One Plus One Is Three

If you've read many of the articles I have written, you know there are times when I write about biblical doctrines or teachings that I truly believe to be in error. Now, I readily admit that I'm not a theologian or hard-core Scripture wonk, because I'm not...not really. I'm just an average born-again believer who tries his level best to rightly divide the Word. The fact remains, however, that there are some dangerous false doctrines floating around out there that I feel compelled to do my best to warn you about.

The simple, unfortunate truth is that there are many rogue doctrinal waves rippling through the ocean of mainstream Christianity today, and most are based on a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of certain passages of Scripture—sometimes a single word in a single verse. As a result, certain individuals have been led to make wrong assumptions—assumptions that typically contradict some other crystal-clear teaching in other passages of Scripture. And they'll do the following every single time.

In spite of those other clear verses of Scripture, however, they proceed to construct a doctrinal house of cards built on the foundation of their wrong assumptions by twisting and reinterpreting those other clear passages to force them into submission to their misguided misinterpretations, and they do it for one simple reason—the alternative is unthinkable:

Admit that they are (gasp) wrong!

I have spent countless hours over the last few years going round and round with numerous people on YouTube, arguing over all kinds of false doctrine. And I admit that I would be ashamed to let you read some of the snarky things I have written to certain hard-headed individuals—people who post videos on YouTube that are so full of venomous lies and vitriolic lunacy that the only way to let it pass is to sit on your hands.

Or in my case nail them to the desk.

The problem is that once you get into it with some of these people, you've already failed to take verses like the following to heart:

Withdraw yourself from such. Don't get into doctrinal fistfights with them. Don't listen to them. Don't engage them. In other words, don't yield to the temptation to set them straight by cold-cocking them with your finely crafted biblical arguments. Your words will fall on deaf ears, tempers will flare, blood will be spilled (yours and theirs), and worst of all those with the misfortune of following the conversation will be far less receptive to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit that draws all men to Christ.

Oh yeah, the Holy Spirit. Remember Him? The one who is sealed within all born-again believers and has marked us as adopted members of God's family? The one who is tasked with convicting us of sin and conforming us to the image of Christ? As born-again believers, we are generally doing one of two things: We're either giving Him a chance or grieving His heart.

And we all do the latter far more than we even realize.

One plus one is three...and here's proof!

I think one reason I wanted to write this article is just to vent a little—and to remind myself that it's not my job to correct all the false teachers out there, but maybe just help a few people understand why what some of those false teachers are teaching is false.

Many times when I am confronted with someone who is promulgating errant doctrine and I consider the misunderstanding that led to it, it brings to mind an amusing mathematical tidbit I came across many years ago. I sometimes imagine how it might sound if it were presented by one of the many false teachers I have encountered:

Yes, my friends, you've had it wrong all these years. You've been misled by false teachers of mathematics your entire life. I can just hear them: "One plus one is two, one plus one is two...don't question it, just learn it...one plus one is two!" How sad that so many people have been led away from the truth by those who have believed a lie, unaware that math texts the world over have been mistranslated for centuries.

After I reveal this profound truth to you, backing it up step by step with indisputable, airtight logic that cannot be challenged or refuted, your eyes will be opened. You will finally understand and be fully convinced that, yes, one plus one is actually three! More and more people are discovering and coming to grips with this exciting doctrine—don't be left in the dark! Don't allow yourself to be deceived by blindly and naively following the traditions of men and the lies of false teachers. Follow along carefully, and prepare to embrace the real mathematical truth that our forefathers knew and taught: One plus one is really and truly three!

Proof: Let a and b be any two equal, non-zero numbers. Then we have

a = b

ab = b²   (Multiply both sides by b)

ab – a² = b² – a²   (Subtract a² from both sides)

a(b – a) = (b + a)(b – a)   (Factor)

a = b + a   (Divide both sides by b – a)

a = a + a   (Since a = b, substitute a for b)

a = 2a

1 = 2   (Divide both sides by a)

1 + 1 = 2 + 1   (Add 1 to both sides)

1 + 1 = 3   WOW!!

And now you know the truth: One plus one is three. As you can see, the reasoning is impeccable. Each mathematical operation is rock solid. The logic of each step is compelling and irrefutable.

OK, enough is enough. Even toddlers who can barely count on their fingers know that one plus one is two, not three, so if you're smart enough to be reading this article, you're smart enough to know I'm pulling a fast one. At some point your common sense just says STOP!

You instinctively know something is wrong somewhere.

Well, if you managed to stay awake through high school algebra, you've probably already spotted it. You may dimly recall something about not being able to divide by zero, and that's exactly what I've done in the fifth step. If a = b, then obviously b – a = 0, and so I have committed that most egregious mathematical faux pas—and as a result everything from that line on down is absolute rubbish because division by zero is undefined. Oops, my bad.

Even if you didn't manage to stay awake through high school algebra and are highly allergic to all things mathematical, it's actually not too difficult to see why division by zero is such a big problem.

Think about division for a moment. For example, when you divide 12 by 4, what are you actually doing? You're counting how many times you can subtract 4 from 12 until you have nothing left (or you are left with something less than 4 so you can't subtract 4 again). Thus, division is just repeated subtraction. So, you start with 12. Subtract 4 once and you have 8 left, 2 times and you have 4 left, 3 times and you have nothing left. So, 12 divided by 4 is 3. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Now, let's try dividing 12 by 0. Subtract 0 once and you have 12 left, 2 times and you have 12 left, 3 times and you have 12 left, 100 times and you have 12 left, 97 trillion times and you have 12 left. Subtract 0 an infinite number of times and you still have 12 left. The process never stops. Strictly speaking, division by zero yields infinity, but infinity doesn't operate like any ordinary number. In reality, it's not a well-defined number at all. Think about it: What's infinity plus 12? Infinity? What's infinity plus (or minus or multiplied by or divided by) 97 trillion? Infinity? In fact, it doesn't make any sense to even consider such operations as being mathematically valid.

Numbers too big for the human mind to grasp bounce off infinity like ping-pong balls off the Starship Enterprise. Unlike finite numbers like 12 or 97 trillion, you can't perform any arithmetical operations on infinity that will increase or diminish it in any way—because it's infinite. It never ends. It never changes. It completely swallows up and overwhelms any attempt to perform basic arithmetic on it. Everything breaks down.

Mathematical operations such as ordinary arithmatic that can be performed on ordinary finite numbers in a logical, sensible way are absolutely meaningless when applied to infinity, which is what you get when you attempt to divide by zero—and that's why it's strictly verboten.

As soon as you divide by a quantity that can be equal to zero, you're on shaky mathematical ground. Every step you take from that point on is highly suspect, no matter how mathematically sound each individual operation may appear.

It's the same with most errant biblical doctrine that people teach and believe. At some point someone has divided by zero, and are either unable to see it or are unwilling to acknowledge it.

In the remainder of this article, I want to review several of the most common examples of the biblical equivalent of dividing by zero. These are several of the doctrines I have discussed with various individuals on the Internet, and I want to highlight at least one of the major points of misinterpretation that lie at the root of each, and show you how each one is effectively an attempt to prove that one plus one is three.

Case in point: Calvinism

Many neo-Calvinists today hate being called "Calvinists" and avoid the word like the Ebola virus, but the codeword that gives them away is "reformed." Anyone who frequently and approvingly drops references to "reformed" this or "reformed" that is some species of Calvinist, whether they agree with that assessment or not. (If it quacks like a duck...)

One of the key (and most biblically reprehensible) points of Calvinism is the idea that God sovereignly and arbitrarily chose some people to save before the foundation of the world (the "elect"), and His sovereign choice has nothing whatsoever to do with our free will, which has been so utterly corrupted by sin that we can in no way respond to God on our own. He simply chose to save some random sinners and let all the other equally sinful people go to hell. So, if you're one of the elect, then congratulations.

If not, tough luck. See ya—wouldn't wanna be ya.

The problem is that although there are verses of Scripture that do actually say that God chose us, there are just as many verses that say we must believe the gospel to be saved, and that this does in fact involve our free-will choice in some way. There are numerous verses that clearly indicate that we have a personal responsibility to respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit and to God's offer of grace, and those are the verses Calvinists must twist to mean something other than what they clearly say.

Now, how the concepts of God's sovereignty and man's free will are reconciled is open to speculation, but it would appear to have something to do with the fact that God doesn't view time the way we do. He knows the end from the beginning, including who will repent and believe the gospel.

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to stop Calvinists from twisting verse after verse that clearly says "whosoever will" into saying "whosoever God arbitrarily chose for some unknowable reason."

One of the verses Calvinists cling to is in Romans, and the brouhaha revolves around a single word: foreknew.

Foreknew. What does it mean? What do you think it means? It means that God knew something in advance but did not determine it—namely, our belief in faith. Yet Calvinists will drag you through the most strained and exhausting verbal gymnastics to convince you it doesn't mean that at all, and that the entire verse is saying something completely different from what it plainly says. And sadly, they ultimately leave you with a capricious God who was apparently content to create a species of sock puppets.

In other words, they jump through hoops to convince people that one plus one is three. As soon as you assume God has just arbitrarily chosen those He will save and those He will condemn, based solely on His own sovereign will and with no regard whatsoever for man's God-given free will, theologically speaking you've just divided by zero. And just as in mathematics, every step you take from that point on is highly suspect, no matter how biblically sound each individual verse you wrap around it may appear.

Case in point: the post-trib Rapture

The Bible clearly infers a coming seven-year period commonly called the Tribulation or Daniel's 70th Week, most of which will be hell on earth. Its purpose is for God to judge and punish the nations that have persecuted Israel, bring Israel back into their covenant relationship with God, and refine Israel and bring a remnant of Jews to belief in their true Messiah to prepare them for His return and the long-awaited kingdom that God promised them thousands of years ago.

The Bible also clearly describes the rapture of the Church:

For many years, one of the most divisive and controversial arguments that has ever gripped the Church has been the issue of the timing of the Rapture in relation to the Tribulation: pre-trib or post-trib. (There actually are a couple of other views, but these seem to be the two major camps that have emerged from the fracas.)

Personally, I am convinced that the Bible cannot be interpreted to teach anything but a pre-trib Rapture. It would take an entire article to go over the biblically based reasons why I say that, and even then I could barely scratch the surface. In discussions with people who believe in a post-trib Rapture, however, it has become clear to me that one of the key passages of Scripture that underpins their entire argument is from the Olivet Discourse:

Every single person I've ever known who holds to a post-trib view insists this passage of Scripture is describing the Rapture.

Forgive me for being blunt, but it's not.

The Church and the Rapture are never mentioned and are nowhere in sight throughout the entire Olivet Discourse, which is Jesus' response to His Jewish disciples' questions concerning (a) when the temple would be destroyed (which is what He had just prophesied earlier that day), (b) what would be the sign of His return (to rule in what they assumed was the soon-coming kingdom, so this is indisputably a reference to the Second Coming), and (c) what would be the sign of the end of the present age (and thus the beginning of the kingdom they were eagerly looking forward to being part of).

Post-trib Rapture advocates naively read the Church into all of this, and it's simply not there. The gathering of the "elect" in verse 31 is the fulfillment of numerous Old Testament prophesies about the gathering of a believing remnant of Jews into their land after the Second Coming so they can be ushered into the Millennial Kingdom on earth. This is what Jesus is describing: His physical return to earth to establish Israel's promised kingdom, and the judgments He will carry out (Matt. 25) which will determine who among the Tribulation survivors will be granted entrance into that kingdom.

Notice that I quoted from the King James Version of the Bible above, and I did that for a reason. Post-trib adherents focus on the phrase "Immediately after the tribulation of those days..." and, assuming that what follows is a graphic description of the Rapture, tout this as proof positive that the Rapture occurs after the Tribulation. Case closed.

That's it. One passage from Matthew 24, taken completely out of context and misinterpreted, and from that they proceed to build their doctrinal house of cards and try to prove that one plus one is three. But the truth is that as soon as you read the Church into the Olivet Discourse, you have divided by zero and, just as in mathematics, whatever ideas you develop from that are highly suspect and, in most cases, are complete rubbish.

Case in point: replacement theology

Replacement theology is a body of teachings that center around the idea that the Church has replaced Israel as the "true Israel" or "spiritual Israel." Most adherents push the idea that the Church has inherited all the blessings and promises God made to ethnic Israel, which inherits all the curses. Most consider the modern nation of Israel in the Middle East as a geopolitical red herring with little or no biblical significance, and many go so far as to doubt the ethnicity of its inhabitants.

Unlike arguments in support of the post-trib Rapture, which can be readily dispatched by any semi-competent student of the Bible, some of the arguments behind replacement theology can be rather slippery and sophisticated. Some of the key points rely on forgetting (or ignoring) the intended readership of certain epistles (Jews or Gentiles), or by obfuscating the meanings and usages of the word "Israel" itself.

One well-worn arrow in the replacement theologian's quiver is in Romans:

Adherents of replacement theology claim that Paul is making a distinction between ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel, and that spiritual Israel consists of all believers, including Gentiles, who are spiritual descendants of Abraham through faith, rather than physical descendants through birth.

At first blush, that doesn't sound like such a bad argument. That is, until you realize that Paul is writing exclusively to Jews, not Gentiles, a fact that is readily apparent from historical context as well as other context within the epistle itself. Paul is explaining to Jewish believers in Rome that not all physical descendants of Abraham through the flesh are in fact spiritual descendants of Abraham through faith. In other words, there exists within ethnic Israel a "spiritual Israel" (if you want to call it that, although the term is never used in Scripture), or a believing Jewish remnant that will be saved and will ultimately inherit God's eternal promises to Israel.

Paul is saying in no uncertain terms that God has not rejected the Jews. He's not done with the Jews. And that the Church has not replaced Israel.

Paul makes it thunderingly clear that one plus one is not three.

The bottom line is that as soon as you assume the Church has replaced Israel in God's economy, or that the promises God made to Israel have somehow been transferred to the Church, you have just divided by zero. No biscuit.

Case in point: anti-OSAS

I have to be honest—more than any other false doctrine, this is the one that breaks my heart. Doctrinal disagreements over the timing of the Rapture and stuff like that are one thing, but this one cuts right to the heart of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us on the cross and what it means to be born again.

At issue is eternal security—the idea that once we are saved by faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice on our behalf, that we can never lose it. This is summed up in the well-known initialism OSAS, or "Once Saved, Always Saved."

Understand that there is a wealth of crystal-clear teaching in the Bible that puts a lock on our salvation that would give Houdini nightmares. But Houdini got that one plus one is two. It seems anti-OSAS people do not.

With some ham-fisted mishandling of Scripture, the anti-OSAS people seemingly pick the lock God placed our salvation and convince hapless believers that their salvation is in jeopardy unless they maintain some nebulously defined standard of moral behavior (or fail to repent as expeditiously as they should if they don't). So, their concept of biblical salvation is apparently something akin to the following:

Sin, repent, sin, repent, sin, repent—die. Whew, that was close!

Sin, repent, sin, repent, sin—die. AARRGH!!

Pardon me for taking a bit more time with this one, but this is absolutely crucial for you to understand. I don't want to overload you here, but I want to give you at least a few verses to prove to you that nothing in this universe is any more secure than your eternal destiny if you have believed in faith that Jesus' death and resurrection paid the penalty for your sin.

Let's begin at the beginning:

I could go on, but I think I see a pattern developing.

On any one of a number of occasions recorded in Scripture, the apostle Paul and other New Testament writers—not to mention Jesus Himself—could have clarified once and for all any other requirements that we had to satisfy or standards of behavior that we had to maintain to keep ourselves saved and ensure our eternal destiny. Yet what do we see—what is the operative word—again and again and again?

Believe. Believe. Believe.

Believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He died and was resurrected to pay the penalty for our sin. That's it. Simple and straightforward.

But do we still sin sometimes after we get saved? Well, why don't we ask the apostle Paul:

Yep, we sure do—and it interrupts our fellowship with God.

"Well, Mr. Smarty Pants Bible Dude, maybe we should try really hard to keep ourselves sin-free, unlike carnal OSAS slackers like you."

Wrong:

"Well, OK, but we still have a responsibility to maintain our salvation."

Wrong again:

It is God who takes responsibility to keep us saved. And will He?

I hate to point out the obvious, but "no one" includes you.

"OK, but we still have to work for it, you know."

Work for it? Oh yeah, big time:

Again, believe.

The "work" God requires of us for our salvation ends then and there—at the moment we believe.

"So I suppose you think you can just slack off and live any old way you please because your salvation is so secure, right?"

Can you slack off? Yeah, sure. The only problem is that in order to do that (assuming you are really saved), you have to deliberately quench the voice of the Holy Spirit within you. Is that even possible? Apparently it is:

Jesus gave His life so you could have your sin debt wiped out and be saved from an eternity of separation from a loving Heavenly Father if you will but believe the gospel in repentant faith, and He sent the Holy Spirit to indwell you to convict you of sin and gradually conform you to His image.

Now, in reality (and in perfect honesty), I have a hard time believing people who claim they truly believe what I just said with all their heart and then casually go their merry sinful way as if nothing had changed—because that suggests to me that nothing has changed.

But it's not my call. Nor is it anyone else's.

It's between them and God.

"So according to you, after we're saved, that's pretty much it, right?"

No, not quite:

Paul is telling us that we should try to live up to what we have already attained. We have already attained eternal salvation, so we should live like it in the here and now. There are rewards ("crowns") mentioned in Scripture for believers who try their best to live lives characterized by holiness and purity, who long for His appearing, who influence others to believe the gospel, and so on, and we should strive for these rewards, just as an Olympic athlete trains for a sport to win a medal.

But medals or no, we're still in the game.

The moment we change our minds about our sin and our need for a Savior and believe the gospel, God sees us as we will be in the future: perfect. He no longer sees us as sinful—He sees us as being clothed in His Son's righteousness. Every sin we have ever committed or ever will commit in our entire lifetime has been cast as far as the east is from the west. They're gone. The blood of Jesus paid for them all. Sin's eternal penalty has been satisfied on our behalf and is no longer the issue.

For the time being, however, while we still live in this fallen, sin-infested world and inhabit this body of flesh, we are stuck with our old sin nature. And yeah, we do sin, and sometimes our Heavenly Father chastises us and will still allow us to suffer the earthly consequences of our sin. After we are saved, sin hinders our fellowship with God—our walk with God—and daily repentance and turning from sin restores that fellowship and keeps it fresh and vibrant. As we grow in grace, this is a cycle that will never end.

Well, actually it will end:

The Rapture—whether we have already died or are alive and remain when it occurs: That's when we will finally become in reality the way God sees us now.

One thing that many anti-OSAS people don't seem to understand is that there is a critical difference between union with God and fellowship with God. There are union verses (which deal with our salvation and eternal destiny) and fellowship verses (which deal with living in a manner pleasing to God on a daily basis and as a result enjoying His presence and His blessings during our earthly lives). Unfortunately, when these two types of verses are confused, doubts about our salvation come oozing out—poisonous, festering doubts with fleshly, man-centered tendrils that strangle the life out of our spiritual walk.

And all because of a misunderstanding of a couple of verses of Scripture.

Although there are several passages in the Bible that anti-OSAS people love to wave in people's faces, I'm only going to focus on one representative verse that will serve to illustrate my point, which is that only a gross misunderstanding of Scripture can undo what Jesus did for us on the cross.

One of the key verses anti-OSAS adherents cling to is from the book of Hebrews. Now, I readily admit that Hebrews is a hard slog, and unless you keep in mind exactly who the author is writing to and exactly why he is writing to them, it is remarkably easy to miss what the Holy Spirit is saying to us:

Whew...that sounds rough.

"Those who tasted the good Word of God and fell away—they can't be renewed to repentance! See? Told ya so. Guess you'd better shape up and toe the line, hoss—because if you don't, you're doomed!"

This is a classic example of what can happen when we read a verse without taking into account the context of the entire passage. OK, here we go:

• Exactly who is the author writing to?

Well, they call it the book of Hebrews for a reason. The author is writing specifically to Jewish believers.

• Exactly why is he writing to them?

The author is writing specifically to Jewish believers because they were being pressured by other Jews into returning to the Levitical system of animal sacrifices for the atonement for sin.

You have to remember one thing: For roughly 1,300 years before Jesus came, the Jews had been following the Law of Moses and the detailed system of animal sacrifices for the atonement of sin that was established by God in the book of Leviticus following their flight out of Egypt.

The Law of Moses was given to them as part of the Old Covenant, but it was merely a shadow of what Jesus Christ, their prophesied Messiah, would come to do for them. Animal sacrifices only covered their sins, and since they couldn't completely stop sinning any more than you or I can, they had to keep offering them on a regular basis for God to consider them clean and righteous. If they believed God's promise of a coming Messiah who would redeem them and followed the sacrificial laws, God imputed it to them as righteousness. That's how people were "saved" in the Old Testament—obedience to the Law of Moses coupled with faith in a coming Messiah.

The Levitical system of animal sacrifices was as deeply ingrained into the Jewish psyche as anything could possibly be. Even though these Jewish believers had expressed their belief that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah, the pull of 1,300 years of tradition was powerful indeed. Some apparently felt they had better continue offering animal sacrifices just to be on the safe side, or were being pressured to do so by others.

The Law of Moses was what the Jews were all about—it was their life, their culture. It represented their unique relationship with the living God.

What the author of Hebrews was trying to explain to these Jewish believers was that the Law of Moses had been fulfilled by Christ, and it no longer applied to those who trusted in His one time sacrifice. So, to have faith in Christ—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world—and then go back to sacrificing lambs of the four-legged variety to atone for their sin again was the ultimate offense to God. That's what the author of Hebrews meant when he said "...seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame." Every time these Jewish believers sacrificed a lamb to atone for their sins, they were in effect crucifying Jesus all over again. The sacrifice of the Lamb of God apparently wasn't enough—a small woolly animal was still required to finish the job.

I'd say that was putting Christ to open shame, wouldn't you?

Believing it was necessary to continue offering animal sacrifices to atone for their sin after having faith in Christ's sacrifice was a worse sin in the eyes of God than not offering the required sacrifices before He came!

My point is that none of this has anything to do with born-again Church Age believers losing their salvation, because that's impossible, and the Bible says so about as clearly as it can be or needs to be said.

The bottom line is that if you read anything in God's Word that leads you to the conclusion that you can lose your salvation, you have just divided by zero, and are running around waving a banner that claims that one plus one is three. Not only that, but the fleshly, works-based treadmill that this belief will consign you to will cripple your spiritual life.

Can't you read?

I sometimes wonder what God must think about people who teach errant doctrine that blatantly contradicts very clear statements in His Word. I know it's silly, but occasionally I can't help but imagine God looking down and saying:

"What's wrong with you people? Can't you read?"

The thought I want to leave you with is that God cannot lie or contradict Himself, and that means there aren't any contradictions in what His Word says. As a result, one of the fundamental principles of Bible study is to start with the verses about a particular topic that are absolutely clear, and then interpret other verses that are somewhat less clear in a way that conforms to what the very clear verses clearly say.

And it's not rocket science...unless, that is, you have a pet doctrine you want to foist upon other believers to bring them into some sort of bondage and strip them of the hope and assurance that God's Word offers.

Unless, that is, you are simply too proud to admit that you've got something wrong and need to go back to the drawing board until you fix it and get it straightened out.

Unless, that is, you are trying to convince people that one plus one is three.

Greg Lauer — AUG '14

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