MacArthur’s courage to speak Scripture’s truth, no matter the audience, should be commended.
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
“The Church exists to tell anyone and everyone who knocks on her door wondering what’s inside: Come and see” (pg. 58). Such reminders make The Church a worthwhile read.

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The Gospel is our freedom from sin. It is Christ in the mirror, Christ for me and for you.
The more that we hear the law, the more we recognize others as those who, like us, are torn and tattered by the wounds of sin and brokenness.
We take what we perceive to be freedom and turn it into a new credo, a new law, an idol to be lifted up and lived out.
It’s been my experience that All Saints’ Day, celebrated on November 1st and observed on the first Sunday following, gets overshadowed by the celebration of Reformation Day.
On this day, the church remembers all the saints who have gone before us.
The striking truth of this festival is not that the church remembers the saints who have gone before us, even though we rightly chime the bells and speak the names of those who in the past year have flown away (Ps. 90:10). The real joy of this day is that those who have departed are counted together with us as the church and we are counted together with them.
But there is something far more serious and important: being reconciled to our Father in Heaven.
The Feast of the Reformation affords preachers a special opportunity to catechize on the doctrine of justification by faith. It is also a perfect week for us to read through Romans in full for our devotions. It is an opportunity to hear again those marvelous words of absolution and sins forgiven and to recognize a righteousness which is revealed apart from the Law (Rom. 3:21); our need for absolution must be very great.
So, in keeping with Mark’s focus on discipleship this Fall, your Reformation Sunday sermon on John 8 might reflect on what it means to be a disciple. As you proclaim the commands and promises of Christ, you might invite your hearers not only to believe his Word, but also to abide in it. To hear and mediate on his promises in the various ways he delivers them.
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
I am often haunted by my past. I am daily haunted by what I should be doing.
Let’s take a walk together. And as we do, I’ll tell you a mystery.