We are grateful to have celebrated the life and ministry of our founder, longtime president, and chancellor, Dr. John MacArthur, on August 23, 2025. Below is an adapted transcript of  Dr. John Piper's reflections from the memorial service.

 

"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward." —Psalm 19:7–11

It is amazing how two hearts can be knit together by a common taste for this honey. It's amazing how two hearts can be knit together by a common greediness for this treasure that is more precious than gold.

John MacArthur loved the taste of the honey of heaven. He was greedy for the treasures of the Word of God. He told a few of us some years ago, "I have never ceased to be thrilled with the preparation to preach. I love to discover the truth of God." He loved the quest.

It was a fulfillment of Psalm 111:2: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.”

He loved the quest, and he loved even more the treasure, the seeking and the finding. It could never be said of John MacArthur, “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” He loved to learn. He loved to arrive. He loved to stand.

Most of all, he loved to preach—to herald the treasure that he had found in the Word to other people. A shared joy is a double joy. You see more clearly what you say more clearly. Commending a treasure intensifies the experience of its worth. And so, he loved to preach, and he was good at it. So clear, so textual, so precise, so zealous, so authentic, authoritative, practical, relevant, anointed. God made John MacArthur an extraordinary preacher. At every level, I was drawn in. Quest, discovery, treasure, heralding, anointing.

50 years ago, that's what I wanted. John MacArthur was seven years older than I am. 50 years ago that seemed like a chasm. And yet, thankfully, the admiration of the younger for the older grew with time into a friendship.

The spark flashed in 1988, the year before he had published The Gospel According to Jesus. John was dismayed that the evangelical tribe from which he had come and been nurtured, which had given him a deep love for the Bible, could also give rise to a theology that, in its understanding of conversion, would say things like, “You can receive Jesus as Savior and maybe later make Him Lord.” To that, John said, page 210, “Jesus is Lord and those who refuse Him as Lord cannot use Him as Savior.”

I couldn't put this book down. I was totally compelled by it. It was so relevant to my situation. So, in February of 1988, I wrote an article celebrating the book in our little denominational magazine, The Standard. And John told me later that the fact that James Boice and J.I. Packer would write forewords for the book, and that I would celebrate it so publicly, awakened him to the fact that suddenly his tribal connections had enlarged.

In a sense, John, to his amazement, found a home in the stirrings of the Reformed Resurgence. But for me personally, the gratefulness that he showed to me in the lordship controversy was more significant than common tribal identity. John befriended me, and he never stopped befriending me.

I doubt that he liked everything I wrote. But when he really liked it, he called me. I couldn't believe it. When he read Spectacular Glory, he called me. When he read Providence, he called me to just effuse.

And in those conversations and others, it became clear we have a deep common taste for the honey of heaven. We have a shared greediness for the treasures that are more precious than gold. We manifestly love the Bible, the Word of God. God opened our eyes to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. We saw it everywhere in the Bible, and we loved it. We thrill to study it, to uncover the unsearchable riches, and to preach the beauty of what we see. How could we not be friends? How could our hearts not be knit together?

That's what the heart is, right? It's a valuing organ. And when two hearts value the same glory at a similar intensity, they cannot but be united.

Three things helped me realize the preciousness of this friendship.

Number one, the enormous debt that we both owe to our fathers. And that was a debt also to the fundamentalist, dispensational heritage in which both of our fathers grew up and were nurtured. John and I would never come to despise that heritage.

Jack MacArthur lived from 1914 to 2005. My father lived from 1919 to 2007. Both were Baptists. Both received honorary doctorates from Bob Jones University. Both were traveling evangelists. Both were intensely doctrinal and biblical in their preaching. Who can calculate the ripple effect of such lives on the lives of their sons?

I personally have no doubt that something clicked between John MacArthur and me because of this precious common heritage.

Second, our friendship was thrown into very strong and stark, beautiful relief by the fact that we were so differently wired by way of personality.

Many of you, I can tell by your laughter, remember a most vivid illustration of this during a panel discussion in which the panel leader asked us to comment on how we deal with discouragement. And I told the story of sitting on the steps of a guest house crying, and my wife coming to me and saying, "Johnny, what's wrong?" And I said, "I don't have any idea." And MacArthur looked at me like I was from another planet. And he said, "I don't have time to be discouraged. I just go on to the next thing to be done."

And it was a wonderful learning moment for all the young pastors out there because I wanted to say to them, “Take heart. Not everybody's like MacArthur. God uses melancholy pastors.”

My point is that those differences—and there were others—had the effect of throwing the value and the beauty of our friendship into very sharp relief. It was sweet.

Finally, the third thing that intensified this friendship was that we were both never satisfied with words, doctrines, ideas, or arguments. It was in our DNA to push through words, through doctrines, to reality.

Doctrines describe reality. They're not reality. God is reality. Christ is reality.

The honey of heaven that we tasted in the Bible was Christ. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” The greediness that we felt for the treasure of the Word was greediness for Christ.

There will never cease to be the need for doctrinal battles. And I'm sure if he were standing here tapping my shoulder, he would say, "Be sure to say, ‘Contend for the faith once for all delivered for the saints.’"

But that commitment to contend together was not the sweetness of the friendship. The sweetness of the friendship was captured by John Owen in these words that I find extraordinarily insightful. He wrote, “When the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us; when not only the sense of words is in our heads, but the sense of the things abides in our hearts; when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for—then shall we be garrisoned, by the grace of God, against all the assaults of men.”

That was the key. That was the most important thing. That was the sweetness: communion with God. Communion with the living God in the doctrine for which we contend.

When commitment to the living God in the doctrine that we contend for is the essence of the friendship, death doesn't end it. Both of us still enjoy communion with God at this moment, and in that sense, we still enjoy communion with each other.

So, thank you, Father, for the life and the friendship of John MacArthur.