Books are a love language, and one of the ways Jared demonstrated his love for me early on was by lending me his pastoral library. I love books, Jared loves books (he has more than I do), and he’s always been generous with them. I’d come home from my visits to Arkansas with commentaries and paperbacks in my suitcase that helped me tremendously as I studied the Bible. The two authors who stood tallest, whom Jared blessed me with most during that time, were Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones and John MacArthur.
I came to love these men because they opened Scripture as carefully as a surgeon does a body. Whole pages of their commentaries were meticulously devoted to one verse, so in the emotionally-turvy months of a relationship, I landed upon a truth I needed: Scripture isn’t a reservoir that will eventually run dry, but a spring-fed stream—always deep, always wide, reaching its tributaries into the ordinary landscape of the Christian life and watering it.
And so it was through the books he loaned me that I came to know Jared. (In fact, I’d advise any girl who finds herself in a relationship to read the books he reads. They will tell you volumes.) Jared, I would learn, was a man who loved God’s Word.
When I heard that John MacArthur passed away last week, I knew that for Jared, it would be like the loss of a friend. In recent days, we’ve seen pastors fall, but this was not the cowardly stumble of immorality. No, this was the thunderous fall of a warrior in battle that reverberates throughout the army. In his tribute, one writer quoted 1 Samuel 3:38, that “a great man has fallen this day in Israel.”
But what makes a great man, I wonder? His megachurch? His ministry? His seminaries?
After his death, the stories about MacArthur have poured onto pages of the Internet. There are a lot of wonderful tributes, but the ones Jared has pointed out to me have been from MacArthur’s own congregation and community—of college students who remember how he held the door open for them and his physical therapist, who didn’t know who he was, but came to love him for his kindness and determination to rebound.[i] It’s hard to argue with praise from the people who knew a man, not just in a suit and tie, but in his everyday clothes.
I think of Paul’s instruction to Timothy as a younger man and pastor:
“Present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” – 1 Timothy 2:15
He also reminded him that “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (1 Tim. 2:24, emphasis added).
While it is good and righteous to pay tribute to a man who was faithful in public ministry, it’s also good to recognize noble men in small places, who shepherd average-sized congregations with both gentleness and strength.
I see these mingled traits in my own pastor and husband. I’m still navigating the early weeks of pregnancy, and I often find the sink emptied of dishes and the laundry already started in the washer. Jared has been up an hour before me, studying Scripture and tidying the kitchen. As a pastor and chaplain, he visits the sick and elderly in their hospital rooms, even as He fights the good fight of the faith behind the pulpit. In fact, visiting the widow and the orphan often is the fight of the faith (James 1:27). Truth and kindness are arrows in the same quiver, sailing together, and I fear a pastor who does not understand this will become either spineless or heartless.
The mark of a great man is not the size of his ministry, but how he hungered and thirsted for God’s Word (Matt. 5:6).
So I humbly offer two little tributes:
I am grateful to John MacArthur for wielding the Word of God like both the weapon and balm that it is, and I give thanks for Jared, a man equally as devoted to Scripture, who lent me his books.
“If Jesus, the sinless and perfect Son of God, limited Himself to speaking nothing during His incarnation except the truth He received from His Father, how much more should those who have been called into ministry speak only on the authority of divine Scripture.”
– John MacArthur
[i] See tributes by Owen Strachan and Madelyn Moses.
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