Let me start by saying that I really admire John MacArthur as a Bible teacher. I’ve read more of his books and his teaching is usually solid. This book, The Truth About the Lordship of Christ is no exception, but it does suffer from some serious shortcomings.

First of all, it seems to lack cohesion. There’s a lot of truth and important truth at that, but I missed an overall theme or a bigger line that connected all the dots. In the book info it said that the book was compiled from previously published materials from his other books, so that could be the main reason for the lack of cohesiveness. A little bit more editing and writing some connecting paragraphs would have done wonders I think.

As a result, the supposed central theme of the Lordship of Christ is there, but barely visible. With some reasoning, you can deduct what for instance assurance of salvation has to do with God’s sovereignty, but the argument is made implicitly.

A second issue is that many important theological issues and viewpoints are merely touched upon, or are described so densely that every sentence has to be studied and pondered. A little extra information or reasoning would have been welcome in many instances.

A third objection I had was that there was also a lot of ‘familiar’ content, especially for Christians who’ve been around for a while. Some passages were repetitive inside the book, others were about well known stuff like sanctification and salvation.

That being said, I did like the content and the viewpoints MacArthur presents here. He is radical as ever, for instance denouncing the reformed viewpoint some people hold that God hates sinners.

He also makes a solid case against ‘false’ conversions and digs into what constitutes a true disciple. Although this line of reasoning isn’t always clear (it lacks a clear numbering for instance), he does get his point across that discipleships has certain ‘marks’.

He also states very clearly the cost of following Christ, for instance rejection en division, even within families. That alone is a message the church needs to hear far more often.

All in all, I found truth and wisdom in this book, but not as much and not as clear as I had hoped. It’s a good introduction for people who want to get a basic overview, but for those who want to dig deeper on this topic, they’d either have to do extra reading themselves as an addition, or find another book.

(This book was provided to me free of charge by Booksneeze, in return for an honest review).