Dever: Only true converts finally respond to the truth about Jesus Christ.

Teach that hope is found in Christ alone.

A pastor must teach very clearly that a person’s hope and trust must not be in who they are or what they have done, but in Jesus Christ and what he has done—that God became man in Christ, that he died on the cross as a substitute for everyone who repents and believes, that he rose again for our justification and as the first fruits of the final resurrection.

• So any idea that people can be converted through our own works must be rejected. Romans 1–3 by itself clearly destroys any such idea.

• We must confess that Jesus is the Christ and the incarnate Son of God (see 1 John 2:20–25; 3:23; 4:2–3, 9–10, 14–16; 5:5, 10–12).

• We must be clear not only about his person but about his atoning work. “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16; cf. 2:2).

• We must also be clear, over against theological liberalism, that denying the bodily resurrection of Christ, according to the Bible, is denying Christ himself. What else is Paul’s majestic 1 Corinthians 15 about?!

Without preaching salvation through Christ alone, we can make converts to fatalism or to an ethical society, as so many Protestant churches have become. But we cannot have a truly Christian church.

When we get this teaching right, we both offend and attract all the right people. The self-righteous and wrongly self-confident will be offended at such talk of a Savior, while those who know they are sinners in need of a Savior will hear the news and rejoice. Only true converts finally respond to the truth about Jesus Christ.

Mark Dever in (Jonathan Leeman et al.,) The Underestimated Gospel (Nashville, TN: B&H Books, 2014).

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