DEVOTION / Learn the Brahmagupta Rule

Everyone knows this, right?

• If you add a positive number to zero, the total must be a positive number.

• If you add a negative number to zero, the total must be a negative number.

• If you add zero to zero the sum must equal zero.

• If you add a positive number to a negative number and both numbers have the same value (e.g., adding +12 to -12) the sum must equal zero.

Early in grade school, budding mathematicians learn how to work with zero. These are concepts we trust everyone knows.

Zero hasn’t always been zero

But it wasn't always this way.

Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in A.D. 628 proved that zero works in those ways. In A.D. 628! 1395 years ago, mathematicians -- not just pre-school students -- had not figured out how to work with the number zero.

Learning about the spiritual zero

There's a corollary in our spiritual lives. Early in our Jesus-following, we stumble over many discipleship principles. We can be convinced that an angry word from the lips of another adds up to retaliation from us. In our spiritual math, the more good deeds we do the more we add to the blessings that God owes us.

But the more time we spend with the Spirit in his Word, the better we understand that our addition was faulty. Time in the Spirit's classroom enables us to understand the reasons we have failed some of life's tests. The more the Spirit teaches us the more we understand how God's grace zeroes out our sin. All of it.

Takeaways

Consider three takeaways:

• The Spirit always has more spiritual math to teach us. His classroom is within the walls of the Bible. We'll want to slide into a desk there.

• Other Christians have not learned as much of the Spirit's math as you have. Help them.

• Still other Christians have learned more spiritual math than you have. Ask them to teach you.

Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end (Psalm 119:33).