A Tribute to R.C. Sproul: A Giant of the Faith Has Gone Home

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On Thursday evening, December 14, 2017, Dr. Robert Charles Sproul entered the presence of the Lord he had spent his entire life proclaiming. He was 78 years old. After battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years, he was hospitalized on December 2 with difficulty breathing and never recovered.

This morning, as I sit down to write, the weight of that loss is still settling in. It is always a solemn thing when a man of great reputation, a man who has given so much to the Church, passes from this world to the next. And R.C. Sproul was, without question, one of the most important theologians and teachers of our generation.

In This Article

A Life Devoted to the Holiness of God

Sproul was born on February 13, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied at Westminster College, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and the Free University of Amsterdam. But it was not his credentials that made him exceptional, it was his unshakable conviction that theology matters, and that it belongs not just in the academy but in the pew.

In 1971, he founded Ligonier Ministries in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, with a simple but profound mission: to help ordinary Christians understand what they believe, why they believe it, and how to live it out. That mission never wavered. Through his daily radio broadcast Renewing Your Mindhis ministry’s Tabletalk magazine, over 300 lecture series, and more than 90 books, Sproul brought rigorous Reformed theology to millions of people who had never set foot in a seminary classroom.

His book The Holiness of God remains one of the most influential works in modern evangelical literature. It awakened an entire generation to the transcendence, majesty, and fearsome beauty of God, a God who is not the casual, familiar buddy that much of contemporary Christianity had reduced Him to, but the thrice-holy Lord before whom even the seraphim cover their faces.

What Made Sproul Different

What set R.C. Sproul apart was not merely his intellect, though his intellect was formidable. It was his rare ability to take the most profound truths of Scripture and systematic theology and make them accessible to anyone willing to listen. He could explain predestination to a truck driver and make it sing. He could walk a grandmother through the doctrine of justification by faith alone and bring her to tears of gratitude.

He was a philosopher, an apologist, a theologian, and a pastor, all at once. He debated skeptics with grace and precision. He taught the confessions and creeds of the Church as living documents, not dusty relics. And he never, not once, backed down from proclaiming the sovereignty of God over all things.

He has been described as “the greatest and most influential proponent of the recovery of Reformed theology in the last century.” That is not an exaggeration.

A Personal Reflection

For those of us in ministry who were shaped by Sproul’s teaching, his death leaves a void that will not be easily filled. His lectures on the attributes of God, on the doctrine of Scripture, on the work of Christ, these were formative. They challenged sloppy thinking. They demanded reverence. They pointed always and relentlessly to the glory of God.

I remember the first time I encountered Sproul’s teaching. It was like someone turned the lights on in a room I had been stumbling through in the dark. Here was a man who took God seriously, who treated theology not as an academic exercise but as the most important pursuit a human being could undertake. That left a mark on me that has never faded.

The Sadness and the Hope

It is always sad to see a man of such stature pass from this life. The Church is poorer for his absence. We will miss his voice, his clarity, his courage, and his unwavering commitment to the truth of Scripture.

But we grieve not as those who have no hope. R.C. Sproul spent his life teaching about the holiness of God. Now he stands in the unmediated presence of that holiness, face to face with the One he proclaimed for nearly six decades. The glory he described in lectures and books, he now beholds directly.

As he himself often reminded us, quoting the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” R.C. Sproul has entered into that “forever.”

A Challenge to Us

His passing is not merely a time for mourning, it is a time for resolve. The work that Sproul championed, the recovery of theological depth, the defense of biblical inerrancy, the proclamation of the sovereignty of God, that work is not finished. It falls now to the next generation to pick up where he left off.

May God raise up men and women who will teach with the same clarity, defend the faith with the same courage, and love the holiness of God with the same passion that R.C. Sproul did for 78 years.