Mark Dever Quotes

“A healthy church is not a church that's perfect and without sin. It has not figured everything out. Rather, it's a church that continually strives to take God's side in the battle against the ungodly desires and deceits of the world, our flesh, and the devil. It's a church that continually seeks to conform itself to God's Word.”

— Mark Dever

“The first step toward the one true God is to acknowledge that we are not that God.”

— Mark Dever

“Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity.”

— Mark Dever

“What about for your church? What boundaries has the gospel overrun that society fiercely respects?”

— Mark Dever

We are humble because we know we are not the power in salvation. We are obedient because we know we possess the light.

— Mark Dever

“Again, we are humble because we know we are not the power to change the heart. But we are obedient because we know we are the necessary means ordained by our sovereign God by which the light comes to those in darkness.”

— Mark Dever

“The truly changed, truly converted, truly Christian heart can say with John Newton, I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. Yet I can truly say, I am not what I once was. By the grace of God, I am what I am.”

— Mark Dever

“We cannot finally judge the correctness of what we do in evangelism by the immediate response that we see. It is important to understand this truth, because a failure to understand it can distract well-meaning churches into pragmatic, results-oriented endeavors and it can transform pastors into neurotic people-manipulators.”

— Mark Dever

Ultimately, discipling involves living out the whole Christian life before others.

— Mark Dever

“Evangelism is not a making of proselytes; it is not persuading people to make a decision; it is not proving that God exists, or making a good case for the truth of Christianity; it is not inviting someone to a meeting; it is not exposing the contemporary dilemma, or arousing interest in Christianity; it is not wearing a badge saying "Jesus Saves"! Some of these things are right and good in their place, but none of them should be confused with evangelism. To evangelize is to declare on the authority of God what he has done to save sinners, to warn men of their lost condition, to direct them to repent, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

— Mark Dever

“Too often Christians today have only two gears on their theological bike: essential and unimportant. If something is not essential for salvation, it is treated as unimportant and therefore dismissable. But the Bible presents us with a number of matters that are not essential for salvation but which nonetheless are important, even necessary, for obedience to God's Word.”

— Mark Dever

“It is only in the context of understanding something of God's character, of his righteousness and perfection, that we begin to understand the tremendous nature of saying that God truly is love, and his love has a depth, texture, fullness, and beauty to it that we, in our present state, can only begin to wonder at.”

— Mark Dever

“Everything teaches, whether you intend it to or not. The songs teach people doctrine and proper affections for God. Your prayers (or lack of them) teach people how to pray themselves. The kinds of prayers you pray (or don't pray) teach people about the important differences between prayers of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. The way you administer the ordinances teaches people about their meaning, and even the very meaning of the Gospel. Your preaching teaches people how to study and use the Bible appropriately. Everything from the call to worship to the benediction counts as teaching. Teaching is everything.”

— Mark Dever

“The church has not been given authority to make commandments; it is the duty of the church to obey the commandments already made. It is not the prerogative nor the privilege of any church to modify, minimize or in any way obscure . . . any commandment, of Jesus Christ.8”

— Mark Dever

“Membership is the church's corporate endorsement of a person's salvation.”

— Mark Dever

Pride causes us to care more about what our non-Christian friends think of us than what God will do to them in their sin.

— Mark Dever

“Avoiding the doctrine of Hell is one step away from denying it altogether.”

— Mark Dever

“When a person becomes a Christian, he doesn't just join a local church because it's a good habit for growing in spiritual maturity. He joins a local church because it's the expression of what Christ has made him-a member of the body of Christ.”

— Mark Dever

“A gospel that in no way offends the sinner has not been understood.”

— Mark Dever

“Friend, the church finds its life as it listens to the Word of God. It finds its purpose as it lives out and displays the Word of God. The church's job is to listen and then to echo.”

— Mark Dever

“Your plans are fine, as long as you realize God has the right to change them.”

— Mark Dever

We are called to love others. We share the gospel because we love people. And we don't share the gospel because we don't love people. Instead, we wrongly fear them. We don't want to cause awkwardness. We want their respect, and after all, we figure, if we try to share the gospel with them, we'll look foolish! And so we are quiet. We protect our pride at the cost of their souls. In the name of not wanting to look weird, we are content to be complicit in their being lost.

— Mark Dever

“Christian proclamation might make the gospel audible, but Christians living together in local congregations make the gospel visible (see John 13:34-35). The church is the gospel made visible.”

— Mark Dever

“Christians are defined not by our heritage, but by our mission; not by our blood, but by His.”

— Mark Dever

Our examples of enduring hardship are often more powerful than our stories of success and triumph.

— Mark Dever

“God's Word has always been His chosen instrument to create, convict, convert, and conform His people.”

— Mark Dever

“The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel.”

— Mark Dever

“The gospel of Christ has never needed the gimmicks of man to effect conversion in the soul”

— Mark Dever

“T]he church is not a place. It's not a building. It's not a preaching point. It's not a spiritual service provider. It's a people - the new covenant, blood-bought people of God. That's why Paul said, 'Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her' (Eph. 5:25). He didn't give himself up for a place, but for a people.”

— Mark Dever

“Humility is not an 'added extra,' one of the lesser Christian virtues. If you don't have humility, you may be lost.”

— Mark Dever

“We are all called to initiate involvement in each other's lives ... We covenant together to work and pray for unity, to walk together in love, to exercise care and watchfulness over each other, to faithfully admonish and entreat one another as occasion may require, to assemble together, to pray for each other, to rejoice and to bear with each other, and to pray for God's help in all this.”

— Mark Dever

“Forgetfulness of God's grace is one of the greatest tools in the enemy's war against our souls.”

— Mark Dever

“If you have no interest in actually committing yourself to an actual group of gospel-believing, Bible-teaching Christians, you might question whether you belong to the body of Christ at all!”

— Mark Dever

“God's eternal plan has always been to display his glory not just through individuals but through a corporate body.”

— Mark Dever

Today is what the Lord has prepared you for.

— Mark Dever

Prayer is the preview of God's action.

— Mark Dever

“We do live best in this world when we keep the next in mind.”

— Mark Dever

If you think that the gospel is all about what we can do, that the practice of it is optional, and that conversion is simply something that anyone can choose at any time, then I'm concerned that you'll think of evangelism as nothing more than a sales job where the prospect is to be won over to sign on the dotted line by praying a prayer, followed by an assurance that he is the proud owner of salvation.

— Mark Dever

“As long as quick numerical growth remains the primary indicator of church health, the truth will be compromised. Instead, churches must once again begin measuring success not in terms of numbers but in terms of fidelity to the Scriptures.”

— Mark Dever

“I'll tell you what's more important than all the commentaries in your library: prayer.”

— Mark Dever

“Unbelief is like gravity, it's always pulling down on the authority of Scripture.”

— Mark Dever

“Suffering can serve us. Suffering tests our trust in God's promises. And we have a great interest in knowing the truth about our trust in Him.”

— Mark Dever

“Sin claims to free but in fact it kills.”

— Mark Dever

“Our fears lie to us about how important they are.”

— Mark Dever

“A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It's not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn't devise it.”

— Mark Dever

“By the grace of God I am what I am”

— Mark Dever

“Do you want to know that your new life is real? Commit yourself to a local group of saved sinners. Try to love them. Don't just do it for three weeks. Don't just do it for six months. Do it for years. And I think you'll find out, and others will, too, whether or not you love God. The truth will show itself”

— Mark Dever

“If you are not a member of the church you regularly attend, you may well be going to hell.”

— Mark Dever

For a Christian, our fears about the future are rooted in those places where our will differs from God's will.

— Mark Dever

“Discipling involves instruction and imitation.”

— Mark Dever