After watching many National Football League games growing up, I finally grew curious enough to walk into my parents’ office and pick up the family Bible. It seemed every football broadcast included shots of someone standing in the end zone, behind and between the goal posts, holding up a simple sign: JOHN 3:16. I knew enough about the Bible to locate the Book of John in the New Testament. When I read John 3:16, I wasn’t impressed. Turns out the verse was familiar, thanks to Sunday school. I guess I expected to read some sort of decoded message that would unlock a valuable secret. In some sense that’s exactly what I read, but I didn’t yet have the eyes of faith to behold the beauty of what God has done in Jesus Christ.
Overall the list represents a nice cross-section of Scripture and tells an uplifting story of God’s work in the world. He created it (Gen. 1:1); calls us to trust and submit to him, not conform to it (Prov. 3:5-6; Rom. 12:2); loves it enough to save it (John 3:16); and commissions us to traverse all of it making disciples (Matt. 28:19). From this list we learn that when most people turn to Scripture, they’re often looking for encouragement. They cling to these verses trusting that God is working for their good (Rom. 8:28), giving them strength (Phil. 4:13), planning their hopeful future (Jer. 29:11), and calming their anxieties by answering their requests (Phil. 4:6). If nothing else, these results help those of us who regularly preach and teach the Bible understand how many Christians and even non-Christians use the Bible.
Let me mention an omission. Maybe you caught it, too. Knowing the whole Bible and not just the most-searched passages, you realize that the absence is glaring. You won’t learn from this list why God needs to redeem the world he created. You won’t learn why his love is so significant. You won’t find any warning of what’s to come if you don’t believe. In short, you won’t read about our sin and God’s wrath. Actually, you need to follow the list all the way down to #19 and #20 to find sin. At #19, 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” And #20 reads, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
If we neglect sin and the Lord’s righteous wrath, then we haven’t understood even the basics of Scripture and God’s true character. D. A. Carson writes in The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism:
The point that cannot be escaped is that God’s wrath is not some minor and easily dismissed peripheral element to the Bible’s plot-line. Theologically, God’s wrath is not inseparable from what it means to be God. Rather, his wrath is a function of his holiness as he confronts sin. But insofar as holiness is an attribute of God, and sin is the endemic condition of this world, this side of the Fall divine wrath cannot be ignored or evaded. It is not going too far to say that the Bible would not have a plot-line at all if there were no wrath.
The danger of popping into Scripture from Google is that we miss the story for the verses. Each one of these top 10 most-searched Bible verses is a beautiful, moving testament to God’s loving faithfulness. We should memorize them, sing them, copy them, and remind one another of them. But without knowing the whole story, we don’t know why we should care that God loved the world enough to give his one and only Son. Unless we know about our sin, we will surely perish in it.
Why Do So Many Young People Lose Their Faith at College?
It’s often because they’re just not ready. They may have grown up in solid Christian homes, been taught the Bible from a young age, and become faithful members of their church youth groups. But are they prepared intellectually?
New Testament professor Michael Kruger is no stranger to the assault on faith that most young people face when they enter higher education, having experienced an intense period of doubt in his freshman year. In Surviving Religion 101, he draws on years of experience as a biblical scholar to address common objections to the Christian faith: the exclusivity of Christianity, Christian intolerance, homosexuality, hell, the problem of evil, science, miracles, and the Bible’s reliability.
TGC is delighted to offer the ebook version for FREE for a limited time only. It will equip you to engage secular challenges with intellectual honesty, compassion, and confidence—and ultimately graduate college with your faith intact.