“There was, I think, a widespread perception that John is a preacher and not really a personal shepherd,” Johnson said. “But that wasn’t true. It’s just that he didn’t trumpet all the little things like that that he did to reach people.”
Johnson continued to share a story that was told to him by “Left Behind” author Jerry Jenkins about a “situation where a woman at Grace Church phoned John and said, ‘My husband is being unfaithful to me.’”
“How do you know?” MacArthur asked the woman. She answered, “Well, his car is parked right in front of the house of the woman he’s having an affair with.”
Johnson said that MacArthur then asked her for the information: “John called, and the guy who was having this affair, for some reason, answered the phone in this woman’s house.”
MacArthur told the man, “This is your pastor,” before asking if the man was “being unfaithful to your wife?”
After admitting to the affair, MacArthur told the man to stay there because he was going to drive over and pick him up. Johnson said that MacArthur “drove over, picked that guy up, took him back, worked with him, [and] discipled him.”
MacArthur, without giving away the person’s name, later shared that the man was “here at Grace Church, faithful and serving, and all of that is past history that the Lord has forgiven, and he has a healthy marriage now.”
As he concluded the story, Johnson said, “John did all that sort of stuff. I mean, he did more hospital visitation than than practically anybody could ever appreciate. And he was really good at it.” Johnson said that MacArthur was “the most gentle, gracious person I’ve ever dealt with.”
 pastors Phil Johnson and Mike Riccardi shared some of John MacArthur's last words before he died on July 14.){kind=link}