The Church Quotes

“Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“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, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“Too often Christians today have only two gears on their theological bike: essential and unimportant.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“People can creatively devise how to approach a mute God, but they must listen to a speaking God.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“In Scripture, God tells us how we should approach him in public worship. We read the Bible, sing the Bible, preach the Bible, pray the Bible, and see the Bible (in baptism and the Lord's Supper).”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“In many ways a church is simply a group of people who are living lives of love (John 13:34–35) because they all agree on how they have been loved in Christ.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“By direct command, example, implication, or principles, God's Word tells us everything we need to know about every aspect of following him in life—from dating to marriage, from working to grieving, from evangelizing to eating. What should churches do? The answer is in the Bible.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“As in every other topic, our regular practice as Christians should be to seek God's will in his Word, either by explicit command or by reasoning from principles in the Word. We want to see that the answer is in the Bible.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“This book attempts to provide such careful instruction so that we might understand and recover faithfulness to God's Word on something that is not essential for salvation but that is both important and necessary for obedience—what the local church is to be and to do.”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“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, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“The church arises only from the gospel. And a distorted church usually coincides with a distorted gospel. Whether it leads to such distortions or results from them, serious departures from the Bible's teaching about the church normally signify other, more central misunderstandings about the Christian faith.3”
― Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

“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, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible