pose the evils of the system was to invite “vitriolic attacks in the newspapers; [Wilberforce] was physically assaulted, he faced death threats and he had to travel with an armed bodyguard.” Yet he persevered.
Wilberforce perceived enslaved Africans as fellow men and brothers and was moved to take their cause as his own. He rejoiced with tears in Parliament in 1807 as the transatlantic slave trade was ruled illegal. Wilberforce didn’t leave a legacy of numerous theological treatises yet his commitment to other image bearers revealed a solidly scriptural understanding of God.
The men we Christians lionize are usually known more for their doctrine than for their application of truth to the issues of their day. In our own time, we often honor (and rightly so) contemporary theologians who shepherd us in our orthodoxy. Many are fiery preachers with solid Biblical expositions that leave us in awe of a big God. Dr. John MacArthur is certainly among these men.
MacArthur is valiant for the truth. As a younger preacher, he was among the 334 evangelical leaders who gathered in Chicago in 1978 to formulate the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Just a decade into his pastorate, MacArthur joined luminaries including J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and R. C. Sproul to defend Biblical inerrancy against liberalism’s assaults. Since then, he has remained steadfastly orthodox in his passion for the Scriptures. I’m thankful to say that my own theological formation has benefitted greatly from his confident preaching.
So when The Master’s Seminary — of which MacArthur is president — released a YouTube video titled “Racism and Black Lives Matter” on July 8, 2016, I expected a strong application of the Gospel to today’s polarizing racial issues. What I heard instead was disappointing.
The clip begins with this question to MacArthur:
Obviously our county has had an issue with race since the beginning. And we’ve seen a continued increase in racial issues from Ferguson to the Black Lives Matter movement… [H]ow does a pastor address this if their church isn’t predominately African American or doesn’t want to become a “social justice” church?
Here’s a portion of MacArthur’s answer:
[Christ] has already predetermined before the foundation of the world the racial mix of His church… so all I want to do is preach… the Gospel, with the same love that God has already determined to shed on every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation on the planet. So there’s a sense in which this is a non-issue… I can’t fix racial injustices… my responsibility is to realize that in Christ there’s neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, we’re all one in Christ… The object of life is no longer to fix past injustices. The object of life now is to proclaim Christ to whomever. And I just will not give that up for another agenda… once [you] come to Christ, all other issues… disappear and the Gospel takes prominence.
I expected a larger view of the Gospel from a man like MacArthur. While he explains the Gospel as preeminent, his overall position says otherwise. My husband explains it best:
To suggest that social issues become spiritual issues for believers or that social issues “disappear” once saved actually has the reverse effect: rather than making it clear that believers can hope amidst the reality of sin and suffering because our gaze is fixed on a coming King, MacArthur’s answer amplifies the voice of every… heckler who ever claimed Christianity as merely mythical panacea or elusive escapism.
I’m surrounded by black Christians for whom racial issues have not disappeared with salvation. Dr. MacArthur’s position is disrespectful to those battered by the blows of discrimination. If nothing else, his response is very insulated. Not many pastors in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Dallas, Ferguson, Baltimore, or Chicago could sit today and claim that salvation erases racial issues.
Answers like MacArthur’s tend to scoot too close to Luke 11:42: “For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, with