Blaise Pascal was a deep and prodigious thinker in both Mathematics and Christian Theology. His famous Pensees, actually collated and published after his death, contained an analysis (thought #233) that has come to be called Pascal’s Wager – it will be of greater benefit to believe in Jesus than not. He was not trying to prove the existence of God, but giving a mathematical approach for making a choice about belief.
His work was one of the first to examine Expected Value in decision making. There are two parts to expected value – the probability of a particular event occurring and the reward (value) of that event.

Pascal’s Wager examines the costs and benefits of believing in Jesus. The cost in this life would include the study, discipline, and potential ridicule involved in being His disciple. Assigning a value to such a cost is very subjective, but let’s just say the cost is 1,000 units. The reward for belief would be eternal paradise – an infinite amount.
Now we factor in the probability that Jesus is, indeed, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Suppose you have grave doubts and only give a 1% possibility of this being so. The expected value of believing is the (probability that the God of the Bible exists times the reward of believing) minus the (probability God does not exist times the cost of believing). With our assigned values:

1% x infinity – 99% x (1000)

The stunner in the math is that infinity outweighs everything else. If there is just a tiny possibility that Jesus is right, and even if the price of discipleship is very high, the expected value of an eternity in heaven makes it a good bet to believe.

The potential reward of eternal life is a powerful incentive, but some are weighed down when they count the cost. Others can’t imagine such a thing as a sovereign creator providing a solution to man’s greatest problem. And still others are oblivious and don’t know that a wager is even being made. In any case, the Bible addresses Pascal’s wager in 1 Corinthians 4.17: “…this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…” Infinity outweighs everything else.