You have heard of the Gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but have you heard of the Gospel according to Jesus? Today’s book shatters the idea that you can have Jesus as your Saviour without him being your Lord and Master.

Hi, my name is Terence, and I’m your host for Reading and Readers, a podcast where I review Christian books for you. Today, I review “The Gospel According to Jesus: What is Authentic Faith?” by John F. MacArthur. Today I am reviewing the Revised and Expanded Anniversary Edition. 443 pages, published by Zondervan in May 2009. Available on Amazon Kindle for USD9.99 and in Logos for USD28.99.

The End of a World With MacArthur

I got this book after I got the news that John MacArthur had passed away. He died on 14 July 2025 at the age of 86 years old. He is known to some as a preacher of controversy. An uncompromising Calvinist, critical of charismatics, he is also famous for standing up against the state government’s order to close churches during COVID.

But what really got John MacArthur on my radar was a Tim Challies video. Challies brought to my attention how in June 2011 John MacArthur “came to an end of a 42 year journey of preaching through the New Testament verse by verse.” As Challies emphasised, that is 27 books, 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, verse by verse for 42 years.

When John MacArthur passed away, I read the tributes from Christian leaders who knew him, worked with him and have learnt so much from him. As for me, I have only read a few of his books, and I only admired him from afar. But I recognised his death marks the passing of an age, so I did a bit of research and bought and read the book that many say is his best. Let’s get to it: The Gospel According to Jesus.

Lordship Salvation

This book has John MacArthur charging headfirst into a controversy. Let me read a long quote from the preface. MacArthur writes:

People have been trying to domesticate Jesus’ message for many years. Long before The Gospel According to Jesus was first published, it was popular in certain circles to exclude any mention of Jesus’ lordship from the gospel message. The idea, apparently, was that declaring Jesus’ lordship was tantamount to preaching works — because lordship implicitly demands obedience, and obedience per se was automatically portrayed as a work. Some argued that even to encourage an attitude of obedience (like the simple, submissive heart of the thief on the cross or Zacchaeus’s intention to make restitution) was to preach a works-based religion. Ostensibly trying to keep the gospel as untainted as possible from works-religion, some evangelical leaders became insistent that no gospel appeal to unbelievers ever ought to include the truth that Jesus is Lord of all. Unconverted sinners were not to be urged to repent. The cost of discipleship; the need to hate one’s own sin; Christ’s call to self-denial; His command to follow Him; and (especially) every mention of submission to Him as Lord were systematically expunged from the message Christians proclaimed to unbelievers. Sanctification became wholly optional. A whole new category — “carnal Christians” — was invented to explain how someone could be converted to Christ and given eternal life but left totally unchanged in heart and lifestyle by such a transaction.

Later, he writes:

The Gospel According to Jesus made one simple (and to my mind undeniable) point: Jesus proclaimed no such message. The faith He called sinners to was a repentant, submissive surrender to the truth — including the truth of His lordship.

So the problem is Lordship Salvation. Lordship salvation is a term of derision from his opponents, but it is a term that MacArthur has not hesitated to defend.

Scripture Soaked Chapters

The book is divided into six parts.

Part One is an exploration of the issues.

Parts Two, Three and Four are where MacArthur makes his arguments by drawing on how Jesus heralds his gospel, illustrates his gospel and explains his gospel. There are 24 chapters in the book, and 21 of those chapters are in Parts Two, Three and Four.

Part Five is one chapter, titled “Jesus Fulfils His Gospel”.

Part Six consists of three appendices, titled “The Gospel According to the Apostles”, “The Gospels According to Historic Christianity”, and “Answers to Common Questions”.

This book is MacArthur at his best. He draws upon Scripture and puts it against the claims of his opponents. He makes no philosophical argument. Maybe you don’t know what that is. It can be hard to differentiate a philosophical against a Scriptural argument.

Philosophical does not mean the guy starts quoting Plato or Nietzsche. A devout Christian makes a philosophical argument when he bases his beliefs on his understanding of God rather than the Scripture.

For example, MacArthur, who already knows so much about God and the Bible, could write a book explaining how a holy God requires holiness from his people. MacArthur could invite the reader to trust him, trust that he is able to understand the Bible, trust that he is truthful and trust that he has our ultimate good at heart.

But why should I? He could be writing this book for any number of selfish reasons.

MacArthur does not invite us to trust him. He invites us to trust the Bible. He shows us the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. He shows us the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Wheat and Tares and how Jesus, Jesus!, explains them. He shows us how Jesus himself explains the gospel about repentance and faith. This is not the Gospel According to John MacArthur. It’s the Gospel According to Jesus.

And the promise in the title is delivered in the book.

Jesus Illustrates His Gospel

Let us have a look at chapter 12, titled “The Wheat and the Tares”. It starts, I quote:

Christians are not supposed to live like unsaved people. That may not sound especially profound, but many evangelicals today do not seem to understand it.

MacArthur makes a critique:

I am convinced that the popularized gospel of our day has made all this possible — even inevitable. The notion that faith is nothing more than believing a few biblical facts caters to human depravity. If repentance, holiness of life, and submission to the lordship of Christ are all optional, why should we expect the redeemed to differ from the heathen? Who is to say that someone might not be a believer, just because that person lives in stubborn rebellion against God? If people say they believe, shouldn’t we just take their word for it?

Then he leads the reader to the parable. He writes:

When Scripture acknowledges the difficulty of telling the sheep from the goats, the point is not that Christians may seem ungodly, but rather that the ungodly often appear to be righteous. To switch metaphors slightly, the flock is supposed to be on the lookout for wolves in sheep’s clothing, not tolerant of sheep that act like wolves. In this regard, Jesus’ parable about the wheat and tares (Matt. 13:24 – 30) has often been misunderstood.

Matthew 13:24-30 is printed in full for readers to consider. While some preachers, teachers or writers would consider printing a Bible verse sufficient to establish their Christian credentials for them to then say they really want to say, MacArthur doesn’t do that. He never does that. He sticks to this parable.

He explains it. He tells us of the players or the characters in the parable. He explains the plot. Then the plan. And his outline maps to the verses. And he shows how this parable addresses the Lordship Salvation debate.

He writes:

How will the reapers know the wheat from the tares? The issue, as always, is the spiritual fruit they bear. Tares may look similar to wheat, but tares cannot produce wheat kernels. The mature grain clearly sets wheat apart from tares. So it is in the spiritual world. The sons of the Evil One can imitate the children of the kingdom, but they cannot produce true righteousness: “A bad tree [cannot] produce good fruit (Matt. 7:18). The language of the parable confirms this. The tares are called “stumbling blocks . . . those who commit lawlessness” (v. 41). The wheat are called “righteous” (v. 43). Clearly, character and behavior are what separate the wheat from the tares. In the judgment the difference will be fully manifest.

And once again, as he does at the end of every chapter, MacArthur shows us, from Scripture, that it is not possible for a Christian to claim Jesus as saviour without also being Lord.

Jesus Explains His Gospel

In chapter 17, titled “The Call to Repentance”, there is a shift in MacArthur’s angle of attack. The attack is still focused and intense, but it’s a volley from a different direction. A different direction, yet from the same source, namely Christ.

The chapter begins:

Having examined how Jesus dealt with individuals and having studied the parables and figures He used to illuminate truth for the disciples, we now turn our focus to the rich doctrinal content of the message He proclaimed to the multitudes. Here we will explore the principal themes that flavored Jesus’ discourses, and weigh the popularized gospel of today against the Savior’s own teaching. In the process, we will attempt to gain a clearer understanding of the terminology Jesus employed. Most of the current controversy regarding the gospel hinges on the definitions of a few key words, including repentance, faith, discipleship, and Lord. In this final section, we will study those terms and see how Jesus Himself used them.

I like the variety of approaches MacArthur deploys in this book. Each of the parts is self-contained and, in my opinion, conclusive in itself. But it’s eye-opening that we get to see the life and teaching of Christ through these three distinct lenses.

If someone came to you and said that you can be a Christian without all the obedience stuff, and, in fact, if you insist on obeying the law, you are actually adding works to the gospel. You are now no longer declaring salvation by faith, but salvation by faith and works. What would you say?

One way for you to clarify the issue is to simply ask, “What then is repentance?”

Let’s listen to one definition. I quote:

Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Systematic Theology listed repentance as one of “the more common features of human responsibility which are too often erroneously added to the one requirement of faith or belief.” Chafer noted that the word repentance is not found in the gospel of John and occurs only once in Romans. He pointed out also that in Acts 16:31 Paul did not tell the Philippian jailer to repent. Chafer viewed that silence as an “overwhelming mass of irrefutable evidence [making it] clear that the New Testament does not impose repentance upon the unsaved as a condition of salvation.”

MacArthur includes quotes from the opposing view. And I always appreciate authors who do this, or at least include a footnote. By doing this, it keeps the author honest and allows diligent readers to check whether the author’s claims are true.

Of course, MacArthur rejects Chafer’s definition. And he gives a lengthy discussion on what Repentance is and is not. It is not just intellectual or emotional, it is intellectual, emotional and volitional; it must include a transformation of the will.

MacArthur shows us what is written in Isaiah, Ezekiel, 2 Chronicles, Jonah and eventually brings us to John the Baptist and Jesus. Repent for the Kingdom of God is near! Repentance is clearly important and surely clearly explained!

MacArthur writes:

In Matthew 21:28 – 31 Jesus used a parable to illustrate the hypocrisy of a profession of faith without repentance:

The passage is printed. Let me read it.

“But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ And he answered and said, ‘I will, sir’; and he did not go. And he came to the second and said the same thing. But he answered and said, ‘I will not’; yet he afterward regretted it and went. Which of the two did the will of his father?”

MacArthur concludes the chapter with these words:

There are many today who hear the truth of Christ and immediately respond as did the son who said he would obey but did not. Their positive response to Jesus will not save them. The fruit of their lives shows they have never truly repented.
On the other hand, there are many who turn their backs on sin, unbelief, and disobedience, and embrace Christ with a faith that obeys. Theirs is true repentance, manifested by the righteousness it produces. They are the truly righteous (1 Peter 4:18). And that is the ultimate aim of the gospel according to Jesus.

I have shared two chapters from the book: a chapter from Part Two and a chapter from Part Three.

Good to Read the Whole Book For Yourself

In my review, I have extensively quoted from the book because that is what MacArthur does; he extensively quotes and prints from the Bible, so that readers can judge for themselves what is written.

In my opinion, his most powerful chapter was already made way back in chapter 1. This is a new chapter for the anniversary edition. It is titled, “What Does Jesus Mean When He Says, ‘Follow Me?’”. For most Christians, that chapter is convincing enough without belabouring the point. But is it really belabouring to read what Jesus himself says of his Gospel? Even if you are convinced of MacArthur’s thesis, it is still worth reading the whole book to remove any doubt and affirm this great truth.

But some of you may still choose not to read this book, and I want to pre-empt any misgivings you may have.

MacArthur Does Not Seem Like a Nice Man

MacArthur does not come across as wholesome or nice when it comes to his opponents. Some see him as naming and shaming. But he did say here that he has respect for the people on the other side. He just thinks they are wrong. I don’t see any malice or personal attacks.

I only see this as a problem if MacArthur has quoted them out of context and has misrepresented their positions. If they stand by with what they publicly taught, then it is fair for MacArthur to name and quote them so that we can consider the arguments on both sides.

MacArthur is Not In My Theological Tradition

Those who know MacArthur perhaps from other controversies may be reluctant to pick up this book because of his doctrine or because they don’t like his style. His posture can come off as arrogant to some. I would say don’t let any of that put you off this book.

If you really dislike MacArthur the man, then just consider that God used a donkey to speak truth. I say this with the confidence that MacArthur would not let his character flaws or past remarks stand between anyone and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is solid teaching here on the Lordship Salvation controversy that would benefit everyone, whether you are Calvinist or not, Charismatic or not, or even whether you are a Christian or not. We have here a faithful exposition of the Bible, and any doctrinal disagreements can be easily brushed aside to consider the weight of his arguments for lordship salvation.

Can We Redeem Carnal Christianity?

The only big question I wrestled with while reading this book is whether MacArthur’s forceful arguments are equally decisive if we slightly modify the opponent’s position.

We know that we must reject the idea that we can be a Christian without accepting Jesus as Lord.

But what about the idea that we can be a Christian without showing any spiritual fruits yet, because we are in the infancy of the born-again experience? What if we strongly emphasise through discipleship that obedience is a necessary part of Christian life?

If we do that, we can maintain that the carnal Christian is simply one step away from being a holy Christian. Carnal Christianity is not the end; it should never be! We are merely describing people as carnal Christians to awaken them to the reality that, as a born-again Christian, they must progress towards obeying Jesus, heart, mind and soul. Can the term carnal Christian be redeemed?

After I finished this book, the conclusion is a resounding no. MacArthur explicitly describes this two-stage idea: the carnal Christian has a basic faith which can be upgraded later to an enriched or enhanced faith. His book slams against it.

The infant Christian who is not yet fully aware of his sins or not yet fully convicted to kill sin is not a carnal Christian, he is a Christian on the way to maturity. Through all the Scriptures brought forward and explained, MacArthur has demonstrated that a person who does not accept the lordship of Jesus Christ is simply not a Christian.

Too many Christians are unable to make the distinction between the two. And so, sadly, this book is still much needed today.

In conclusion, the Gospel According to Jesus is a powerful book. Anyone who has to think through this lordship controversy should read it, regardless of their position on it.

This is a Reading and Readers review of “The Gospel According to Jesus: What is Authentic Faith?” by John F. MacArthur. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.