Life Wins- On the Passing of John Barros

I’m not shy about the term hero. I have many of them, not because my standards are low. It’s not that I misapply the term, using it as a synonym for “someone I admire.” It is rather that a. I’ve been blessed to know quite a few heroic people and b. I am deeply grateful for them. I enter into the hero relationship.

Many of my heroes are, if not famous, at least widely known. My father is my first hero. Sinclair Ferguson is another. John Gerstner is a hero. The circles in which John Barros is well known are small indeed. Among those who minister outside abortion mills, bringing the gospel to the very gates of hell, John is Muhammad Ali, the greatest of all time. His tender care floated like a butterfly; his convicting clarity stung like a bee. God used John to rescue multiple thousands of children whose parents arrived at Orlando Women’s Center intent on snuffing them out.

God also used John to bring in His elect from that particular corner of the world. Many of these were the mothers of the babies that were saved. John was a hero, less because he stood up for the unborn but more because he knelt down before the once dead, Jesus of Nazareth.

For two decades John served not as a protester but as a herald of the good news in the darkest place on earth. He had no great theological education, though he was sound and careful. He had no golden voice nor the rhetorical gifts of Steve Brown. All he had was all his audience needed, the gospel. He had it, and brought it, precisely because he knew he needed it.

When I visited him a few weeks before his passing he greeted me, told me he loved me and asked me to preach the gospel to him. When I was with him just days ago, though he was unable to ask me to do so, I preached that same gospel to him again, reminded him again that he is my hero, and that I love him.

None of which gets to the deepest part of his heroism. John was a hero, like Paul, because he walked the path of his Hero, Jesus. Jesus loved John, who was in himself unlovely. John loved the staff and the clientele of the clinic who are themselves unlovely. John loved unlovely me. John, in short, was captured by the gospel.

It was a profound moment to be there when he passed through the veil. I reminded the gathered that whatever changes glorification might bring, it wouldn’t make John stop being John. And that meant that we ought not to say, “he loved us” but “he loves us.” Lisa and I, in turn, will not say, “we loved him” but “we love him.”

Jesus wins, always and everywhere. His servant John was a powerful weapon on our Lord’s hands, all because John rested in those same, scarred hands. We mourn with this great hope- Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.