Remembering John MacArthur

This is something of a living eulogy because as of this writing, John MacArthur is still with us. But I know he has been in failing health so I thought it would be appropriate to remember what he has meant to me on my faith journey.

To fully appreciate John MacArthur's impact on me, I have to take you back to a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 1970's / early 1980's. My family attended a mainline Presbyterian church that prided itself on not being a crazy fundamentalist Baptist church while also steering a wide berth around Roman Catholic / Orthodox ritualism. We were higher brow than Methodists, but not as snooty as Episcopalians. There was a pretty traditional protestant liturgy and we sang from hymnals accompanied by an organ. Potluck dinners were common fare and I learned about basic Bible stories on flannel boards. Graham crackers and kool-aid were in abundance.

Par for the course in mainline protestant churches, the preaching was... pretty milquetoast. It was usually heavy on personal or historical stories around an ad hoc theme of the day. My all-time favorite sermon was, "Is it okay to pray for the Cleveland Browns?" I'm being totally serious. The connections to the Bible were mild at best. And by mild, I mean not at all. There were Scripture readings out of the Old and New Testaments, and occasionally there was an attempt to connect to some moral principle, but the Bible was part of the furniture of the sanctuary and little more. The church did eventually hire a young evangelical youth pastor who finally cracked the Bible open, but the overwhelming culture was one of a quasi-religious Rotary club, not a deep faith community.

In my early teens, my family migrated to an evangelical church led by Alistair Begg. Alistair is a very gifted preacher with a Scottish brogue and special charm that is very compelling and endearing. But more than that, he taught directly out of the Bible. It was eye opening and life changing. For the first time in my life, the Bible was not a mysterious relic, but the living word of God.

When my family moved to Southern California during my Freshman year of college, Alistair recommended that I transfer from Indiana University to "John MacArthur's" school - The Master's College. I wasn't familiar with John MacArthur, but Alistair's recommendation carried weight, so I looked for a book of his to read. Since I was encountering pentecostalism / charismatic Christianity for the first time, I ordered, "Charismatic Chaos." That was one of the first polemic works of theology I had ever read. Up to that point, I had been introduced to Francis Schaeffer's books on apologetics and some other books on philosophy of history, but never a book that was written to confront a theological error. It brought clarity to me at a moment when my friends were babbling in incomprehensible tongues and I started to see why Alistair recommended I go to "John MacArthur's" school. He was a serious teacher for serious people and I seriously wanted to be taught.

As I was considering transferring to The Master's College, I found myself struggling with my Christian identity due the various challenges of being a young man. So I read MacArthur's best-selling book, "The Gospel According to Jesus." Whoa. MacArthur was once again confronting a theological error that was prevailing at that time - namely, that people could accept Jesus only as Savior, but not as Lord. He made the compelling Biblical case that Jesus could not be divided this way. He is Savior and Lord, and true saving faith embraces both realities.

But this posed a deep problem for me. Did I REALLY have saving faith? Had I made Jesus Lord in my life? Or Lord enough? Or was I just outside the line of whatever Lordship required? Was my fate and weak faith hanging in the balance? I was emotionally distraught.

Now up to this point, I had never heard John MacArthur preach. (This was early 1992 before the dawn of the interwebs and the youtubes!) So when I traveled to Southern California to visit The Master's College on spring break, I remember waking up in a hotel room in Burbank the day of the campus tour... and who was on the radio? John MacArthur. And what was he preaching on? He was preaching on the theological topic of assurance - how to know that you are a Christian. I was spellbound. I was tuned in. This guy was speaking into the issues that mattered the most to me and his thinking was linear and clear. Authoritative. Biblical. Convincing. Not milquetoast. Nothing about the Cleveland Browns... Not a graham cracker in sight. In an exercise of faith, I transferred to The Master's College my sophomore year with a thirst for Biblical teaching, but a pretty weak kool-aid infused / flannel board understanding of things. I had been exposed to some good Gospel foundations through Alistair, but I didn't know the Bible well at all. During my two and a half years at TMC and occasionally attending Grace Community Church, here are some of the major ways MacArthur shaped my faith:

1. Biblical authority: Most Christian people I know from various traditions have at least a vague respect for the Bible, even if they don't know its contents very well. But respect is not reverence. It certainly is not love. John MacArthur loves the Bible and it is the centerpiece of his thinking and teaching. He's not a philosopher or a historian. He's not really even a theologian, per se. He's a guy who is all-in on God's word with no fluff and no apologies. Straight Bible, no chaser. Very few people on this planet exude his enthusiasm and devotion for God's word like he does.

2. Expository preaching: One of the hallmarks of his ministry is expository preaching - which means he "takes out of" or "exposits" the Bible - word by word and verse by verse. He doesn't conjure up a pastoral theme and put a sanctified Ted-talk together. He starts at the beginning of a NT book and painstakingly works through it in a linear fashion. You don't hear a lot of personal or historical stories in his preaching. You just hear him explaining the text - the context - the grammar - the outline of ideas. It is nuts and bolts stuff and it is a great way to start to appreciate all the Bible has to offer.

3. Method of interpretation: John is a major proponent of the "grammatical-historical" interpretation of Scripture. That simply means that he believes we have to understand its authorship, audience, historical context, and literary genre/grammar to properly interpret it. This is related to expository preaching, but not identical. You could preach the Bible in a verse-by-verse fashion, but lean more heavily on a "less literal" approach. Some traditions see historical stories as spiritual allegories with spiritual importance, but little more. The resurrection might be a spiritual idea or principle, not a historical reality. John has no time for that, believe me. He wants to know what the person who wrote it meant and what it meant to those who first received it. This is always the best place to start.

4. Reformed adjacent: John loves the puritans and he shared the platform with Reformed teacher, RC Sproul, for many years. He could be a bit evasive about labels, but if you dig into his teaching, he is a full five-point Calvinist in the way he understands salvation. And while he is not Calvinist in his understanding of the church, the sacraments, or Christ and culture, his teaching is rooted in the borrowed capital of the Reformation. This peculiar theological adjacency along with other influences from my Presbyterian past led me fully back to the Presbyterian-Reformed faith - but that is another story. The point here is that while John is a hardcore Baptist guy, he was Reformed "enough" to set my path in that direction.

5. Eschatology matters: One of the features of John's teaching is that he is a rabid premillennial dispensationalist. For the uninitiated, let me assure you that this is not a bad skin rash. This is a belief that prior to the future 2nd coming of Christ, there will be a rapture of the elect, Israel will be restored to faith, Jesus will reign from Jerusalem for 1000 years, and there will be a massive rebellion prior to the final judgment and eternal state. Now, I happen to totally disagree with him on this series of points about the circumstances of Christ's 2nd and future return, BUT. He is right to make eschatology (doctrine about the future/end times) an important feature of his teaching. The Bible is full of eschatology and pretending that it isn't is precarious and wrong-headed. I came out on the other end of things, but was alerted to it mainly due to his emphasis on these matters.

I like to think that "in heaven" - or more properly, in the new heavens and new earth, that there will be a lot of parks for walks and BBQs and stuff like that. And in those parks will be many benches. And on those benches, I will get to talk to a lot of people about what went on around these parts the first go around. John MacArthur is one of those people I want to meet on a park bench. I have a list of topics to cover and if time and space avails, I may do a blog on that...

Until then - for all the ways I may disagree with him on particular issues, I do appreciate him as a stalwart man of God. I give thanks for his life. See you on the park bench, sir.