Reflections on the life and work of John MacArthur:
A great man of God has just gone to be with the Lord. The famous 86-year-old pastor of Grace Community Church in California has just passed away. Along with other issues, he had been struggling with pneumonia for several days and never recovered from it. He will be missed by so many.
Born in 1939, he did undergraduate studies at Bob Jones College and Los Angeles Pacific College. In 1963, he received his MDiv from Talbot Theological Seminary. He began a pastoral ministry in 1964, and began work at Grace Community Church in 1969.
His radio and television ministry involved the program Grace to You. He helped to lead McMaster’s University and Seminary, and he was a keen proponent of expository preaching. His theology was mostly Reformed although he was a dispensationalist.
He had a large global following and his ministry spanned more than 60 years. He penned well over 100 books, and his Macarthur Study Bible was very popular indeed. The 14 volumes of his that I own give you a feel for the sorts of things he wrote and spoke about:
Charismatic Chaos The Divorce Dilemma Faith Works The Gospel According to God The Gospel According to Jesus The Jesus You Can’t Ignore The Power of Suffering Think Biblically Truth Endures The Truth War Vanishing Conscience Why Government Can’t Save You MacArthur, ed., The Inerrant Word MacArthur and Nathan Busenitz, eds., Right Thinking from a Culture in Chaos
In terms of evaluation and assessment, allow me my own biases here, by looking at two areas where I tended to differ with him, and two areas where I very much agreed with him. And don’t worry, I will spend more time on the positives than on the negatives.
In 2013 his church hosted a “Strange Fire” conference that coincided with a new book with that title. Both argued for cessationism and against the Charismatic Movement. As I have written before, I began exactly in that same camp as an early Christian, but over the years I shifted away from it.
I discuss these matters in some detail in a two-part article that I wrote that same year :
And his earlier 2000 book, Why Government Can’t Save You, I really had to do a short review of. It seemed quite unnecessary for him to insist that we must either preach the gospel, or get involved in political activity. I argued that we should of course do both. As I wrote in my piece:
Thus the essence of his argument is to make a dichotomy – in my view, a false dichotomy – between spiritual work like evangelism and earthly activity like cultural renewal. He just sees these as polar opposites and forces Christians to make a choice. What is it, evangelism or social reform? What is it, doing things God’s way, or man’s way?
But many, including myself, see this as a false dilemma. We believe that Christians are to do both. It is not a question of either-or but both-and. That has always been the case with the Christian church throughout history. Wherever Christian missionaries went, they both preached the gospel and did social good. Hospitals, education, prison reform, improvement of the welfare of women and children, etc. have been part and parcel of the Christian mission. Thus the Christian church has been at its best when it has been up to its ears in social reform. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2001/11/28/a-review-of-why-government-can%E2%80%99t-save-you-by-john-macarthur/
But what I like about MacArthur has always outweighed what I might disagree with him on. One area I so much liked about him was how he strongly challenged the dodgy theological position of cheap grace and easy believism. These folks so strongly emphasised the grace of God in our salvation, that they actually claimed that anything – even being obedient to Christ – was just a work, and we should not even go down that path.
Gospel According to Jesusby John F. MacArthur (Author)
I especially liked these two volumes that he penned to combat this foolish position: The Gospel According to Jesus (1988) and Faith Works: The Gospel According to the Apostles (1993). In them he carefully and biblically defended Lordship salvation over against the hyper-grace folks. See my two-part article on this where I discuss his books:
To argue that one can be a believer and yet not make Christ Lord is in fact an utter contradiction in terms. To become a Christian is to renounce the lordship over one’s own life and accept the Lordship of Christ. It is a transfer of allegiances – rejecting one boss in favour of a new boss. Without that one cannot be a Christian.
Scripture makes all this quite clear. Everywhere we are told that to be a child of God means to live a transformed life – a life of obedience and holiness. No change means no salvation. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
I continued:
And sure, a life of obedience is not how we procure our salvation. Justification is the once-off free gift of God. But sanctification is the ongoing work of God, changing us and conforming us to the image of his son. Obedience then becomes the indication and fruit of a transformed life. If there is no obedience and changed life, one can rightly ask if there really has been any salvation in the first place.
Thus a changed life is evidence of our salvation, not a means to our salvation. And that must be our desire, no matter how dimly perceived, from the very beginning. To think we can come to Christ for forgiveness of sins, as a kind of fire insurance, without also seeking to let him transform our lives and become our only Lord, is to deceive ourselves.
And in the second part I quoted various authors, and then concluded this way, featuring what MacArthur had said:
“Christ is Lord, and those who refuse him as Lord cannot use him as Savior. Everyone who receives him must surrender to his authority, for to say we receive Christ when in fact we reject his right to reign over us is utter absurdity.” John MacArthur
“When we come to Jesus for salvation, we come to the One who is Lord over all. Any message that omits this truth cannot be called the gospel. It is a defective message that presents a savior who is not Lord, a redeemer who does not demonstrate authority over sin, a weakened, sickly messiah who cannot command those he rescues. The gospel according to Jesus is nothing like that. It represents Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and demands that those who would receive him take him for who he is.” John MacArthur
The idea that we can come to Christ and take him only as Saviour but not as Lord is simply a perversion of the biblical witness. Yes, salvation is all of grace, and we cannot earn it by our own works or merit. But to become a follower of Christ is to become his disciple. And a disciple is one who has abandoned his old allegiances and lords (sin, self, etc) and has taken on the one new, true Lord: Jesus Christ.
Without bowing to the Lordship of Christ, and turning from our own sinful and selfish life, there can be no salvation.
Another area I certainly appreciated about MacArthur was when he really put his money where his mouth was. He did not just teach basic biblical truths, but he lived them. I refer to the great Covid Wars of 2020-2021. As we know, churches were shut down all around the West. Never mind that brothels and pubs and other places were mostly left open.
It was bad enough that Big Brother governments considered the worship of the living God to be non-essential activities, but it was even worse that most pastors and church leaders readily went right along with all this. They were happy to see church doors closed, all in the name of obeying a faulty understanding of what passages like Romans 13:1-7 really teach.
But one of the few brave exceptions to this was MacArthur. He was willing to stand against the tyrants and keep his church doors open. I wrote various pieces about this at the time. As I said in one of them:
When the state orders Christians to do things that they cannot do in good conscience, and when the state forbids Christians from doing what they ought to do, then there can be a place for Christians to say yes to God and no to the state. So the question is, when Scripture commands us not to ‘forsake the assembling of ourselves together’ (Hebrews 10:25), and the state says the churches must remain closed, is this one of those situations where Christians must disobey?
You will get Christians on various sides of this issue. In California right now we have some famous Christian pastors taking different views on this. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, says he will defy Governor Newsom’s recent orders on this.
Although he could face fines and even arrest for keeping his church open, he said yesterday in a Fox News interview that the draconian lockdown is “just not warranted.” He said Jesus is Lord, and the government “is usurping a role that they don’t have over the church” in this regard. He said “we are not spreading anything but the gospel.”
Franklin Graham concurred and said this: “I agree with Pastor MacArthur and appreciate his call for ‘the church to be the church in this world.’ If I were in Southern California this weekend, I would love to attend their service tomorrow—and if you live anywhere in southern California, I urge you to get up tomorrow morning and go!”
That brave move alone is enough to thank God for this man and his ministry. But he did far more good than just that. He was a champion who served his Lord faithfully, and he is now hearing the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of your Lord’ (Matthew 25:23).
Rest in peace Pastor. You have ‘fought the good fight, you have finished the race, you have kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7). Enjoy your eternal rest.
Agreed; Thank you John MacArthur… Thank you God for John MacArthur.
A prophet in our day.
Once I could see past the things I disagreed with, or had serious questions about, he became a blessing and encouragement to me.
His Reformed view of theology was very powerful and a serious antidote to the slimy modern day heresy of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.
I easily understand his problem with Charismatic practice, but he seemed to link that to the Charismatic theology rather than the corruption of that theology.
Thanks Bruce.
John Macarthur’s teaching on family was so important to my husband and I as young parents over 45 years ago. We were the only Christians in both our families and did not really have an understanding of biblical marriage and parenting. His resources helped to equip us, train us and bless our little family. Now present with his Saviour and Lord, may his family and church feel the comfort of our Father God in their time of grief. He will be surely missed by many.
Agreed; Thank you John MacArthur… Thank you God for John MacArthur.
A prophet in our day.
Once I could see past the things I disagreed with, or had serious questions about, he became a blessing and encouragement to me.
His Reformed view of theology was very powerful and a serious antidote to the slimy modern day heresy of “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.
I easily understand his problem with Charismatic practice, but he seemed to link that to the Charismatic theology rather than the corruption of that theology.
Thanks Bruce.
John Macarthur’s teaching on family was so important to my husband and I as young parents over 45 years ago. We were the only Christians in both our families and did not really have an understanding of biblical marriage and parenting. His resources helped to equip us, train us and bless our little family. Now present with his Saviour and Lord, may his family and church feel the comfort of our Father God in their time of grief. He will be surely missed by many.
Thank you Ann.