Lots of people seem to react to the story by finding fault with MacArthur.
In fact, some seem to be more concerned with his supposed fault in asking this woman to burn her book of prostitution clients than the fact that she was prostituting.
Another possible choice could have been to turn it over to the police. (I’m not saying she should have. Just pointing out that there are more than 2 options here.)
Acts 25:11 NKJV
For if I am an offender, or have committed anything deserving of death, I do not object to dying; but if there is nothing in these things of which these men accuse me, no one can deliver me to them. I appeal to Caesar.”
Romans 13:3 NKJV
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.
Maybe the problem was her needing deliverance from demons. Jesus did not just forgive Mary Magdelene. He cast the demons out of her.
Mark 16:9 NKJV
Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.
Maybe she just needed to go through a little more painful consequences of the life she was living.
John 5:14 NKJV
Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”
I’ll be glad to accept such criticism of MacArthur from someone who can honestly claim, with God as witness, that they have personally led prostitutes to Christ who completely reformed their lives, and went on to become godly wives and mothers. I would not be surprised if MacArthur has numerous such testimonies during his years of ministry.
I’ve ministered to a number of prostitutes. One I bought a meal for and shared Christ with was a very beautiful young woman, other than the track marks on her legs. She was a heroin addict. She shared that she had begun her journey into drugs and prostitution as a teenager who got pregnant and had a mother who forced her to have an abortion. She turned to drugs to cope with the pain of this. Being pretty, she had plenty of men who would help to support her addiction in exchange for sex.
I offered to put her in touch with a Christian ministry who would help her with a place to live, food, and addiction recovery. She wanted help but was unwilling at that time to accept the real help she needed. She preferred the “easy” life of working at strip clubs and prostituting.
The Bible is explicitly clear that prostitutes and the men who go in to them will NOT inherit the kingdom of God. Numerous scriptures back this up. Many warnings are given not to let anyone deceive us concerning such matters. Anyone who suggests that this woman or any woman (or man) can be a believer and also engage in prostitution is a liar, a deceiver (including the self-deceived), and a false teacher. The Bible speaks with the harshest language, of the harshest penalties in this life and the world to come for those who do not repent of this, and this means fully break from it.
I Corinthians 6:15-20 NKJV
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
Ephesians 5:3-6 NKJV
But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Revelation 2:20-23 NKJV
Nevertheless I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. And I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works.
I find it quite ironic that so many people ooze with compassion for the prostitute in this story and feel MacArthur is just too harsh and demanding. Yes, the woman is a victim of sin and the Devil. Yes, she needs compassion. But what MacArthur gave her is compassion. Lying to someone by telling them their sin is no danger to them is not compassionate.
Hopefully, no one here would advise a murdering, abusive, violent, drug-dealing pimp that he could receive Jesus into his life without an immediate break with his illegal and immoral lifestyle.
This woman was engaged in a life that not only destroyed herself, but it destroyed the men who were her customers, the wives of men who were her customers, and the children from the broken homes that this behavior caused.
I’ve heard people say to hate the sin and love the sinner. Fine. But don’t leave out the proper attitude toward the sin. It matters.
Jesus gave His life to save sinners like this woman and me. He didn’t give His life so we could escape the consequences of sin and yet remain living in sin.
As I said, we have to interpret this matter from the very spare account provided us by John MacArthur. In this minimalist account, nothing is really explained. There are no details.
Why did this woman feel desperate? What things did they talk about? What else was said about her life and circumstances, and that book? Did MacArthur offer her any help, including further counseling?
And, again, this woman is being talked about, and she isn’t heard from.
With so many unanswered questions, then, we’re left to just take MacArthur’s account and conclusions about the woman as “Gospel truth.”
And that is really an offense against God — His truth and justice.
It’s not that MacArthur necessarily meant to do her wrong, to whatever extent he did here. And this is from 1993.
It’s that to judge people — especially including their hearts and motives — is perilous and questionable enough, and to do so without presenting sufficient evidence does put “the judge” in the wrong. And to immediately devise a “performance test” for a prostitute who’s taken steps to approach a pastor with her sinful situation, that’s quite questionable without offering any real evidence for the spiritual appropriateness of it all.
It’s as though MacArthur conducted a brief, one-sided trial here, with really no evidence, and found this woman guilty.
When someone — even a mature Christian — tells us similar bare bones stories about people, along with their own judgments on them, are we really just to unquestioningly accept them?
No, we’re not.
MacArthur rendered a judgment here on this woman’s spiritual sincerity at that moment, finding her insincere, and even apparently devised an extra Biblical test of his own making that she had to pass to his satisfaction right then and there for him to declare her faith sincere and genuine. He’s not Jesus, who knows her intimately because he’s God. One could credibly wonder if this episode was a mild formal of spiritual abuse
In any case, the evidence for MacArthur’s judgments here has to be genuinely considered. That’s our duty to the Lord, more so even than it is to that woman.
Maybe it is true that she wasn’t sincere. But from the account he provided, he nowhere near conclusively proved it to his readers.
Now, anyone can look at what he told us and say, “she’s guilty of the terrible sin of prostitution, and so on the matter of her sincerity, I’d say she was ‘credibly accused.’ That’s enough evidence for me to find her guilty of insincerity, too.”
But that is being indifferent to God’s will for us to uphold truth and justice.
And no, I’m not in any way making liignt of her sin, or the seriousness of sexual sin. I repented of lesbianism because I love and believe the Lord
Our worldly society has promoted and reveled in sexual sin to Satanic, Hellish levels, and the Laodicean church today participates in that culture to a considerable extent. I used to say often that I’m “almost Amish,” and that’s still the case. The entertainments, hobbies, material things I’ve happily left behind for the Lord. But I seek to have understanding and appropriate compassion and humility for the the grip that the world generally has many people today.
I have to say, too, that quite often many in the church lord over their “social inferiors,” like prostitutes, homeless people, and the low-income. — including in ministries where they serve them.
It’s as though many church people recognize themselves as sinful creatures inferior to their Creator when considering God, and give thanks to and worship Him, but then feel so superior to the groups mentioned that they regard themselves as God over them by comparison and expect to be regarded that way. And I have to say, too, that I don’t say that lightly. As I’ve said, I’ve been both low-income and homeless, and I’ve experienced and witnessed that happening a great many times, including that “superior church people” are entitled to make snap judgments, with carte blanche freedom, against people in those groups. It’s like, such spiritually drunken power trips and playing God, with whatever amount of respect for the truth one feels like having, are actually okay when dealing with such people. Perhaps because it can be like a nice break from reality to be able to so comfortably sit in judgment on at least some people. There’s a spirit, too, of “these people are so unrighteous and so unimportant that getting any facts right about them and giving them the due consideration that you’d give any human being isn’t worth my time.”
When homeless, I’ve often told Christians in churches and ministries in real life that I have a strong relationship with the Lord and that the Lord has had me low-income and sometimes homeless to have me accomplish some things and minister to others, and these things can’t be done otherwise. For the most part, church people have refused to even consider that could be true. Just as the Creator-creature relationship is absolute, unquestionable, so they seem to be confident that they have to absolutely be spiritually far superior to me. Some I’ve sometimes gotten to know, and we’ll seem to have fellowship until out of the blue they try to pin some unrighteousness on me.
God knows how hard I’ve worked in my life, including working very hard at menial jobs despite being a gifted from Him with a lot of intelligence and having a bachelor’s degree. Given so many circumstances and experiences in my life, starting with my childhood, I could have simply gone for disability for psychological reasons decades ago. But as a Christian, if I could work, even if out of place at a menial job, that would be the right thing to do. And that’s what I did until I developed as a middle-aged woman physical problems that interfered with my ability to work, and I had no human support system, no natural family or church family.
While homeless, I met a couple young women who went around ministering. I got to know them some. They liked talking to me about spiritual things.
Yet despite me telling them of my physical problems and situation, more than once they tried to accuse me of “not working.” “If you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat.” “Just go and get a job at a restaurant downtown. There’s a lot of them.”
These two young women, in their twenties, came from solidly upper middle class families. They felt quite comfortable saying that to me despite all I’d told them about my life and medical problems. Does the truth matter?
God knows how devoted I am to Him and to His work. His passion is to save souls. Like some people are consumed with a sports team, always thinking about how they have to do this or that in order to win, I’m always thinking about how every little thing I do can best serve His cause. When I worked at menial jobs, I spent my free time serving Him in any way I could, and at my jobs worked as if He were my boss.
The First Great Commandment is basically to love and serve Him with everything we have, and that’s how I want to live. And anyone near me who is genuinely, through Christ, seeking truth can and would easily, before too long, find that out.
Once, I mentioned to these two women something like that I needed to stop at my storage unit for extra clothes since I was sleeping outside at that time, and it felt cold at night. One replied, “It’s not cold right now. It’s 60 degrees at night.” They’d often try to find fault, pick at and pounce on things I said. Sixty degrees is cold if a thermostat is set at that, and even in July when it’s 95 during the daytime,most people sleeping outside that I knew of used some type of cover. I ended up giving my winter coat in July to a man who had lost his blanket. But that woman was so haughty with me, I felt like telling her these things would make no difference to her.
One day I also met a Christian man who said he went around evangelizing to homeless people. I told him that I was a Christian myself and had a close relationship to the Lord. He told me he thought homeless people were cursed. I started to tell him how the ungodly culture made it more difficult for less able people to be godly. “You’re making my case for me,” he said. Then I asked him if he thought more well off and successful people in our Era were truly blessed since prosperity was causing people to abandon faith in God and the church to mostly be overcome by worldliness. He didn’t have an answer for that.
But he did want me to prove to him I was a genuine Christian. “Oh, so did you read the Bible today?” “Yes.” “Which chapters?” I told him the four I’d read. “That’s pretty good.”Like I said, it’s taken as an absolute that, spiritually, he’s a superior judge over me. And I could mention so many other similar examples with other Christians.