John MacArthur has gone to be with the Lord. With him, passes one of the people who has done the most to shape modern Evangelicalism (along with John Piper and Billy Graham). His study Bible and commentaries are go-tos for countless pastors (I’m not a pastor, but I almost always check his study Bible when working on a passage of Scripture–even when I disagree with its conclusions), his sermons and radio show make the rounds (or did back when people listened to the radio), and his quotes are easily memeable on social media.
All that to say, MacArthur’s presence will be missed greatly.
From my seat on the sidelines, there are four ways MacArthur has stood out to me over the past two and a half decades that I’ve been aware of his work. Those who know him better can speak more to his legacy, but I think these are four reasons his influence has been so great:
-Unquestioned character. To the best of my knowledge, there are no personal moral scandals surrounding MacArthur’s pastorate. He has never been accused of sexual impropriety, his church has never been shown to have covered up a major scandal, and MacArthur himself was known to speak his mind with utmost integrity and honesty.
-Faithfulness to a local church. I forget which T4G it was (2016, maybe? or 2018?), but they had a contest for who had served the longest in the same church. After working their way up, the winner at 49 years in the same pulpit was John MacArthur. The prize? A complete set of the MacArthur Commentary series…
I happen to think this is the most commendable thing about him, aside from his persistent faithfulness to the Gospel. (The sticking with one church, not winning his own books…)
-Theological Rigor. What I suspect he will be most remembered for is not his planting himself in one place, but rather his robust Dispensational Calvinism. And in many ways this is the most important part of his legacy, because the work that MacArthur laid in the 80s and 90s was a major influence in shaping the Calvinist revival of the early 2000s. MacArthur was relentless in his pursuit of theological truth, and taught others how to be as well.
-Unafraid of legitimate controversy. Along with that pursuit of truth, MacArthur wasn’t afraid to wade into the weeds and fight the battles of the day. If we must criticize him in a eulogy, it was that from time to time he blurred the lines between friend and foe, and fellow believers could end up swept away by his condemnations. Perhaps the easiest example of this was the Strange Fire conference (discussed here), where odd and heretical beliefs were condemned alongside faithful Christians who believe that the Holy Spirit operates in different ways than MacArthur would understand. Still, though he was overly rigorous at times, there’s no doubt that the majority of his efforts for the truth were rightly focused and grounded firmly on the Gospel.
Even with that mild caveat, MacArthur served as a faithful witness for the past half-century. Time and time again he called us back to the basics of the Gospel and encouraged us to cling to the solid foundation of God’s Word. He will be missed by us, even as he no longer misses anything.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO
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