How John MacArthur’s Ministry Changed My Life—and Why I’m Mourning Today

Pastor John MacArthur passed away on July 14, 2025.

The news of his passing resulted in an avalanche of responses. Christianity Today published a piece. Religion News published a piece. Baptist News Global published a piece. There were others as well, and of course, the masses took to Twitter/X and Threads to discuss the news.

Admittedly, I am a month late to this discussion, since my family was packing ourselves into our car to drive 1,000 miles home from vacation when I saw the news. But I believe I have a unique perspective on MacArthur’s ministry.

I was first introduced to MacArthur in high school (2006–2010), when my Christian school’s student leadership team worked through The Book on Leadership (published 2004).¹ When I was in high school, I didn’t know who MacArthur was, but that would soon change.

In 2011, I started attending a new church, a church less than a year old. One of the pastors (henceforward: PK) was attending The Master’s Seminary but was also wrestling thoughtfully with the doctrines of Dispensationalism vs. Covenantalism—“What role does Israel play in God’s plan today?”—as he preached through the Gospel of Matthew. The other pastor at this church (henceforward: PS) often relied on MacArthur’s commentaries for sermon outlines, and—being ethnically Jewish—took MacArthur’s dispensationalism as the gospel (or at least the next best thing).

I got swept into this debate when I started speaking to them about a study on John 15 I had taken upon myself (still forthcoming, fifteen years later). Commentaries I read said that the vine is Israel, and I wanted to know which side of the debate this would land me on. PS said, “Wow, you really jumped into the deep end, didn’t you?” and we never discussed it again, though there was an underlying assumption that MacArthur’s position was correct, and since his commentary on John 15:1 cited Köstenberger favorably as it relates to Jesus fulfilling Israel, I was satisfied that I could trust him on this text as well.²

In my quest to better understand Scripture and respect my church’s positions—less than two years after rededicating myself to Jesus—I started purchasing MacArthur’s commentaries, since the MacArthur Study Bible didn’t have all the details I desired. By 2017, I owned all of MacArthur’s commentaries, and I still own them all. They have moved across the country with me twice, and across towns another five to seven times. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to part with them. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

My dad told me that if I was going to be a pastor, I should study the Pastoral Epistles carefully (1–2 Timothy and Titus), so in 2011, I cracked open MacArthur’s commentary on Titus. I chose Titus first because I had memorized it in my Bible class freshman year of high school.

I hadn’t gotten past the second chapter before I read something that broke me. It still exerts control, even 13.5 years later.

Being the husband of one wife refers to the singularity of a man’s faithfulness to the woman who is his wife and implies inner as well as outward sexual purity. It is quite possible, and all too common, for a husband to be married to only one woman yet not be a one-woman man, because he has sexual desires for other women besides his wife or engages in impure behavior with another woman. Jesus made clear that “everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). A lustful husband, whether or not he ever commits physical adultery, commits moral adultery if he harbors sexual desire for women other than his wife. He is not a one-woman man. When his unfaithfulness becomes known, he is disqualified.

An elder must have an unsullied, lifelong reputation for devotion to his spouse and to sexual purity. He must be completely free of fornication, adultery, divorce, and remarriage (except after the death of a wife), mistresses, illegitimate children, and all such moral stains that tarnish the reputation of Christ and His church. When a church brings a morally corrupted man into leadership or brings him back into leadership after serious moral sin, it does so in serious contradiction of God’s standards and will.

The writer of Proverbs asks rhetorically, “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Or can a man walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? So is the one who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; whoever touches her will not go unpunished” (Prov. 6:27-29). “Men do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself when he is hungry,” the writer goes on to say, “but when he is found, he must repay sevenfold; he must give all the substance of his house” (vv. 30-31). But “the one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; he who would destroy himself does it. Wounds and disgrace he will find, and his reproach will not be blotted out” (Prov. 6:32-33). Unlike a thief, a man who commits adultery has no way to make restitution for his sin and can never be free of reproach, and consequently, can never be “above reproach.”

. . . Such a man can never be above reproach.

It should be carefully noted, however, that a man who has never been guilty of sexual sins is not necessarily morally or spiritually superior to a man who has fully confessed and been forgiven of them. It does not mean that a repentant man will never be used effectively by the Lord in Christian service. It simply means that only a sexually pure and faithful man is qualified to be the pastor and example in Christ’s church.³

I lost sleep over this quote. I’d experienced God July 1, 2010 and rededicated myself to him, promising to quit watching pornography, but in December 2010 I added fornication to my pornography struggle, by crossing physical boundaries with a female friend. In February 2011, I felt called to pastoral ministry, but in April, MacArthur told me I was not a one-woman man and thus permanently qdisqualified from pastoral ministry.

So I met PK for coffee. PK told me that MacArthur can get things wrong, and this freed me from some of the guilt that MacArthur had dumped on me.⁴ In the vein of hearing God, maybe this was God calling me away from pastoral ministry, trying to show me that I’d misinterpreted my perceived calling a few months prior, but it didn’t prevent me from pursuing a ministry degree.

When I went off to Bible College in the fall of 2013, I lamented the fact that no one cared about John MacArthur. There was only one MacArthur commentary in the whole library: 1 Corinthians, buried in a back room. One of my professors said he wouldn’t accept MacArthur as a source, so I dutifully wrote papers absent from MacArthur’s influence,⁵ but I still regularly listened to MacArthur’s preaching, as well as sermons from my home church.

And then I met my best friend at college, who thought I was an idiot for choosing a school in Missouri over The Master’s University in my home state of California (it was my first choice, but it was more expensive, and they offered less financial aid). My new friend loved MacArthur, and even had a personal story of interacting with him that we often laughed about.⁶ My friend encouraged me to join a local church while at college; I argued, since I had my church back home, but he was right that it was 1,600 miles away.

So I joined his church. I should have known it was an unhealthy situation when the pastor (henceforth: PT) insisted I cancel my membership at my home church in order to join his, but hindsight is 20/20. I don’t believe PT cared for MacArthur, but he had a similarly unhealthy view of pastoral authority. MacArthur believed the pastorate “is the highest location [a person] can ascend to that power in the evangelical church.”⁷

None of this came to the fore until I approached PT to help counsel me about my pornography struggle. The first words out of his mouth after I explained my situation were, “You know guys just confess this sin these days to feel good about themselves, right?” I should have seen the red flag and run, but I didn’t. As our meetings progressed, he began insisting that I couldn’t even share the gospel with others as long as I hadn’t made it a year sober. In the end, while I’d come to him asking for him to help “make Jesus more beautiful to me,” he insisted on making me feel like the ugliest, most broken, unlovable person on the planet. My struggle became worse, and depression I hadn’t felt since rededicating myself to Jesus in 2010 came back with a vengeance.

In order to combat the increasing depression, I left his church (you can read a bit more about that in my Galatians commentary) after only attending for about a year and a half. (I endured 6 months of almost weekly counseling.) Around the time I left, I wrote an exegesis of Titus 1:5-9, including a heavy discussion on what Paul meant by “one-woman man” in 1:6. I followed this up with a sermon on Titus 1:6 (that I have never published or preached).⁸ MacArthur featured in both.

Shortly thereafter, I started a relationship with a wonderful young lady (which never could have happened under the other pastor).⁹ We dated my final semester of college and into the next calendar year (I graduated December 2015).

My graduation gift from my parents was a trip to the 2016 Shepherd’s Conference. I’d wanted to go since PK showed me a message on Philippians 4:13 from the 2011 conference—it was finally time! However, around this same time, the novelty of my relationship had worn off, and I had relapsed. So depression was demanding dominion of my mind.

Paul Washer’s sermon from the 2016 conference was especially encouraging to me that year—as well as the fellowship with PK and PS and others.

But I returned from the conference to a lunch date at which I found myself single again. If it wasn’t for the life that had been pumped into me by that conference, the depression would have killed me. MacArthur’s ministry saved my life.

Shortly thereafter, I started writing my Galatians commentary. MacArthur features in it heavily because I no longer had to cater to professors’ expectations. However, Galatians is a lynchpin for the Dispensational-Covenantal debate. It was throughout this study that I started critically reading MacArthur and decided he was wrong on (at least) this doctrine.

As time went on, I started noticing more. It began in the summer of 2018, when one of the guest pastors at the Shepherd’s Conference that spring admitted to being guilty of an affair. MacArthur publicly denounced him, removed his sermons from the conference website,¹⁰ and made it look as though he’d never been connected to the man. When PS kicked me out of his church in 2022 for calling for love to the “loveless,” my sermons were all similarly scrubbed from existence¹¹ (and it had happened previously in 2019 as well). It’s a prideful, power move, and it is contrary to Scripture. God didn’t remove any of David’s psalms from the Bible after he committed adultery with (more accurately: raped?) Bathsheba. But PS got it from MacArthur.

Additionally, at the Shepherd’s Conference in 2019, I watched as politics destroyed the love I’d grown used to seeing between MacArthur and his fellow pastors at the conference.¹²

Beyond my personal experiences related to MacArthur—his approach to pastoral authority, women, and how he’s handled abuse allegations lead me to mourn. I said, “MacArthur’s ministry saved my life,” but as I say that, I know that others’ lives were destroyed by his ministry. Like Paul, I could wish my own life was destroyed so they needn’t have suffered as they did.

MacArthur “wrote” many books over the course of his ministry. One of the most popular ones, The Gospel According to Jesus, is more of an argument for Lordship Salvation than a discussion of the gospel Jesus taught and modeled. This is proven by his Introduction,¹³ Scripture Index,¹⁴ and the opening sentence of Chapter 1.¹⁵ I read this book in 2017,¹⁶ and I wrote this about it: “Very good, though I’m learning I’m not a huge fan of MacArthur’s writing style. Definitely recommend for new believers.”

I would no longer recommend this book for new believers; it drops a heavy burden on peoples’ shoulders that Christ came to remove (Matthew 11:28).

I believe it is time to write a new book titled The Gospel According to Jesus, in which we look at Jesus’ life and teachings and mostly leave out Paul and John and James and Peter.¹⁷ The gospel is not a bunch of rules to follow, and Paul especially would agree with this (see Galatians especially). The gospel is peace and joy and love and acceptance. Jesus made this possible. His followers—those who believe his gospel—should be extending his work in this world: “we are as he is in this world” (1 John 4:17).

Live in Love; find your true reward!

In this with you.

Thanks for reading.

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Noes and References

1. I would need to reread it to be able to claim this definitively, but I don’t believe his dangerous perspectives on pastoral authority were present in this book. ↩︎
2. It should be noted that after reading his Galatians and two-volume Revelation commentaries cover to cover, he clearly contradicts the statements he made relating to Jesus/Israel in John 15. ↩︎
3. John MacArthur, Titus, MNTC (Chicago, IL: Moody, 1996), 28–29. ↩︎
4. A future post will highlight the danger of MacArthur’s teaching on this topic and how it contributes to secret lives and potential for abuse from ministers. ↩︎
5. This was probably for the best, contributing to making me a much more well-rounded exegete. ↩︎
6. It’s less laughable given my present perspective on MacArthur. ↩︎
7. Rick Pidcock, “Ep40: John MacArthur, Alligator Alcatraz, & the Epstein Coverups,” Highest Power: Church and State, 14:52. As Pidcock goes on to comment, “MacArthur doesn’t define a pastor as somebody who helps people process their wounds, as somebody who fosters the fruit of the Spirit in people. For MacArthur, the pastorate is an ascension to power.” And based on the context of MacArthur’s quote above, he believed that women should not hold any power. ↩︎
8. Perhaps I will publish it here soon. ↩︎
9. He insisted on a year of sobriety before entering a dating relationship. Hindsight being 20/20, I have mixed feelings about this expectation. Perhaps a future post. ↩︎
10. See how it jumps from General Session 5 to General Session 7 on Thursday? That’s why. If you wonder where General Session 10 went on Friday, another long-time pastor friend of MacArthur’s was caught in an affair late last year and similarly scrubbed from existence. You can listen to MacArthur’s response here, where he says nothing at all about the woman involved. ↩︎
11. Or would have been if I hadn’t kept my own copies. In this folder, the ones that were scrubbed from sermonaudio.com were “2017-09-20” –> “2018-01-24” and “2021-09-01” –> “2022-05-04.” ↩︎
12. None of the men on that panel were invited the next year. Mohler, Dever, and Ligon Duncan are conspicuously absent from the 2020 Conference. ↩︎
13. John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith, revised and expanded anniversary edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 19–22. The first edition was published in 1988. His introduction is especially clear on this point on page 22, when he admits that some have labelled “lordship salvation” as “another gospel.” ↩︎
14. MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, 287–294. The index has about an equal amount of space for Matthew–John as it does for the rest of the canon. This is fine from a “Jesus speaks through all Scripture” perspective, but it immediately raises two questions: 1) Why was it followed by The Gospel According to the Apostles (1993), The Gospel According to Paul (2017), and The Gospel According to God (2018)? 2) Why can’t the historical Jesus of the gospels speak for himself, without needing to be interpreted by his followers? ↩︎
15. MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, 25: “Jesus is Lord.” ↩︎
16. Other than a book he edited in 2018 with other Shepherd’s Conference guys—High King of Heaven—that I finished in 2020, I’ve not read any MacArthur since reading this one in 2017. ↩︎
17. It would especially consider Jesus’ gospel as applied to money, women, sexuality, and children. ↩︎

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