Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus

by John MacArthur

Jesus Christ did not die on the cross so you and I could have a nice day.

Ministers and teachers who water down the gospel of Christ in order to make it more popular and appealing may be leading their fun-loving audiences down the road to eternal punishment.

This book is John MacArthur's unflinching, unapologetic treatise on the modern tendency to alter the true message of Christianity in order to meet the whims and desires of a culture hoping for nonconfrontational messages, easy answers, and superficial commitments.

Too many people just want a Madison Avenue Jesus to make them well, make them happy, and make them prosperous. But Jesus Christ isn't a personal genie. He is the Savior. He died in agony to satisfy the wrath of a holy God and to forgive the sins of humankind. Faith in Him demands a willingness to make any sacrifice He asks. The hard truth about Christianity is that the cost is high, but the rewards are priceless: abundant and eternal life that comes only from faithfully follwing Christ.

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Paperback, 240 pages

Published January 8th 2006 by Thomas Nelson (first published February 29th 2000)

tags: theology, faith, christianity, christian non fiction, religion, biblical, nonfiction, christian living, discipleship, christian

Book Quotes

“This is one of the most serious problems with seeker-sensitive churches. I was talking to a pastor at a seeker-friendly church not long ago about his idea that prospective Christians needed to “feel welcome” and “accepted” before anything else: no “threats,” no “judgmental baggage.” I asked, “If you had a person living in sin come to your church, would you confront him?” He furrowed his brow and shook his head disapprovingly. “Oh, no! We’d want him to feel loved and welcome.” My eyes widened. “How long would it be before you would actually say something about that?” “Maybe a year and a half, two years,” he said, smiling. “Because then he would really feel a part of things.” That was shocking to me. Is there some virtue in leaving a man in his sin for the sake of feeling accepted? “Well, that’s the difference between your church and our church,” I said finally. “Openly practicing sinners come to our church, and they either get saved or they don’t come back.”

― John MacArthur

“This is the problem. An unconverted person may have great reasoning power and intellect, but when it comes to spiritual reality and the life of God and eternity, he makes no contribution. Whether it’s Athens or Rome, whether it’s Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Princeton, or wherever else, all the collected wisdom that is outside the Scripture adds up to nothing but foolishness.”

― John MacArthur

“Almost no one tolerates the exclusivity and supremacy of Christ these days, even some who profess to be Christians. The message of the cross is not politically correct—it’s the singularity of the gospel, on top of everything else, that bothers people. Can you imagine for a moment what might happen if a celebrity or political leader just said, “I’m a Christian and if you’re not, you’re going to hell”? Yikes! And then imagine if he said, “All the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and all the people who believe they can earn salvation, whether liberal Protestants or Roman Catholics, and all the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses—you’re all going to eternal hell. But I care about you so much, I want to give you the gospel of Jesus Christ, because it is far more important than wars in the Middle East, terrorism, or any domestic policy.” You can’t be faithful and popular, so take your pick.”

― John MacArthur

“The gospel confronts man and exposes him for what he really is. It ignores the disappointment that he feels. It offers him no relief from the struggles of being human. Rather it goes to the profound and eternal issue of the fact that he is damned and desperately needs to be rescued. Only death can accomplish rescue, but God, in His mercy, has provided a Substitute.”

― John MacArthur

“C. S. Lewis, who called pride “the great sin,” and “spiritual cancer,” wrote: It is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began . . . Pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God. In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God.1”

― John MacArthur

“I think about this when I watch those frantic, overdressed evangelists on television, raving and promising people power. Then people in the crowd, in a mindless acquiescence to an altered state of consciousness—wanting so desperately to get the power that they’ll do anything the speaker suggests—fall over in a faint. It’s a sad situation when people want the power more than they want the Person. No one on earth can have the power of Jesus Christ to do what He did, and anybody who promises otherwise is lying. God granted the power of Jesus Christ only to the apostles and those who followed in the apostolic age to establish His messiahship. You will never have the power to heal the sick or raise the dead, walk on water, or cast out demons. But anyone can be saved who believes in Him.”

― John MacArthur

“It’s pretty overwhelming to grasp that God has used a frail, human, clay pot as His means of saving others. But the reward goes even beyond that. Look at Matthew 10:41: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” That’s a tremendous divine principle. By the way, a prophet is what he says, and a righteous man is what he is, so the two really speak of the same individual. A true disciple lives what he says. He speaks the gospel truth, and he lives righteously. When you go out representing God by your life and your lips, by your speaking and your living, those who receive you will receive the reward that you receive. This could be true of a pastor, a teacher, a missionary, an evangelist, or anyone who represents Christ; the one who receives that one will share that one’s reward. If the Lord gives me a reward for proclaiming to you, He’ll give you the same reward for receiving what I proclaim. We all share. You want to be a blessing in the world? Then confess Christ before men! Stand up boldly, and don’t mitigate your testimony; don’t be ashamed of Christ. Don’t water down the truth. And let your life become the source of their reward. Then a disciple is a person who determines destiny. Even the least of us shares with the greatest of us in what God does in blessing us.”

― John MacArthur

“we will not manipulate people to get the desired superficial results, because we know, as 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 affirms, that “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.” The problem is not the seed, it’s the soil. It’s the unreceptive, barren condition of the human heart. Paul said he would not use words and techniques that manipulated the results, because he understood that when people don’t believe, it is because they are in the condition of spiritual deadness. They are perishing and blind, thanks to Satan. If our gospel is veiled to someone, it is veiled because that person, like all sinners, is unable to understand. Changing the message, manipulating the emotions or the will, is useless, since no one can believe unless God grants him understanding. Nothing is wrong with the message. Nothing can be. It is God’s Word! How could we be so brash as to change it? If they don’t hear the truth, cool music won’t help. If they don’t see the light, Power-Point won’t help. If they don’t like the message, drama and video won’t help. They’re blind and dead. Our task is to go on preaching not ourselves, not our manipulated message, but repentance and submission to Christ Jesus as Lord. The message never changes. We may be nothing more than baked dirt, but we carry a supernatural message of everlasting life that we will not surrender.”

― John MacArthur

“We’re not concerned with the temporal and transient. Our success isn’t measured in hours, or even centuries. Our focus is fixed on eternity. The gospel is hard to believe, and the people who bring it to the world are nobodies. The plan is still the same for all who are God’s clay pots. To summarize, here is Paul’s humble, five-point strategy: We will not lose heart. We will not alter the message. We will not manipulate the results, because we understand that a profound spiritual reality is at work in those who do not believe. We will not expect popularity, and therefore, we will not be disappointed. And we will not be concerned with visible and earthly success but devote our efforts toward that which is unseen and eternal.”

― John MacArthur

“In 2 Corinthians 4:6-7, Paul wrote, “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” And that brings us full circle to where we started in this chapter: at the end of the day there is no human explanation for the growth of the church. The world thinks we’re odd and bizarre. We’re the losers. We’re the privy pots. And yet, through the mouths of Paul and other misfits across the centuries, the church inexplicably moves in the history of the world with immense power beyond anything else. The gospel alone turns sinners into saints by transplanting men and women from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son—from eternal death to everlasting life. That is power to create new beings fit for God’s presence and glory. If we brought a bus load of movie stars, corporate titans, or Ivy League professors into our church (assuming they’d condescend to get on a bus), they’d look at us and laugh: “These people can’t change the world!” No, we can’t. But for those who remain faithful to the whole truth of Christianity, God is changing the world through us. He’s been doing it through all history.”

― John MacArthur

“Apart from hypocrites, there are two categories of the deceived in the church: the superficial and the involved. The superficial are the ones who call themselves Christians because, when they were little, they went to church or Sunday school, they got confirmed, or they “made a decision” for Christ. You may have heard someone, when he is getting baptized, say, “I received Christ when I was twelve, but my life was a mess after that, and now I want to get back to the faith.” The truth probably is that he never received Christ at all when he was twelve. He went through some superficial religious activity and was deceived into thinking he was saved as a result. The involved who are deceived are a much more subtle and serious group. They’re immersed in the activities of the church, up to their necks. They know the gospel and biblical theology, but they don’t obey the Word of God.”

― John MacArthur

“It’s not at all surprising that Luke 4:28 says the people in the synagogue, “when they heard these things, were filled with wrath.” Nothing is worse than spiritual pride, because it is a barrier people selfishly put up that separates them from their own salvation. The Lord had said, “You know I come to save, and this is it. But I can save only the poor, the prisoners, the blind, and the oppressed. It doesn’t matter whether one is a Gentile woman or a Syrian leper. It just matters that he sees his bankruptcy and destitution, and he comes to Me like the hated tax collector who pounded his guilt-ridden chest and cried: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13), or the man who said, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ (Mark 9:24). He may not know everything there is to know, and his faith may not be full, but if he will just come in his desperation and say, ‘I don’t have a choice. I see what I am, and I see what You can do for me,’ then he will know I am the Messiah.”

― John MacArthur

“It always comes to this, though not so violently. There’s only one reason why people who know the truth of the gospel are not willing to repent and believe. It is because they will not see themselves as the poor, prisoners, blind, and oppressed. It has nothing to do with the style of music your church offers, the drama and skits you stage, or the quality of your laser light show. It has everything to do with the spiritual deadness and blindness of pride. God offers nothing to people who are content with their own condition, except judgment. If you don’t think you are headed for hell, don’t think you need forgiveness, you put no value on the gospel of grace.”

― John MacArthur

“It means absolutely nothing to profess Christ if your life doesn’t back it up. That’s why Peter said that if you can’t add virtue to your faith, you’re not going to know if you’re actually redeemed (see 2 Pet. 1:5-11?). That’s what James meant when he said faith minus works equals zero (see James 2:17). The kind of “faith” that makes a verbal profession while the heart continues to pursue sin is no true faith at all. I think the epitome of taking the Lord’s name in vain is not using His name as an expletive on the streets, but claiming Christ when He isn’t yours.”

― John MacArthur

“Paul suffered and struggled mightily in the service of his faith. Perhaps you could argue that he simply wasn’t the best example after which to model our own behavior. What if we look at the ultimate example of a Christian teacher and expositor, Christ Himself? Surely then we’ll see how to handle this unappealing message of a crucified Savior whom only the dregs of society preached. Surely at last we’ll see a glimmer of success. But by worldly standards, when Jesus began preaching His own gospel in His own hometown, He was an even more spectacular failure than Paul! This episode in Jesus’ life is one of the most gripping and powerful portions of the Bible. His words in Scripture capture the shock and emotion of the moment, and they still stun us with their power and their force. The riveting drama begins in Luke 4, verses 16 through 21: So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Imagine going to church next Sunday, expecting to hear your pastor preaching, and having the Lord Jesus Christ appear in person to tell you that He had come to fulfill all the prophecies of His second coming—all the prophecies of the glory of His kingdom of salvation on earth! Imagine that you had gone that morning, and Jesus was standing in the pulpit to tell you that the time was now for the fulfillment of all divine promises connected to His return. Well, that’s something like what the Jews in the Nazareth synagogue experienced that day. They had attended that synagogue all their lives, and they had heard reading after reading of the Torah, the Law, and the Haftarah, the prophets, and sermon after sermon on Sabbath after Sabbath throughout their lifetimes. They had heard much teaching about the Messiah, and they had been reading many Scriptures about His coming and kingdom. But all of a sudden, on this Sabbath in the year A.D. 28, in an obscure synagogue in a nothing blue-collar town called Nazareth, He was there!”

― John MacArthur

“I’ve read and reread William Tyndale, David Daniells’s substantial biography. Thomas More was a great defender of Roman Catholicism in England, and he felt himself the servant of God in taking on William Tyndale and doing everything he could to destroy his work. Tyndale did what More thought was an absolutely horrible thing: he translated the Bible into a language people could read, in defiance of the Catholic hierarchy of the time. They were afraid the church would lose its influence if any common person off the street, and not just the official interpreters of the church who knew Latin, could read and understand the Bible. More’s contemporaries relentlessly persecuted him, forcing him to live in exile with the knowledge that if he went back to England, his enemies would kill him, as they were killing the people who read his New Testament. Eventually they hunted him down, then imprisoned and executed him in France. His crime? Translating the Bible into English.”

― John MacArthur

“Jesus was trying to get the Pharisees to come off of their proud, high tower and see the spiritual bankruptcy in their own lives. The Pharisees had no regard for spirituality of soul, purity of heart, integrity of behavior, or obedience to God, and they were building their big spiritual structure on sand. Sure, they prayed and fasted and gave alms, but they did so only to impress God, to parade their supposed spirituality, and to enhance their reputations. They had a religion of externals; that is a religion of sand.”

― John MacArthur

“The true, exclusive, narrow gospel is hard enough to believe as it is. But to make things worse, from the start those promoting it were rejected people who had no standing or respect in society, like Paul, who preached this foolish message faithfully. The people proclaiming the most important and hard-to-believe truth are generally the ones the world despises, belittles, and ignores. In A.D. 178, Celsus wrote that Christians were the most vulgar and uneducated people around. No wonder. In 1 Corinthians 1:26—29, Paul told us that was by divine design. God has purposely chosen the foolish, the nonintellectuals to shame the wise: For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”

― John MacArthur

“I read a story years ago that claimed to be about the most insignificant person ever born. His mother wrote his name on the birth certificate as Nosmo King. Somebody asked the mother where she got a name like that. It turned out the mother was illiterate, so she just copied down the No Smoking sign in the room and wrote it “Nosmo King.” There is the ultimate nothing person, named after a No Smoking sign. If you speak the hard gospel of Jesus Christ, you may be pegged as one of the Nosmo Kings of the world: a loser, a nobody. Verse 28 of 1 Corinthians 1 says God has chosen things that are “despised,” exoutheneo, considered nothing. Christians are about as low as you can go. We are “the things which are not,” literally “the nonexistent ones.” It’s human nature to want to be somebody. So the Lord decided to do it a different way, choosing as His messengers the impotent, nonintellectual nobodies whom the world considers nothing by its standards.”

― John MacArthur

“When I look back in history at great generals who risked their troops and their own lives for victory, or at scientists who shut themselves up in their laboratories for months or even years, trying to discover something we now take for granted, or at a missionary who burned his life out by the time he was thirty, trying to get the gospel to some people in a foreign land, I remind myself that this is the mark of greatness. If the desire for comfort is always diverting you, if you can’t take pain and you’ve always got to find the easy way, then you’ll never know what greatness is.”

― John MacArthur

John MacArthur

John F. MacArthur, Jr. is a fifth-generation preacher who serves as a pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. He is also a prolific author, conference speaker, and is president of The Master's College and Seminary. MacArthur received a B.A. from Los Angeles Pacific College, his M.Div. from Talbot Theological Seminary, Litt.D. at Grace Graduate School, and D.D. from Talbot Theological Seminary. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, he regularly teaches Expository Preaching at the seminary and frequently speaks in chapel.

MacArthur's pulpit ministry has been extended around the globe through his media ministry, Grace to You, and its satellite offices in Australia, Canada, Europe, India, New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa. In addition to producing daily radio programs for nearly 2,000 English and Spanish radio outlets worldwide, Grace to You distributes books, software, audiotapes, and CDs by John MacArthur. In thirty-six years of ministry, Grace to You has distributed more than thirteen million CDs and audiotapes.

John Fullerton MacArthur, Jr. is a United States evangelical writer and minister, noted for his radio program entitled Grace to You. MacArthur is a fifth-generation pastor, a popular author and conference speaker and has served as the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969, and as the President of The Master's College (and the related The Master's Seminary) in Santa Clarita, California.

Theologically, MacArthur is a conservative far-right Baptist, a strong proponent of expository preaching, a dispensationalist and a self-described Calvinist. He has been acknowledged by Christianity Today as one of the most influential preachers of his time, and is a frequent guest on Larry King Live as representative of an evangelical Christian perspective.

MacArthur has authored or edited more than 150 books, most notably the MacArthur Study Bible, which has sold more than 1 million copies and received a Gold Medallion Book Award. Other best-selling books include his MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series (more than 1 million copies), Twelve Ordinary Men, (more than 500,000 copies), and the children's book A Faith to Grow On, which garnered an ECPA Christian Book Award.

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