity by which we're made partakers, not only half of Christ, but as I said, here, this one's a little bit easier and maybe, if you think, more devotional.

How God sees us and acknowledges us. Of course, we realize that we, because of original sin, then our own sin nature, enemies of God, John 8, our

Father is Satan, as unbelievers. How does God receive us?

How would a king receive such a rebel? How would a king acknowledge a rebel?

But everything is different now because of the Lord Jesus, and we have redemption.

God has revealed Himself as true God, perfectly just and perfectly merciful,

Bezos said. And therefore, when I read this, it does really warm my heart.

He receives us and acknowledges us as if, as His, as if we were covered and clothed with innocence, sanctification, and perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Now I said as if, but it doesn't really say that. Bezos says, in the next place,

He receives us and acknowledges us as His if we are covered and clothed with innocence, sanctification, and perfect righteousness of Christ Jesus.

It's not as if we were, we are. That's an important distinguishing difference there.

We are, we are innocent in God's eyes, we are sanctified in God's eyes, we are perfectly righteous in God's eyes because we are credited with Christ's perfect innocence, sanctification, and righteousness.

Bezos said on the other side, He has revealed Himself as perfectly merciful for finding in us only ground for damnation.

He willed that His Son take our nature in order to find in Him the remedy which would appease

His justice. That is so good, short, pungent, not run -on sentences, freely communicating

Him to us with all the treasures which He possesses, Romans 8. He makes us partakers of eternal life solely by His goodness and mercy on condition that we take hold of Jesus Christ by faith, which we will develop a little later.

See, this is why this is such a highly recommended book by Theodore Bezos. It's all

God -centered. Do you notice even in that paragraph, He has revealed Himself.

He willed His Son to take our nature, freely communicating

Him to us. He makes us partakers of eternal life.

And our response is simply to believe, to trust, and to take God at His word, knowledge, assent, and trust.

That's what faith is. Now the final concluding paragraph of chapter three on the

Son reads thusly, But on the contrary, any religion which opposes to the wrath of God anything other than the sole innocence, righteousness, and satisfaction of Jesus Christ, received by faith, strips

God of His perfect justice and His mercy. For this reason, such a religion, e .g.,

Romanism, must be regarded as false and deceptive. And there we have the end of chapter three on the

Lord Jesus Christ. And what he's trying to say in 326 there, there's no other religion.

You can have other religions, but they're going to lead you nowhere except to wrath. I regularly say, every religion leads to God, to His justice, to His wrath, to His holy displeasure.

Every religion ultimately leads there. But there's only one religion that leads to God as Father, and that's based on the work of the

Son that was sent by the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There can be no other religion because how can we have redemption in another

God, right? You're going to have to have a representative and substitute, truly man, truly

God, perfectly God, perfectly man. You're going to have to have, as Beza would use the language, a

God who with full justice punish all of our sins.

And those sins will either be punished on us by God in hell for eternity, or the substitute is punished on our behalf, in our stead, in our place.

That's called substitutionary atonement. What other religion would give you a surety and a security to say, do you know what?

I think I'm going to actually make it. I think the promises of God are true, and yes, in Christ Jesus, yes and amen.

And I think since I'm justified, the flip side of that is condemnation. But Romans 8 says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and I'm in Christ.

And I already know what judgment day is going to say. Judgment day is going to say, judgment day doesn't say anything, but personified.

God on judgment day is going to say, not guilty, paid in full, no condemnation, welcome, right?

The welcome mat will be out. And of course, nothing that we've done, I mean, what have we contributed to our salvation besides sin, right, as some people say?

It's 100 % of God's work, right? This is not self -salvation, autosotirism, this is all of God's work.

What other religion can treat us, although even we still struggle with sin, what religion can treat us as justified, as declared righteous, as legally righteous, not based on a crazy type of alien fiction, but no alien righteousness.

Alien meaning a different, another, something else. God's perfect justice, God's perfect mercy, we receive salvation by faith alone.

Justice is poured out on Jesus in our place, we receive mercy, and therefore, he says, every other religion, and in particular,

Romanism, is regarded as false and deceptive. That's a lot, and it's a short book, but you just dwell a little bit, and you're trying to learn, and you think, oh, okay,

I'd like to figure these things out, but I also want to stop and think about them, I don't mean in a pietistic way, but in a devotional way, where you think, you know what, why is that important for me to understand?

How can that spur on gratitude in my life and in my heart, right, guilt, grace, gratitude?

So just to take a breath, my name is Mike Cabendroth, this is No Compromise Radio, and we are in Beza's book,

Theodore Beza, The Christian Faith, it's a little systematic theology, and we just do a show called

The Beza Briefing, and I basically read it, and then I say things that I think are pertinent, apropos, and not too unbiblical.

I'm going to be careful about the nature issue with Lutherans. Segment, section, chapter, four.

So we had the Trinity, we had the God the Father, God the Son, any guesses now? Section four, the

Holy Spirit, that's exactly right. This is going to be important for us, because we need to understand the deity of the

Holy Spirit, who He is, we don't want to say things like it, when we talk about the

Holy Spirit. It's kind of easy to say the word it, especially for new people to Christian faith, because spirit would be an it, right, a spirit's a him, but then you look a little bit closer, and you see the scriptures, and you talk about the will of the

Holy Spirit, seeming emotions of the Holy Spirit, volition, intellect, will, all these different things.

I already said that. I know, I just caught myself, but I don't get to edit much on the show.

We have a high quality production, except our editing staff. I just don't like telling

Spencer to edit. He does a great job, I just don't like to do it. We just talk like we would normally talk. If we make a mistake, we make a mistake, but I understand when some people say it, and it's just,

I don't call them heretics right away, and they'll probably correct themselves, and they'll say he, but anyway, he, the

Holy Spirit. Four one, the person of the Holy Spirit, that's another reason why we don't say it.

Four one, Beza, we believe in the Holy Spirit. I was just reading some of the

Athanasians Creed this morning about this very issue. He is the essential power of the

Father and Son, Genesis one. He dwells in them and is co -eternal and consubstantial with them.

Now, when he says essential power, he doesn't mean influence, force, anything like that, where some false teachers would talk about the

Holy Spirit as a power. He has a capital P, and now he goes on to explain himself. He dwells in them and is co -eternal and consubstantial with them.

He proceeds from them, so you see Beza, that the Spirit of God, spiration discussion here, proceeds from the

Father and the Son, right? Some people, you know, you've got the East -West debate, proceeding from the

Father and the Son or proceeding from just the Son. Here we have, he proceeds from them, rightly so.

I think the Nicene Creed also says the very same thing. John 14, John 16, he, the

Holy Spirit, is one God with them. So he's talking about his personhood here.

He's not saying he's just an influence or power, so don't let that fool you. He is always a distinct person from the one and the other,

Matthew 28, 19, right? When you think about the Trinity, you're thinking one

God, Deuteronomy 6, the deity of the Father, the deity of the Son, the deity of the Holy Spirit.

The Father's not the Son, the Son's not the Spirit, the Spirit's not the Father. We have, how are they related in the sense?

What's the relationship? Father, Son, Holy Spirit, eternal begottenness, the

Father sending the Son, eternally begotten, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son. These are all ways that we're trying to talk about the

Trinity. You say, well, the word Trinity's not in the Bible. I know, the word Bible's not in the Bible either, no

English words in the Bible. We say these things as we try to wrap our minds around the corpus of Scripture, and what does

Scripture teach us? Basic goes on to say, this is what the church has well settled, by the word of God, against the

Macedonius and other similar heretics. Macedonius, footnote, denied the divinity of the

Holy Spirit fourth century. His heresy was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381

A .D. And like the errors when it comes to the person of the

Lord Jesus Christ, Eutychian error, Arminian error, I'm sorry,

Arius error, Sibyllian error, Apollinarian error.

There's all kinds of errors, right? He's not really God. He just seems like God. He's not really man.

He just seems like man. He's lesser God than man. There's all these different things. There are errors, too, when it comes to the

Holy Spirit, and one of the errors is what Macedonius said, that the Holy Spirit, he is not

God. And you can read Acts chapter five, and if you believe in Scripture, you have to say, he's

God, he's called God. Four two, the personal works of the Holy Spirit.

And again, notice what Baez is doing. He's a person. He's not a force. He's a person. His infinite might and power are demonstrated in the creation and preservation of all creatures since the beginning of the world,

Genesis one, Psalm 104. But in this treatise, we shall especially consider the effects which he produces in the children of God, how along with faith, he brings to them the graces of God to make them sensible of the efficacy and power of them,

Romans eight, first Corinthians two, first John four. In brief, how he brings them more and more to the end and goal to which they had been predestined before the foundation of the world,

Ephesians one. That's the end of the section there, four two, the personal works of the Holy Spirit. But it's so good.

Do you notice what he said there? Isn't this encouraging? He produces, again, back to the

God -centered nature of all this. He produces in the child of God, how along with faith, he brings to them the graces of God to make them sensible.

I mean, without the Holy Spirit, we would be, you would be nonsensical. It would be nonsense.

We would have no sense, right? My dad would say, what do you mean you don't have any sense to do something like that, to think something like that, to make them sensible of the efficacy and power of them.

And he is bringing us, he is sanctifying us, he is conforming us. He is the one, we could say, applying the work of the

Son who was sent by the Father. And we, of course, don't want to separate the

Holy Trinity in the sense that, well, there's, you know, there are three persons, that's true, co -eternal, consubstantial, but we don't want to say, oh, the

Father does this only, and the Son does something completely different only, and then the

Holy Spirit does something completely different only. There's inseparable operations. And the best way, you can probably think of it in the easiest way, who created the earth and the worlds and the galaxies and all that?

Well, you could see where the Father does, Genesis 1, the Spirit does, Genesis 1, the

Son does, Hebrews 1, because there's one God, right? There might be more scriptural data for the

Father's creative work or, you know, something like that, but we have one

God. We don't want to forget that. I mean, who raised Jesus from the dead? The Father did, the Son did, the Spirit did. That makes sense because there's one

God, and Scripture teaches all three, right, very blatantly.

For three, the Holy Spirit makes us partakers of Jesus Christ by faith alone. Again, very God -centered by Besa, the

Holy Spirit is therefore the one through whom the Father places and maintains His elect in possession of Jesus Christ.

And consequently, of all the graces which are necessary to their salvation, we have

Christ Jesus because of the Holy Spirit, because that's what has pleased the Father. But it is necessary in the first place that the

Holy Spirit makes us suitable and ready to receive Jesus Christ. That is what He does in creating us by His pure goodness and divine mercy, that which we call faith,

Ephesians 1, Philippians 1, 2 Thessalonians 3. The sole instrument, not the cause, not the ground, but the sole instrument by which we take hold of Jesus Christ when

He is offered to us, the sole vessel to receive Him. And that's important, and Besa understands certainly that we're not saved because of faith.

We're saved by the mercies of God and the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are saved through faith, this instrument, sole instrument.

And might I say, even though Besa doesn't say it, he would believe it, non -meritorious, right?

Our faith isn't meritorious, and our faith didn't live a perfect life, our faith didn't die on the cross, our faith wasn't buried, our faith wasn't raised from the dead, our faith's not ascended in heaven, our faith is not interceding it for us, our faith isn't going to come back.

But we take hold, Besa said, of Christ when He's offered to us, the sole vessel to receive Him, not the vessel of baptism, not the vessel of circumcision, not the vessel of anything else, mass, not the vessel of good works or civil responsibility and duties, no, no.

Sole vessel to receive Him is faith, faith alone. You say, well, I don't see a verse that says faith alone. Well, just read

Galatians 2, verse 16, and you will say to yourself, for certain fact,

Paul wants us to know it's by faith alone. It's through faith in Jesus Christ. So we have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law, what?

No one shall be justified. My name is Mike Abendroth. This has been the Besa briefing on No Compromise Radio ministry.

Announcer No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.