This article was originally published on desiringgod.org on July 15, 2025.
The longer I knew John MacArthur, the more I loved him. Admiration intensified into affection. C.S. Lewis said,
In some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest (The Four Loves, 78).
Common interest is an understatement. For us it was a common infinite. “The [instruction] of [God’s] mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Psalm 119:72). The Bible was not just interesting. It was better than the best. It was immeasurably precious. There is a kind of affection that happens when you feel — not just know — that the person you are talking to really means it when he says God’s words are “more to be desired . . . than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10).
Aging shaped the affection. He was seven years my senior. Half a century ago, that seemed like a chasm between us. I was dreaming of being a pastor. He was already a veteran. So it seemed like an enormous kindness to me when he agreed to have breakfast and let me pepper him with questions. Forty years later, that chasm vanished. Almost.
“The longer I knew John MacArthur, the more I loved him. Admiration intensified into affection.”
We valued each other on glorious common ground. Seventy-somethings don’t jockey for seniority. Battle-tested, without bitterness, bearing scars with durable joy, we enjoyed each other. He was kind to me — phone calls to express thankfulness, invitations to his conferences, public conversations where affection abounded.
But still I say, the seniority chasm almost vanished. Perhaps once a junior admirer, always a junior admirer. From my side, he was always grand. I was always looking up. This was on me, not him.
Heart-Piercing Power
I simply stood in awe of what he could do in the pulpit with a passage of Scripture. As with all powerful expositional preaching, no description can fully capture what makes it powerful.
Yes, there was crystalline clarity. You knew what he meant and what he did not mean.
Yes, there was explicit textual foundation for each point. You could see where it came from in the text. He made sure of it.
Yes, there was application to the pressing pitfalls and possibilities of our time. The text virtually exploded with relevance.
Yes, there was undistracting diction. No “um” and “uh” and “you know” and “sort of” and “kind of.” Just unaffected simplicity and precision.
Yes, he was just plain interesting. He believed it was a sin to make the Bible boring. How could the word of the Creator of the universe be boring? Whether he was explaining historical backgrounds or current controversies, he was engaging.
Yes, there was zeal. He felt the worth and the horror of the realities he preached. God and man. Christ and Satan. Truth and falsehood. Sin and holiness. Life and death. Heaven and hell. Time and eternity.
Yes, there was authenticity. The whole man was in the message. There was no persona masking the person.
Yes, there was love. Love for God. Love for the gospel. Love for the truth. Love for his flock. Love for the lost.
And yes, there was authority. And that was not a personality feature. It was the “Thus says the Lord!” that comes from unashamed submission to every paragraph of Scripture.
But when all these marks of powerful expositional preaching are put in print, the power remains unexplained. The anointing. The unction. The sacred flame. The heart-piercing presence of God. The kind of seriousness that makes the heart sing. The kind of joy that brings tears with the opening of heaven. What can we say? It was a gift.
Immeasurable Fruit
The sheer constancy of such exposition for over half a century was immeasurably fruitful. Only God knows the countless eternal effects that rippled out from the pebbles of truth he dropped year after year.
Those ripples include a family that admires him and loves his God.
They include his impact across all generations. From Dallas to Dubai, young people come up to me and say that they listen to John MacArthur.
They include a seminary and college and conferences where thousands have been inspired to believe that explaining what the Bible means honors God, saves people, awakens love, effects justice, and advances missions.
They include penetrated hearts and minds across racial and ethnic lines (contrary to what many expect of Bible-preaching pastors).
One could go on: radio, Internet, books, commentaries, global training centers, translations, church planting, and faithfulness to one enduring flock.
What would John MacArthur say to all this?
I think he would be happy with Martin Luther’s assessment of his own ministry — that he simply taught and wrote God’s word, and while he slept, God did it all.
The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come (Mark 4:26–29).