A friend of mine frequently points out the nonsense of saying that something has “stood the test of time”. It’s not really a test that tells you anything more than that the specific thing has been around for a long time. As Christians, we rightly value faithfulness and this does mean that believers, leaders and churches should persevere through challenges, suffering and persecution over time. However, faithfulness is about much more than longevity.
I was struck by this by seeing this little video clip from John MacArthur
It was reshared by one of MacArthur’s right hand men, Justin Peters with this comment.
Now, the irony of these comments are that MacArthur’s ministry has operated under the label “Grace to You.” I see no evidence of grace whatsoever here. First, there is the desire to mock, belittle and represent other pastors who had legitimate disagreements with MacArthur an who were themselves seeking to be faithful to God, to love their congregations and to be godly witnesses in obedience to Scripture. The standard set is not God’s Word but MacArthur’s. Secondly, our aim and desire should not be for people to feel guilty although they may do. Our desire is to see people convicted where they are in sin, to be rescued from that sin and to see relationship with God and others restored. That brothers and sisters is grace, whereas what MacArthur and Peters are offering is legalism.
Secondly, it is ironic because MacArthur has been a polarising figure. For some he has become a bit of a hate figure whilst for others he is being lauded as a great hero. The big reason for lauding him though seems to be that he is an old man who has stayed as lead pastor of a church for a long, long time.
The reason that he has become a hate figure is that people have had serious issues with how he has led and how he has engaged with others that has included public shaming. I have another issue which is little talked about these days. For a significant part of his public ministry, McArthur taught that Jesus was not the eternal son of God. He did believe in Jesus’ full deity but he had a complex and confused explanation of divine sonship. We cannot underestimate how serious this was in terms of error, particularly from someone not just leading a church but writing books and commentaries and speaking at conferences. From what I’ve seen, MacArthur did change his position and fully embrace the orthodox view some time back. However, I have two concerns outstanding, first that whilst he acknowledged it was an error, I don’t recall any statement where he recognised the full seriousness of the error. Secondly, MacArthur has shown a lot of grace by other Christian leaders in terms of continuing in ministry following correction. I don’t, I’m afraid to say, see the same kind of grace or graciousness from him to others when he challenges.
Now, this does not mean that he should be a hate figure. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t a Christian and some of the maligning of him isn’t gracious or godly either. It is worth considering that there have been aspects of his life and ministry that have been faithful and there are things we can be grateful to him for. To give one example, I think he has been maligned and misrepresented as teaching works salvation under the heading of Lordship Salvation. This is, I think, a distortion of his position where he challenged those who presented a two stage view of the Christian life. He was responding to those who say we are saved by grace but then there is a higher level of Christian life called discipleship. He was saying no to the idea that we could accept Christ as saviour and then choose later whether to own him as Lord.
However, my point is this and it is less to do with critiquing one man’s ministry and more about thinking about ourselves, our own ministries and own lives. We can keep going, be in it for the long haul but if what we are doing is unhelpful then are we being faithful. MacDonalds have, without fail, for my life time at least served the same menu of Big Mac and Fries, consistently to millions of people. I guess we could say that they’ve been faithful but would we really use that language to describe the mass production and successful marketing of junk food? What matters is not my faithfulness to time and place but my faithfulness to God and the Gospel.
Faithroots 