LifeWay Explore the Bible Series for June 17: The accountability dare

This week’s lesson looks at the story of Israel’s defeat at the hands of Ai because of Achan’s sin within the camp. Because this one man disobeyed the Lord, 36 Israelite soldiers lost their lives and the nation suffered a humiliating defeat (Joshua 7:5).

Today I’d like to share some thoughts on sin, repentance and accountability, perhaps from an angle you haven’t heard before. The reality is that sin is just as evil and destructive today as it was during the time of Joshua and Achan. God’s glory is just as high. Our hearts are just a hard. Rebellion against God is just as shocking.

What is sin? Sin is a failure to obey God. The first sin was, at the surface level, disobedience to God’s explicit command regarding that fruit of that one forbidden tree (Genesis 2:16-17). Underneath that disobedience was uncertainty about God’s goodness and a desire for independence from God (Genesis 3:5).

There are many ways to talk about sin: rebellion, transgression, pride, missing the mark, etc. But I believe the root of sin is the desire to have apart from God what God intends for us to have in and through himself.

The prophet Jeremiah said we are like people who insist on digging our own cisterns in the hard, dusty ground. Our cisterns are cracked and broken; they can’t hold water. Yet we continue trying to satisfy our thirst from our self-made cistern. All the while God is offering himself to us as the very “fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:13).

 So the problem of sin is not our thirst, our desires. The problem is that we settle for feeble sources of pleasure whose satisfaction does not last. C. S. Lewis wrote: “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

With this understanding of sin, how should we understand repentance? The mechanics of repentance is to change direction. When we repent, we turn from our sinful ways toward God and his ways. So if sin is the pursuit of pleasure or satisfaction outside of God, repentance requires we come to see God as the ultimate source of joy.

God is not interested in our lips without our hearts, in having our hands when he’s not our hope. Repentance from sin requires that, even if we don’t feel it, we trust (have faith) that God is better than sin. Real trust of this truth will result in our pursuit of God overtaking our pursuit of sin.

This is why accountability is so important in the fight against sin. Sin is sneaky, deceptive, tricky. It impairs our judgment, blinds our eyes and stops up our ears. We can think we’re happy in our sins, but the very nature of sin keeps us from seeing what really is going on.

One of the ways God mercifully gives us awareness of our sins is through other people. We all have blind spots. We need other people to tell us what they see in us. We need godly counsel.

But do you know what I look for in people to hold me accountable? I want people whose joy in Christ is passionate, white hot, overflowing, contagious. What works for me better than a wagging finger is flaming heart. Give me someone whose love for Jesus is a clear mark of his character, and I’ll find myself starting to treasure Jesus more.

Only when I treasure Jesus more will I be willing to let go of my sin again and again and again. Mere duty may hold back my fleshly desires for a time, but for lasting repentance and growth, I need to develop bigger, deeper, stronger desires. Like Paul, we’ll only count worldly gain as rubbish when we finally compare all that stuff to “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

So sin is to pursue something or someone other than Jesus. And repentance is when we finally see Jesus as being better, and we give up our first pursuit in order to follow after him. And accountability is most affective when it is aimed at increasing our love for Jesus, not managing our behaviors.

Fall in love with Jesus. Spend time in his word, reading the Bible in order to know and adore him. Sing to him. Surround yourself with people whose love for Jesus makes you treasure him more. Do this, and you’ll notice sin’s hold on your life becoming weaker as your heart for him grows stronger.