Even the Best of Us are Frail and Needy

"Corrupt customs are best cured by rectifying corrupt notions." Matthew Henry (from his commentary on Mark 7 )

Very probably many of you know of my fondness for John MacArthur started as a young believer in the faith. I was given a set of cassette tapes of his sermon series on marriage from a well meaning friend of my late Father in Law. At the time, I could care less about anything spiritual. I mean I cared very much about looking spiritual, but not actually behaving in a manner that is befitting to my Lord. I hid them in the shame I thought they deserved, in the upper corner of my closet. Finding them one day, for whatever reason, I decided to take a listen. To say they rocked my world is an understatement akin to saying the ocean is deep.

Never had I ever heard what marriage was and never had I ever pondered my role within it as a Christian wife and mother. I can say this without hesitation: those tapes (in which I did not even listen to every one) changed my mind about almost everything I held dear at the time. And for that I will forever be grateful.

Truly, that man, by opening the scriptures of Ephesians to me cured many of the “currupt customs” of my heart. In fact, I did not, at the time, even understand the notion that it is out of the heart comes defilement. I had lived for so long believing that it is what I did that was a defilement to me. This had lead to spiritualism but not to true salvation. Once I understood what the standard actually was, I realized that I could never meet it and that I needed someone to meet it for me. My heart was wicked beyond repair and no amount of well intentioned rule following was going to cure it.

What a glorious truth.

Up until those tearful moments in my car, throwing papers in the early morning hours, the scriptures had not been made clear to me. John MacArthur did what I had never heard before: he opened the Bible and preached. Verse by verse he preached. He stood at his pulpit unwavering and unapologetic in the message, confident in the truth to change the sinner.

May God in his mercy raise up hundreds more to follow in his stead.

I’d like to just end there. But I can’t. For the simple reason that we can’t have nice things in 2025…things like a simple post praising a simple man who told the truth every Sunday for 50 years in his pulpit. And we can’t because we live in an age where everyone wants to know everything and also feels like we are entitled to knowing everyone’s everything in the name of “holding people accountable” or something.

There are those out there that would like us to believe that John MacArthur allowed for, enabled and taught abuse in his church. And while I’m inclined to believe that he and the elders did not handle every serious situation and allegation correctly, I do believe they were doing what they thought was right at the time. I can say this because I’ve followed the rabbits hole to the depths. I’ve read almost every story from every angle and listened to too many hours about it as a concerned Christian. That does not make any of it ok. It makes the elders human, fallen and sinful. Just like you and me.

I will not share the story here. It is a moot point. I say moot because it is done and gone (years and years gone) and no-one can do anything now but drag it back into the light and use it for their Twitter-gain to defame (in some way) his legacy. That does not hold people accountable. Certainly not John MacArthur since he is Home in Glory! It actually does nothing at all but further an agenda and ideology that is in fact not Christian. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, bless you.

I only mention it here as a reminder that even the very best of us are frail and needy, even the giants in the faith. Your elders are. Your friends are. Your church family is. You know your family is. You see it every day. To pretend otherwise, is to lie to ourselves. It is to pretend we are greater than we are. And I guess that is why I admired John MacArthur so much, and why he was able to stand when most men were capitulating and failing and what made him so great was that he rightly knew his need for his Savior was even greater.