Hard to Believe: The high cost and infinite value of following Jesus

I have just finished reading John MacArthur's book Hard to Believe. It is one of the books given to us at the Impact Bible Conference 2006 in Hastings.

It has been a challenging book to read. MacArthur is an extremely good expositor of the bible. Therefore he argues with a lot of authority. The book is also written in a style that is like his thoughts being laid out. You can see why he thinks things.

I have to say however that while MacArthur is sound in pretty much everything he asserts, he misses the compassionate side of Jesus. He rightly talks about the wrath, judgement and righteousness of God. We should not (and we do to often) ignore this side of God's character. But ot focus on it at the expense of the compassionate side is just as wrong as focusing entirely on the compassionate side.

Let me explain this a bit more. Christianity seems to be dividing between the:

You got to believe the bible and then get your act together (these are generally termed fundamentalists of which MacArthur is a leading advocate)

and the:

God is in the wind and the trees and He is all love so if we love Jesus then it is all cool, man! [said with a stoned out voice] (these are referred to as the liberals)

Well neither of these are a balanced biblical view of Jesus and what the cross means to humanity. You can proof text (ie find scripture that supports your argument) either position BUT (I repeat BUT) you have to ignore the other sides proof texts.


Jesus Himself walked this amazing line between having unlimited compassion for the lost, the broken and at the same time righteous anger for the hypocritical religious legalists. He somehow was completely seeker-sensitive while at the same time hard-core bible thumper.

Jesus is our example of how we are meant to live out God's plan for us while we remain here on earth. Therefore we need to try to find this same line. I don't think we will be able to nail this line all the time. We sin and part of our sin is not listening to the Holy Spirit who guides us to walk this line. But I think we should try to stay close to the line rather than wandering off to the comfort of what are essentially ideological (NOT biblical) positions.

Back to MacArthur... I really admire his exposition. I can critique some of it but it is some of the most solid interpretation around (that comes out with an answer). It makes me sad how it is used/abused.