Hard to Believe: The High Cost and Infinite Value of Following Jesus is John MacArthur’s argument that the American church has made the gospel cheap, and that the Jesus of the Gospels asked for considerably more than most churches now tell people He asks for. Thomas Nelson published it in 2003. The edition linked here is a later paperback printing.
What MacArthur is actually arguing
His target is the sales pitch. He believes churches learned to present following Jesus as a low-cost upgrade to an ordinary life, and that in doing so they produced large numbers of people who think they are Christians and have never repented of anything.
Against that he sets the passages most sermons skip. Count the cost. Take up the cross. Enter through the narrow gate. Sell what you have. His case is that Jesus routinely made it harder to follow Him, not easier, and that any gospel presentation which never mentions cost is presenting a different message.
It is a bracing book, and it is meant to be uncomfortable. MacArthur does not hedge and he does not spend much time on pastoral softening.
The debate this book sits inside, which you should know about
This is not a neutral devotional. It is a contribution to a long-running argument among evangelicals usually called the Lordship salvation debate, and MacArthur is one of its principal voices.
The question is roughly this: does genuine saving faith necessarily produce obedience and perseverance, or does insisting on that add works to a gospel that is supposed to be by grace through faith alone? MacArthur holds the first position firmly. A camp usually described as free grace holds the second, and organizations in that stream have published critical reviews of this very book.
Where CalledToBetter lands is on the side of grace alone through faith alone, with the understanding that real faith is enduring faith. A person who permanently turns from Christ shows what his faith was. That is close to what MacArthur is contending for here. But it is worth saying plainly that serious Christians who take Scripture as authoritative disagree about where the line falls, and reading this book will put you inside that disagreement rather than above it. Read it knowing that.
What was wrong with this page before
Two things worth naming.
First, the search description attached to this post described a completely different book. It referred to Jesus Christ: The True Story, which is not this title. Anyone who found this page through Google was reading a summary of something else. That is fixed.
Second, the review carried a sentence in quotation marks attributed to MacArthur, a quote attributed to an unnamed reader, and a paragraph about what men in our community had experienced. None of it could be verified and it is gone. The claim that the book contains built-in discussion questions could not be confirmed either, so we are not repeating it. If you need a group study format, check the preview first.
Who should read it
A man who suspects his faith has become comfortable and wants someone to say so directly. It is also useful for anyone who came up in a church culture heavy on invitation and light on repentance, because it will name things he has probably felt and not had words for.
It is a poor fit for someone in the middle of genuine doubt or spiritual exhaustion. MacArthur’s tone here is prosecutorial, and a man who is already beaten down may hear condemnation where assurance is what he needs. There are better books for that season, and reaching for this one at the wrong time can do real damage.