My Friendship with John MacArthur

The law of the Lord is perfect,
     reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
     making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
     rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
     enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
     enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
     and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
     even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
     and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
     in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7–11)

It is amazing the way two hearts can be knit together by a common taste for this honey and a common greediness for this treasure. John MacArthur loved the taste of the honey from heaven. He was greedy for the treasures of the word of God.

Heaven’s Honey

He told a group of us in 2007, “I have never ceased to be thrilled with the preparation to preach. I love to discover the truth of God.” He loved the quest. He embodied Psalm 111:2: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” But more than the quest, he loved the treasure. It wasn’t just the seeking, but the finding. It could never be said of John MacArthur that he was “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

He loved the search. He loved the discovery. He loved the treasure. And perhaps most of all, he loved heralding the treasure he found. A shared joy is a doubled joy. Holding out the treasure to others with clarity and conviction caused his own heart to see its glory more clearly and to savor its value more intensely. So, he loved to preach.

And he was good at it. He was so clear, so textual, so precise and zealous and authentic and authoritative and practical and relevant and anointed. God made John MacArthur an extraordinary preacher.

At every level, I was drawn in. The quest, the discovery, the treasure, the heralding, the anointing — fifty years ago, this is what I wanted. John MacArthur was seven years older than I am. Fifty years ago, that seemed like a chasm. But admiration from the younger to the older grew into friendship.

Common Taste

The spark flashed in 1988, the year before he published The Gospel According to Jesus. John was dismayed that the evangelical tribe that had nurtured him and given him a deep love for the Bible could also give rise to a theology of conversion that said things like this: “You can receive Jesus as Savior and later make Jesus your Lord.” To this John wrote, “[Jesus] 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” (210).

“When two hearts value the same glory with a similar intensity, they cannot but be united.”

I could scarcely put that book down. I found it totally compelling and relevant. So, in February of 1988, I celebrated the book in an article in the Baptist General Conference Standard. John told me later that the fact that James Boice and J.I. Packer would write forewords for the book, and that I would celebrate it so publicly, awakened him to the fact that his tribal connections had just enlarged. In a sense, to John’s amazement, he found a home in the stirrings of the Reformed resurgence.

But for me personally, John’s gratefulness for my support in the Lordship Controversy was more significant than a common tribal identity. John befriended me. And he never stopped befriending me. I doubt that he liked everything I wrote, but when he really liked something, he called me. He called me when he read A Peculiar Glory, my defense of the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. He called me when he read Providence.

And this is where it became clear: We have a deep, common taste for the honey of heaven. We share a greediness for the treasure that is more precious than gold. We love — we manifestly love — the Bible, the word of God. God opened our eyes to see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). We have seen this supernatural light in creation. We have seen it in Christ himself. We have seen it in the gospel. And we have seen it in the whole Bible. We have both been captured by the truth and beauty and worth of the peculiar glory of the word of God. We thrill to study it, to find its unsearchable riches, and to preach the beauty of what we see.

How could we not be friends? How could our hearts not be knit together? That’s what the heart is: It is a valuing organ. When two hearts value the same glory with a similar intensity, they cannot but be united.

Precious Friendship

Three things have helped me realize why this friendship felt so precious to me even though it was nurtured with only occasional personal contacts.

First, we both owe an incalculable debt to our fathers — and that debt was also owing to their fundamentalist, dispensational heritage, which neither John nor I would ever despise. Jack MacArthur lived from 1914 to 2005. Bill Piper lived from 1919 to 2007. Both were Baptists. Both received honorary doctorates from Bob Jones University. Both were traveling evangelists — my father all his life and Jack until he became a pastor. Both were intensely doctrinal and biblical in their preaching. Who can calculate the ripple effect of such lives in the lives of their sons? I personally have no doubt that something clicked between John and me in significant part because of this precious heritage.

The second thing that gave a special luster to our friendship for me is the fact that John MacArthur and I were wired in our personalities quite differently. Many of you will remember the most vivid illustration of this. During a panel discussion between us, someone asked how we deal with discouragement. I gave the illustration of a season in my life where I was sitting and crying on the steps of a guest house. My wife asked me what was wrong, and I said, “I have no idea why I am so sad.” MacArthur looked at me like I was from another planet. And then he said, “I don’t have time to be discouraged. I just go on to the next thing that has to be done.” It was a wonderful learning moment for all the young pastors in the audience: Take heart. Not everybody is like John MacArthur. God will get you through. God uses discouraged pastors.

But my point is here that those differences — and there were others — had the effect for me of throwing the value and beauty of our friendship into sharper relief.

Finally, the third thing that intensified our friendship was that we were both never satisfied with words, arguments, ideas, or doctrines. It was in our DNA to push through words and through doctrines to reality. Words and doctrines describe reality. They are not reality. God is the reality. Christ is the reality. The honey of heaven that we tasted in the Bible was Christ. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). The greediness that we felt for the treasure of the word was a greediness for Christ — for “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8).

Contend for the Faith

There will never cease to be battles to be fought for the cause of God and truth. John would want me to say to all of you who have breath, “Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). But that commitment alone was not the sweetness of our friendship. The sweetness of contending for truth was captured by John Owen in these words:

When the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us — when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts — when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for — then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men. (Works of John Owen, 2:69, emphasis added)

That was the key. That was the most important thing. That was the sweetness: “communion with God in the doctrine we contend for.” When that’s the essence of a friendship — communion with God in doctrine — death doesn’t end it. Both of us still enjoy communion with God in Christ, and in that sense with each other. Thank you, Father, for the life and friendship of John MacArthur.