Austin Hobbs and Irresistible Grace - Part 1

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. In real time, I think it is April 16th.

16th, after tax day.

Paid the taxes yesterday.

I sure hope President Trump is right that maybe we're gonna be having different income tax for next year, but that's a different subject. My name is Mike Ebendroth. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

Today in the studio, special guest, Austin Hobbs. Austin, welcome back to the show.

Thank you, Mike, glad to be here.

So just to let our viewers know again, we first contacted each other, or you contacted me, was that 10 years ago?

It was in 2020.

Oh, well, okay, six going on 10.

Yeah, getting closer.

And you were a student at Texas A &M?

That's right, senior year of college.

And what was your major?

My major was in philosophy.

And is it okay for Christians to be into philosophy? Isn't that pagan?

Well, all throughout history, Christians have studied the field of philosophy. They've been able to appreciate people like Plato, like Aristotle, but of course, not without correction, not without reading it through the lens of scripture.

So theologians like Augustine says, we approach these things with the eyes of faith. We want to understand God's world, because God created the world. God has two books. He has a book of scripture, which reveals to us Christ and what he has done for us.

But also he has the book of nature, which reveals so many things about life and reality that they can overlap with the Bible. But we still have to study these things, because God has said it in creation, especially I think Psalm 19, says it's like the glory of God is spoken from the heavens, yeah.

I love that. And Austin, you now are on staff here at Bethlehem Bible Church. How in the world did that happen?

Well, I think about a year ago, yeah, over a year ago and back in January is my senior year, I guess, well, last year of seminary. And I had reached out to Pat, your brother Pat Abramjoff over X, just DM'd him, asked if he knew any pastoral positions open.

And he said, just keep his eyes open. Then a couple weeks later, he got back to me saying that you're looking for an associate. So he said to send my resume to you. So I sent it to you. And then we talked on the phone a couple times.

I said I wanted to interview for the position. And I interviewed in April of last year. And then I came and visited in September of last year. Then you guys offered me the position in October.

Well, and you've done a great job since you've been here. So thank you for your ministry. There was a little pause because you had to go off and get married or something on June 6th, didn't you?

That's right, yeah, I got married June 6th of 2025.

That's a great day to get married, by the way.

Yeah, D-Day. It's your anniversary, right?

That is.

I just thought of Proverbs 6, verse six, go to the aunt, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise. So actually the Bible tells us to go outside of the Bible to learn certain things, right?

Right, right, for sure.

All right.

So today I want to talk about grace. That's a good topic to talk about grace. And is grace resistible? Can you say no to God's grace when he's calling you to be saved? You have been teaching the youth group here, Cornerstone.

What do we call it? High school group?

We call it Cornerstone. That's our high school youth group.

I know, but are they youth? I mean, they're teenagers. I guess they're still young.

I guess, yeah, they count that way.

And you've been going through the doctrines of grace. Is that true?

That's right, we have.

And so tell us a little bit about strategy. Why teach the young people about doctrine? I mean, don't they just need to know how to live?

Well, you know, basically the program that we're going to follow is going to follow just traditional catechesis. We're going to be going through the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer.

We call that kind of like the core of Christianity. But we also want to go even more, dive in more specifically, especially into our confession of faith and the entire broader Reformed tradition. So then we'll begin with the five solos of the Reformation, like what it means to be Protestant.

Then maybe we'll start to get more particular and get into what it means to be Reformed. So we're getting these doctrines of grace. So we want to promulgate things that are beneficial for us. Because things like the doctrine of election can bring great security for us.

Because the God who chose for the foundation of the world, who gave us to his son, who secured our salvation on the cross, and how the Holy Spirit effectually applies that to us, that will bring us safely home to glory.

That's amazing. That's wonderful. It breeds worship and adoration. There's so much security in that. And we want all of our young people to know that and embrace that.

Amen.

Tell us, Austin, what's a working man's definition of irresistible grace? And what do we mean when we say effectual call or irresistible grace, the I in the acronym TULIP?

Right, right. So the work of irresistible grace, it's really the act of God's Spirit to renew and enable and affect faith into our will. Your will has fallen into sin. It is corrupted. It's unable to choose.

It's actually opposed to things of God. But by the grace of the Holy Spirit, he renews, restores, and corrects our nature that we do choose, freely receive him by faith and to follow him.

All right, great. Sometimes we are very serious on the show, and other times I need extra insight.

I declare that God has made you special. You are not average. You have been custom made. You are one of a kind. Of all the things God created, what he is the most proud of is you.

You are his masterpiece.

You are the masterpiece.

I just hit the power button and said goodbye.

So we say goodbye to Joel Osteen.

So that little blue box has Joel on it.

It's a Joel box, and it says daily inspiration, sermon, daily affirmation, and favorites. So you can just click it and play and click it.

Wow.

So when people hear the gospel, they're unregenerate. They hear the gospel, and they say no, and they dig their heels in. They won't repent. I was born Catholic. I'm gonna die Catholic. I don't wanna believe this evangelical stuff.

They seem to be resisting that grace. Are they resisting? So why is it irresistible grace when it seems like some people resist?

Right, so grace is irresistible because the spirit is going to affect faith into the will. So there, in the cases of those who do not believe, it is the case that God has not had mercy on these people to grant them repentance.

And this is exactly what 2 Timothy says that Paul is commanding Timothy how to work with opponents. And he's saying, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently during evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. They may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. So how is Timothy supposed to preach the gospel to these heretics, these opponents, with gentleness, with truth?

Because he's doing so that this is the means by which God grants repentance. And God has to grant repentance because they're captured by the snare of the devil. Even Paul in 2 Corinthians says that the God of this world has blinded the hearts, unveiled their hearts, so they do not see the light of the gospel or the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So God may perhaps grant them. It doesn't mean he will grant them repentance, but for them to have repentance and faith, God must grant it. So when someone does not come to faith in Christ, it's not because they've resisted God's work in their hearts.

It's just that God has not chosen to grant them repentance.

Good, so we're talking to Austin Hobbs today about irresistible grace. People have the gospel preached to them. They say no. But what you're telling me is when the God of the universe, who makes things out of nothing, who's all-powerful, when he causes someone to be born again, he makes them alive, he regenerates them.

When he decides to do that, they can't stop him. That make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense, yeah, right.

So, I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious. How could puny man, how could finite, frail man somehow stop God's work? Why do you think Arminians, our friends, the Arminians, why do you think they kind of bristle about irresistible grace?

Why do you think they don't like it or they try to teach the opposite?

Well, we really have to situate this in our own cultural or historical and philosophical context behind our view of autonomy and the view of free will. This really stems from modernity, which plays a major emphasis on one person's autonomy.

It's self-rule, self-law, so that there's no, nothing external can thwart your will. And in fact, that should actually be a hindrance. The church would be a hindrance, anything outside of us. But we ourselves are supposed to stand above nature and to command it and to be what we want to be.

So it's the idea of libertarian free will is a purely modern notion. Even now we're getting to more of a postmodern age where we have people like John Paul Sartre, who says, existence precedes essence.

Basically, you choose to be who you are. So you stand above your nature to choose what you have to be. And so that way we think, I think the Arminians think that they have a choice between being dead in sin and alive in Christ.

So they believe they can just transcend those two states of deadness and sin and alive in Christ and choose which one to be. However, that's just not how scripture talks about the will. Because at the very beginning, God made us in his image.

And to be made in the image of God is to be a son of God. Think about Luke three, chapter three, which says, Seth was the son of Adam and Adam was the son of God. Adam fathered a son after his own image, after his own likeness as Seth.

So to be the image of God is to be a son of God. So we were already made to be in a relationship with God. In Ecclesiastes, he says that God made man upright. Those are not morally neutral categories.

Our will was fundamentally oriented toward the good. Of course, we could fall from that state and man did fall from that estate. But man's nature from the beginning was good. And good is not a morally neutral thing.

Adam was not standing above goodness and evil, saying, well, what do I want to be? But he was oriented to the good until he fell prey to Satan's temptations. Now, because of sin, we've been fallen, our will is corrupted, our nature is corrupted.

So we're unable to free ourselves from Satan's grasp. But the good news of the irresistible grace is that the Spirit has come to restore our nature so that we're no longer in the grasp of Satan. Basically, the corruption of sin does not blind our hearts, but he affects faith in our hearts.

He gives light to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Awesome. 1689, Lonnebap's Confession, Chapter 10, Affectual Calling, Paragraph 1, Those whom God hath predestined unto life, he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time affectually to call by his word and spirit out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature to the grace and salvation by Jesus Christ, semicolon, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone and giving to them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills, and by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good and affectually drawing them to Jesus Christ, yet so as they come most freely being made willing by his grace.

Sounds like that's what we're talking about today.

Exactly, that's right. That's exactly what the prophets foresee.

Isn't it interesting, Austin, the language here, enlightening, savingly to understand, taking away, giving to them, renewing their wills, determining them to that which is good and affectually drawing.

Those are all verbs of God acting and we're receiving those. We're passive, God is active. Is that true?

That's right, that's right, yeah. And so, and the thing is, God does not coerce us to do anything, but we freely choose Christ because why? He has renewed our nature and he has affectually brought faith into our hearts.

How is this a comforting doctrine if you have loved ones that aren't saved? Children, spouse, parents, uncles, aunts, nieces, and you think, oh, I so desire them to be saved and to be born again. How does this comfort you?

Or how would this comfort them, rather?

Well, I think this would comfort those who struggle with that in the sense that it's not your fault they're not coming to faith in Christ. It's not your fault, necessarily, that you're not making the best argument possible, you're not answering their objections perfectly.

So it's not because you're not a great evangelist, per se. It's just that it's not within God's will at this point to bring them to faith. And we don't know that, if, when, or if he'll bring them to faith.

But what does give us comfort is that if they do come to faith, it's all because of the power of the Holy Spirit to change their hearts, to affect faith in them, and that they do believe. That should give us confidence as we evangelize in that.

God might, right here, right now, bring them to saving faith.

I think that's so true, because what if we were left to ourselves, and it was our own rationale, our own logic, our own wisdom? What do you do if you meet someone who knows the Bible better than you do, who knows philosophy better than you do, who has a higher IQ, who's been to, you know, they've got their PhD from St. Andrews, or they're a microbiologist, and they just can wrap you up in arguments that you can't get out of?

But if you think, you know what? God saves through the preaching of the gospel, and I'll just preach the gospel and call them to faith, and when God decides to, when God saves them, if he so decides to, there's nothing they can do.

That's right, that's right.

They're going to go from deadness to life. Here's what paragraph two says in effectual calling, 1689. This effectual call is of God's free and special grace alone, not from anything at all foreseen in man, nor from any power or agency in the creature, being holy, W-H-O-L-L-Y, passive therein, being dead in sins and trespasses, until being quickened and renewed by the Holy Spirit, semicolon.

Here is thereby enabled, excuse me, he is thereby enabled to answer this call and to embrace the grace offered and conveyed in it, and that by no less power than that which raised up Christ from the dead.

Resurrection power, that's good.

Yeah, the same spirit who breathed life into the first Adam, who raised Christ the dead, now breathes that new creation life into us. It's a glorious thing.

So you were talking to me the other day and preparing your message for the young people, and you said you pulled out the Roger Olson book from my library against Calvinism. And just so you know, dear listeners, I told Austin, if he wants to read any of my books in here, he can pull them out, but he has to return them.

And so he did that. There's a set, or two different books, one is against Calvinism, the other's against Arminianism, and Olson writes the first and Michael Horton writes the second. What were your thoughts as you were reading Roger Olson's book called Against Calvinism?

What did you tell me the other day I thought was insightful?

You know, as Calvinists, as also just simple Christians, we want to represent people well. We want to represent their views and steel man their arguments. That is the opposite of straw man. We want to present the best argument they have.

So that's why I wanted to read to see like what their side was saying and just so I can accurately represent them. And Roger Olson, he makes pains to make the point that he's not a heretic, Arminianism is not semi-Pelagian or Pelagian or other things.

But strangely, he quotes open theists like Clark Pinnock, like Gregory Boyd, universalists like David Bentley Hart. So it made it very difficult to see he's trying to avoid heresy, but quoting the heretics himself and saying we should read their books.

That was a little bit of a struggle for me. So it didn't seem like the best view was being put forward, unfortunately.

Well, when you were talking about.

Straw man versus steel man arguments, it made me think of Trent, Council of Trent, Roman Catholics, 1545, I believe. And at least to Trent's credit, while I disagree with the Council of Trent, at least they understood what the reformers were teaching.

And if you want to know what the reform faith is, read Trent and say the opponent of Trent, they understood very well. And I appreciate that about the Trent, very clear who's anathema and who's not. In his book, Against Calvinism, he has a chapter called Yes to Grace, No to Irresistible Grace slash Monergism.

Here's what he said. In what situation in human experience is merely accepting a gift the decisive factor in having it? It is a factor, yes, but hardly a decisive one. Merely accepting a gift does not give one the right to boast.

Oh, but the Calvinist will say the student in the above illustration could boast if the professor offered a similar gift of money to other starving students and they rejected it. He could boast that in some way he's better than they are.

I doubt it. He might try, but who would believe him? People would say to him, stop trying to take some credit for being rescued. That others didn't accept the money and were evicted and are begging for food on the street says nothing about you at all.

Give all the credit where it belongs, to the kindly professor. Who can argue with that?

I mean, what is he trying to do?

Yeah, there seems to be illustrations used by people like Roger Olson, like Armenians, to a way to discredit Calvinism, but they tend to not fully capture the concept and situation of what's going on here.

Because in this sense, how is the student, he's trying to say, well, the student's not better than the rest of them, but why did he choose to take the money and others did not? Like, what was the reasoning?

I mean, he had to be wiser or more virtuous or less prideful. And so now, you think about those who come to faith in Christ, are they just wiser? Are they less prideful? So in some way, they are kind of better in a way.

It's interesting because when we think about salvation properly and biblically through the lens of the New Testament and all of the Bible, the decisive factor, the deciding factor of whether we're saved or not doesn't lie within us, right?

And doesn't every one of these letters in TULIP go back to, if you've got a problem with election, it's a problem you don't understand depravity properly. If you've got a problem with limited atonement, particular redemption, you've got to go back to the U and you've got to go back to the T.

These are kind of locked together like dominoes, as it were, aren't they? Does he not, he doesn't grasp how wholly depraved people are. You think that's part of the problem?

That's right, that's right. We have to see that we were actually fallen in sin. We're actually under the grasp of the devil. Like if you're not in Christ, you're a slave to Satan. And you don't stand above your slavery to Satan and choose, do I wanna be a slave to Satan or a slave to God?

Like, no, if you're not in Christ, you're the offspring of the serpent. Your nature is corrupted that you are opposed to the things of God. You can't transcend that nature. No, you are actually dead in your trespass and sins.

And I think that with the issue with people like Olson, they want to put a middle state and basically an intermediate state between being dead in your sins and alive in Christ. That's the idea of prevenient grace.

And they say that this is necessary to prepare the will, to assist the will. It basically gets you back to Adam's position, essentially. Just choose, do I still wanna be dead in my sins or do I wanna be alive in Christ?

And the problem, Mike, in the Bible is that the Bible does not present those two options to you. Like, you're either dead in sin or alive in Christ. We think about the illustration, the vision that God gives to Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones.

And Ezekiel, this prophecy, he's overlooking a valley of skeletons scattered across the valley. And God asks him, son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel says, oh Lord God, you knows. And he said to me, prophecy over these bones and say to them, oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and cause flesh to come upon you and cover your skin with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.

And so these skeletons, they're not like standing above their skeletons, like do I wanna be keeping a skeleton or do I wanna be alive? No, God breathes life into them and they live. They don't have a choice to stay dead.

But God says, I will cause them to live. That's supposed to be an illustration of God changing their hearts. And this is what it says about God's future prophecy about restoring his people of Israel. It says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put within you.

I'll remove the heart of stone from you, from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. The problem with Israel, they have an uncircumcised heart.

They have a heart of stone that is opposed to things of God that are disobedient to things of God. So God has to do heart surgery. He has to give them a new heart. He has to put his spirit in them. The Bible says that, he said, well, you may walk in my statue.

You could choose otherwise. It says, I will cause you to walk in my statutes and obey my rules. God's going to do this. There's no in-between state where he could choose, I want to be dead in my sin or alive in Christ.

You're either dead or alive. Lazarus, he had no choice but to come out of the tomb. He wasn't standing above his dead nature thinking, I think I'll just stay dead or maybe I'll stay alive. I'll just choose to be alive then.

Jesus asked me, maybe I'll just do it.

Well, I immediately think of 1 Peter 1, verse three, he has caused us to be born again, right? God is the actor. Austin, it seems to me that even in a practical way, when you believe in irresistible grace slash effectual call of God, it changes the way you pray because you pray for unbelievers with confidence, right?

If it was left to them and how they respond to this grace, so-called prevenient grace before regeneration, then I think I pray differently. But don't you think even Arminians pray for unbelievers like they believe in the effectual call?

I think so, I think so.

How would a consistent Arminian who denies irresistible grace, how would he have to frame and couch his prayers for the salvation of his loved one?

Probably pray that God grants, gives them the option to have their wisdom to know exactly what to say in the moment and that perhaps God will grant them some assisting grace that they see.

Ah, see?

Just put them in the right position, perhaps.

Right, right, and that they could then freely, without coercion, decide that the benefits of salvation and Jesus's work are, goes on and on and on. So today we're talking about irresistible grace. You can always write me, mike, at nocompromisedradio .com.

I've been getting quite a few requests for the Law and Gospel Primer booklet from folks that wanna order 10 or more. So if you wanna order 10 or more, that's 40 off, just email me, I have to do it through Amazon.

So if you wanna order those, that'll be great. Working on another one now called Sanctification a Primer, except I'm old these days, Austin, and late at night, when I used to be able to write at 10 o 'clock, midnight, 2 a .m., I have to go to bed.

So I don't write as much as I used to. It's a cruel thing because you shouldn't be writing a lot of books when you're young or having children and newlywed, but then you're too old when the kids are out of the house to stay up late at night and write.

I've got this book in front of me, Against Calvinism, Roger Olson. Let's look at this a little bit more. What do you think of this, Austin? He says, yet all Calvinists claim that God is good and loving.

What goodness and love is this? In fact, to put it bluntly, Calvinism necessarily implies, whether any Calvinist would say so or not, that God requires a better quality of love from us than he himself exercises.

In Luke 6 .35 and parallel passages, Jesus commands us to love our enemies. There's no hint of any exception. But according to Calvinism, God doesn't do that. Of course, some Calvinists insist that God does love even the reprobate enemies, but there's no analogy to that kind of love in human experience.

It would be a love in which a person could rescue some from terrible deaths, but chooses not to in order to show how great he is. Is there any analogy to this goodness of love in human experience? If not, then I suggest with Paul Helm, it is meaningless.

Thoughts, comments?

Well, Mike, the problem is with people like Roger Olson who aren't working in the classical theistic tradition is that God is not like us. Like, God is not a bigger version of us. He's not a creature.

So in some way, our language, our analogies, they just fall short because God is not a creature. We don't have creaturely categories to think about God, especially when basically we think about God's special, his secret, his elective love for his people.

That's only, that's pertaining to who he is as God. So we can't say, oh, why are you not like us, God? But really, we have to understand, we have to ultimately just submit to what scripture says. Scripture tells us everything's sufficient we need to know about God.

And the Bible clearly says, you know, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. Like, God chose Jacob, but not Esau. And so in the same way, God says, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion.

And so also we'll say later in the book, like, you know, I have, he says, I'll basically, I have no problem with irresistible grace if God just gave it to everybody. So it's not fair that God gives irresistible grace to some, but not others.

So it imposes upon, it impinges upon the goodness of God. But Mike, it's not unjust of God to allow some to fall into eternal death, but to give grace and to give this free gift of eternal life to some who don't deserve it and who did everything against it.

God's gonna have mercy on whom he has mercy and compassion upon who he has compassion. He doesn't owe salvation to anybody. So he's not being unjust, forgiving to some, but to others, because there's nothing within us that caused God to do that, but only the freeness of his grace.

So if you're saying that God has to give grace to everybody, you're ruining the gratuity, the freeness of God's grace to give it to whom he wills.

And you're leading yourself right down to universalism,.

Right?

This essentially has the same arguments as those who believe in universalism. I loved it when the Lord had talked to Moses in the cleft of the rock in Exodus 33, 34. Moses wanted to see God and who he is, and God passed by.

And at the essence of God, it seemed like in that passage, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. This is who I am. You wanna know who I am at the core? I'm a sovereign God, among other things, not denying simplicity.

Austin, thanks for being on the show today. I appreciate you and your ministry. Maybe we'll stick around for part two.

Okay, happy to. Thank you, Mike.