John Macarthur was the pastor of Grace Community Church in Southern California from February 1969 until November 2024. He went to be with the Lord in July 2025, nine months after preaching his final sermon. 55 years in the same pulpit is almost unheard of in late modern times—the only other example of whom I’m aware is Peter Masters, the pastor at Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle since 1970. As a preacher who has done a lot of moving over the years, I’ve only grown in my admiration for John MacArthur staying in the same place for as long as he did. He was committed to biblical exposition, and God used and blessed his ministry probably beyond anything he could have imagined when he first began.
As a young pastor who had cut his teeth on the likes of Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll (by the way, could pastoral approaches be any more different?), I hadn’t really spent much time listening to John. But after a year or so of preparing and delivering regular Bible exposition, I began to be drawn to the faithfulness and steadfastness of John’s ministry. I’ve so appreciated his work over the years. The fact that he spent his first 42 years preaching through the entire New Testament is nothing to be sniffed at.
I disagree with some positions that John held. His understandings both of the relationship of ethnic Israel to the church and of the end-times are not the same as mine. No big deal; he and the late RC Sproul were close friends, sharing pulpits and conference platforms regularly, while Sproul held decidedly divergent views from John. To be clear, I don’t agree with all of RC’s views either! (Neither do I agree with my own views all the time, constantly reconsidering, changing, etc.)
Now for why I wanted to write this post: To praise God for John’s likely most well-known book: The Gospel According to Jesus (hereafter GATJ). John wrote GATJ after a sermon series on Matthew’s gospel proved transformative for Grace Church. He had been confronting and challenging the so-called Free-Grace Movement, arguing that while Christ saves by grace, the saved must follow and obey him. It took John some seven years to preach through Matthew, but the church had been transformed into a thriving ministry center by the end of it. The literary outcome was (by the final edition) a 24 chapter book explaining the gospel from Christ’s own teaching in the writings of the Evangelists.
At the time that I read GATJ I had been struggling with reconciling what I perceived to be opposing messages when comparing Paul’s letters with the gospel accounts themselves. This supposed dichotomy “between Paul and Jesus” was nothing new, having been present in theology for 100 years or so prior, and continuing now. J. Gresham Machen, the great critic of theological liberalism, wrote The Origin of Paul’s Religion in 1921 because of the “Paul vs. Jesus,” debate. I had also read some cases made for a real dichotomy from the likes of current Christian thought leaders like Scot McKnight. In short, and probably at the risk of being reductive, proponents say that while Paul preaches salvation by grace through faith, Christ preaches obedience and works. There’s more to it, but if you can get your hands around that summary you can get an idea of what’s at stake in the debate. I found myself comforted reading Paul but struggling reading the gospels. I believed it all. But I had a sort of background anxiety about the issue.
Into my own struggle came John’s GATJ. I found it at a used bookstore in Pittsburgh, and I started reading it at a Panera while Kate was at a work meeting. I was stunned at what I found: Jesus preaches the same salvation by grace that Paul did, explaining it in a way that we should expect the incarnate God-man to explain it. The difference in his explanation compared to Paul is easily understood when one considers perspective: Christ is the author of salvation, and Paul is a herald of it. If you dig in, you see that the gospel is the gospel is the gospel, whether from Jesus’ mouth or Paul’s or Peter’s or John’s or David’s or Isaiah’s, etc. There is no dichotomy, only the seemingly paradoxical marriage of depth and clarity. So, after reading GATJ, the gospels opened up to me in a way that has proved transformative.
At the risk of keeping you from reading GATJ yourself, what follows is a brief summary of every chapter under section headings. Please know, such a summary will never replace reading Gospel According to Jesus yourself; it is so helpful if one wants the gospels to come alive. Nevertheless, I hope that a quick survey of the chapters might stir you up to seek it further.
(I Introduction: I’m skipping this section, which includes chapters one and two, in my summary)
II Jesus heralds his gospel
3 He calls for a new birth (Jn.3: To Nicodemus, “you must be born again”)
4 He demands true worship (Jn.4: To the Woman, “Father must be worshiped in spirit and truth”)
5 He receives sinners and refuses the righteous (Mt.8-9: Only the unwell/sinners can get in on this)
6 He opens blind eyes (Jn.9: Blind man didn’t “see the light”; Jesus opened his eyes)
7 He challenges an eager seeker (Mt.19: Rich young man was proud and didn’t know it; Jesus wasn’t going to let him come amiss)
8 He seeks and saves the lost (Lk.19: Zaccheus)
9 He condemns a hardened heart (Judas—heart can harden though in Jesus’ presence)
10 He offers a yoke of rest (Mt.11:28-30 Invites broadly, promising rest; but we only come if He gives it to us, 11:27)
III Jesus illustrates his gospel
11 The Four Soils (Mt.13:3-9, 18-23: only one soil was ready to bear the desired fruit; most who hear the gospel won’t come and stay following Jesus)
12 Wheat and Tares (Mt.13:24-30, 36-43: the ungodly can seem righteous and fool everyone. But God knows who is who)
13 Treasure in the field (Mt.13:44 coming to faith means joyfully leave all for Christ)
14 Laborers in the field (Mt.20:1-16: It’s all grace, no one earns more than the other. All who come to Christ want to labor for him because he’s good.)
15 Lost and found: Lost sheep, coin, and son (Lk.15: God is active in seeking and finding; the lost must see themselves as lost in order to “come home”)
16 Vine and branches (Jn.15:1-12 believers are united to Christ by faith; but some are broken off because they’re not fully plugged in, bearing fruit)
IV Jesus explains his gospel
17 Call to repentance (Mt.4:17, 21:28-32 Parable of two sons: God becomes preeminent in our lives; there are only two types of people, those who feign repentance and those are rebels who then repent)
18 True faith (Mt.5, 18: True faith is lowliness (Mt.5:3-12 beatitudes) & child-like dependence, Mt.18:1-5)
19 Promise of justification (Lk.18:9-14 parable: no delusions, the man begs for mercy)
20 The way of salvation (Mt.7:13-23 Two ways, two crowds, & two destinations. Choose wisely)
21 Certainty of judgment (Mt.7:21-27: Saying without doing=empty words; hearing without obeying=empty hearts)
22 Cost of discipleship (Mt.10:34-49 “I’ve not come to bring peace…father and moth”: Unquestioning loyalty to Christ)
23 Jesus is Lord (Jn.7:30: his arrest didn’t happen prematurely, because he’s Lord of all)
V Jesus fulfills his gospel
24 “It is finished” (Jn.19:30: we don’t need to add to his work, because it’s magnificent in itself; our work shows him in us.)
If you would have told me in early 2017 that by late 2025 we would have lost Sproul, Packer, Keller, and Macarthur, I would have said, “No way—what can happen if we lose them all so close to each other?” But a work like GATJ stands as a testament that Jesus’ gospel continues on wherever there are faithful believers opening their Bibles, choosing “the good portion” (Lk.10:42), and inviting others to do the same. I’m so grateful for all of these men; or, put better, for the Lord’s work through them. His working through us explains why we can sometimes still be fools and yet be capable of doing great, life-giving things. None of these men were perfect men (though they are now), but God used them powerfully. If the Lord wasn’t in us, our lives would be only foolishness, right? Better is to plug into the Author of life (Ac.3:15) under his promise that he’ll use us to bring saving goodness into the world he created for his glory.
Thanks Lord for John MacArthur, and for how you used his gospel labors to crystalize my utter confidence in Scripture. Raise up more gospel laborers, great Lord of the Harvest.
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