The Men Who Inspired...

The strength

MacArthur was a Baptist and a premillennialist. Sproul was a Presbyterian who baptized infants and held that the millennium began at Christ's first coming. Those are not small differences. They have kept men in separate buildings for most of church history.

In 1997, at a Ligonier conference in Pasadena, they stood up and argued it out in front of everyone. MacArthur preached believer's baptism. Sproul preached infant baptism. MacArthur later said the invitation terrified him; he had never studied so hard for anything in his life.

After Sproul's death, MacArthur said his friend had been as bold with him as with any opponent, and that their friendship "was not sabotaged but strengthened" by it.

Read that again. Not survived. Strengthened. The arguing was part of how they loved each other: iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17).

The humility

Sproul said this about MacArthur more than once. If he ever disagreed with MacArthur about anything, and could go to the text and show him he was wrong, MacArthur would change his position on the spot, no matter what it cost him. He had never met anyone more open to correction from Scripture, because MacArthur would rather be accurate than have his ego massaged (Proverbs 9:8).

Notice what the compliment is about. Not eloquence. Not being right. The willingness to be shown wrong and to move (Proverbs 15:31).

And in 1999 he did exactly that, publicly giving up a view of Christ's Sonship he had taught for years because the text showed him it was wrong. It was not the only time, either. He said he had made many such revisions over the years, pulling his own tapes and preaching passages again with a better understanding of them. Sproul was describing what he had watched him do.

The levity

Once, on a stage together, MacArthur said some truths are non-negotiable: a man who denies the Trinity or the deity of Christ is simply false. Then he said you can misunderstand baptism, or something like that — and slowly turned and looked at the Presbyterian sitting beside him. The room exploded in laughter.

It was funny because it was true, and it is this site in one sentence: some errors put a man outside the faith, and some are held by brothers inside it. Everyone here has a brother or sister who is wrong about baptism. Some of you are going to marry one.

The fight

Half the lesson is that they disagreed and stayed friends. The other half usually gets left out.

After Sproul died, MacArthur said that in every major theological controversy he ever fought, Sproul stood by his side. When the gospel was being emptied from within, when evangelical leaders were making peace with Rome, when the sufficiency of Scripture was under assault, when Christ as the only way was being quietly abandoned — each time he took the field, the Presbyterian was already on it.

Count those fights. Faith alone. Grace alone. Scripture alone. Christ alone. And underneath them all, one shared conviction: the glory belongs to God alone. Five fights, five solas — the five words at the top of every page of this site.

The door

Some will look at our doctrinal statement and ask how the door can be that narrow. Others will ask how it can be that wide. It is both, and both come from the same two men. The door is drawn where they stood together, and the room is as wide as the ground where they differed.

Deny the Trinity or the deity of Christ, and MacArthur told you plainly what you are. Deny the inerrancy of Scripture, or empty the gospel of grace, and you are on the other side of the line they spent their lives defending together.

Disagree about baptism, the covenants, church government, the Lord's Day, or the millennium, and you are disagreeing about exactly what they disagreed about — publicly, for decades, without either of them ever once suggesting the other was not a Christian.

The sharpening

Those two men sharpened each other, and MacArthur knew there was something to sharpen. On a stage beside Sproul he said of himself: "I know there are errors in my theology. … I just don't know where they are. If you show me where they are, I'll change them." The errors hardest to see are your own, and the men least able to see them are the ones who share them. A community from one camp is not just smaller. It is missing the brothers most likely to catch what it missed.

The standard

At Sproul's memorial, MacArthur did not call him a colleague or an ally. He called him his friend and fellow soldier, and said there was a hole in his life where the man used to be.

Two men who disagreed about baptism, the covenants, how a church is governed, and how the world ends. One of them grieving the other as a brother.

So here is the standard. If those two could do it for decades, you can do it in a chat room.

You are going to meet people here who are wrong about things you consider important. Argue with them. Bring the texts. Be as bold as Sproul was, and as willing to be corrected as MacArthur was. Laugh with them across the line. Stand beside them against the real enemy, and do not let pride cost you a brother. And when the argument is over, stay friends, because the thing you were fighting about was never the gospel.

That is the floor, not the ceiling. The hope is that the arguing goes somewhere — that one of you is shown from the text and moves; that a man and a woman who start in different camps talk their way into the same one. Always reforming — that is what we hope to build here.

Those two showed it could be done. The rest of us have no excuse.