Sometimes in the web you come across things all back to front. So I first read Mike Breen’s response to ‘Why I don’t believe in Christian accountability’. Then I read these quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer posted by Mark Meynell. Finally I read the original article by Mike Foster who is giving up on the word accountability.

In church leadership I’ve often come up against the issue of accountability both for me personally and the requests of others. It’s often been something everyone felt we should have, no one really did have and when they did have t, no one liked it! The resulting situation was usually unsatisfactory. So I understand the concerns that Mike Foster has.

However, the response by Mike Breen is good and worth reading. Accountability shouldn’t be sin management. Which it all too often is.

It’s not management of sin, it’s the development of wisdom. The whole of Matthew 7 is about accountability. If you’ve heard the word, you ought to do something about it.

I think it’s incredibly harmful to boil accountability down to a list of things we should/shouldn’t do. That’s behavior modification and sin management, not faith in our Lord Jesus!

Instead as Bonhoeffer says, this act of confession can be a means by which God’s love and grace comes to us, we understand and receive forgiveness and are helped in our struggles and weaknesses.

Does this mean that confession to a brother is a divine law? No, confession is not a law, it is an offer of divine help for the sinner

He rightly counsels us against it being a pious act of duty, a mistake I have often made or some weird badge of spiritual progress.

Confession as a pious work is an invention of  the devil. It is only God’s offer go grace, help and forgiveness that could make us dare to enter the abyss of confession.

For what it’s worth, accountability works best when there is real genuine friendship. Not mates and buddies but trust, deep affection, a sharing of lives. The one to whom you share with is trusted and is known. Secondly, we’ve all got to know God’s grace. If one of you doesn’t really believe he’s a sinner. Don’t bother. Good deeds can still be filthy rags, we all approach God with a keen sense of our need for grace. Lastly, I’m not accountable to my friend, I don’t owe him a confession or an inside track on my heart. I am accountable to God. The other person, becomes the means by which I am reminded that Jesus paid for my sins, that His grace picks me up and can help me.