By Douglas Groothuis, PhD
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Bible sales went up 22% since 2024, and the Morning Wire podcast featured a story on this. What does this mean, besides more money for publishers?
It means that people are purchasing more physical copies of God’s Word, God’s revelation to humanity in written form. However, almost no one is wanting for a Bible. They are everywhere; they are online; most families already have at least one; they are in libraries (if anyone goes there anymore). But perhaps this indicates a felt need for what the Bible offers. I hope so.
Most Americans, including most Christians, are illiterate about biblical matters, as Barna and others have been telling us for decades. We are too busy with our amusements—the video games, the films, the series, ad nauseum—to take the time to read and study and reflect on the Bible. Bible sales could increase 100% and it make no difference if people do not read and do not heed what the Bible says, and what it says is disturbing and disrupting of business as usual. There is no Hallmark card or Precious Moments version of the Bible. It is hard, but it is good.
What the Bible Teaches
The Bible says that we are not our own. We were created by God (Genesis 1-2). God keeps us in existence and controls history (Hebrews 1:4; Ephesians 1:11). God is our Judge. There will be a Last Judgment where lies have no effect (unlike in this world). See Revelation 22:15. God is a perfectionist. Jesus said, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). God doesn’t wink at sin. God doesn’t grade on a curve. God is an absolutist and objectivist about what is good and what is true. He does not dissolve into a sea of subjective whims, wishes, fantasies, and deconstructions. He is the Rock that cannot be moved by falsehood or publicity stunts or propaganda campaigns or algorithms. Jesus was not elected Lord.
God is holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6:1-3)—the appendix, zenith, and epitome of transcendent goodness, untouched by error, compromise, or relativism. God is who is he, and you cannot change it. If you knew yourself and if you knew God, you would not want to change God. This is because his character is the backbone of morality, and his judgments are true altogether. Yes, God is love, but that love is holy and cannot be divorced from his holy justice and holy judgment.
God’s holy love and holy justice brought Jesus Christ to the Cross, to die an agonizing death to atone for our sin, to set us right with God on God’s terms, not our own. “Let God be true, though everyone a liar” (Romans 3:4). Jesus unmasks our pretensions, our evasions, and our definitions of God, morality, and ourselves. This is what the Bible teaches about Jesus. Jesus said:
What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person (Mark 7:20-23).
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. (Matthew 7:24-27).
There are many more of Jesus’ words, and they are found in the Bible, the Bible people are buying. But are they reading? Are they heeding? Are they obeying? Here are a few of Jesus’ fiery words to us:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him (John 14:6-7)."
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God (John 3:16-21).
Responding to the Jesus of the Bible
How should we respond to the message of the Bible, which centers on Jesus? We should do as it says, counting the cost, and taking up our cross in faith.
Then he [Jesus] said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels (Luke 9:23-26)."
By all means, if you can afford a Bible, you should own a Bible. No country in the history of the world has had more access to more Bibles. No country has ever had more access to study tools for understanding the Bible, such as commentaries and Study Bibles. But all of this is meaningless, mere chaff in the wind, if you do not read and head and obey the Bible, if you do not submit to Jesus as absolute Savior and Lord. If you do that, you can know the Bible to be “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12) and the final source of authority on all that it teaches—how to know and obey God, how to love your neighbor, how to have a family, how to be a citizen of heaven and of earth. As Paul wrote:
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17; see also Matthew 5:16-18).
If you don’t have a readable and helpful Bible, then get one. (I recommend The NIV Study Bible.) Then read it. Then believe it. If you have trouble believing it, then seek out apologetics to back it up. Then do what it says. Only then will the increase in Bible sales mean anything of temporal or eternal consequence.
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