In this blog post, I will look up a random Bible verse and consider how reading it in context and with a mathematical perspective can teach me something about God.
Today I used this random Bible verse generator. The verse it gave me is 1 John 3:24.
"The one who keeps God's commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that God lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us."
Before I go any farther, I'm going to ask God to open my eyes and mind and heart to everything he has for me to learn from this verse.
In verse 23, it says that God's command is to "believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." So the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God and who loves his neighbor as himself will live in God and God will live in that person. And God's Spirit is the evidence of God living in us.
The first mathematical thought that comes to mind is the difference between 0.999 and 0.999... They are both extremely close to 1. (Whether or not you agree that 0.999... = 1 is irrelevant here!) In multiple proofs, it can be proven that 0.999... functions as thought it IS 1. 0.999 is close to 1, but no one would argue that it is distinctly different from 1 and cannot function as 1. If we multiply 0.999... times 1,000,000, we get 999,999.999... if we multiply 0.999 times 1,000,000, we get 999,000. The first result would round to 1,000,000 even if we rounded to the nearest thousandth. The second is 1,000 away from 1,000,000.
God's spirit sort of feels like the repeating decimal. You could argue that 0.999... is not equal to 1 just like Jesus dying for my sins is not the same as me dying for my sins. However, the result is the same, and it is sufficient and complete. Regardless of my shortcomings, there is something invisible but very much present that gets me to 1,000,000 without my own strength or ability. That's the Holy Spirit.
Keeping God's commands sometimes feels like trying to write out all the 9's in 0.999... And that's the point. God uses my weakness to show his strength. God knows I can't do it alone so he sent Jesus. That doesn't mean I should use that as an excuse to sin. It means that I need the help of the Holy Spirit. And even though I know I will still mess up, sin should not be normative in my life.
So I can be 1 even though I am just a bunch of repeating 9's because of God!
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