ACCOUNTABILITY IN HEAVEN

I get together weekly with two good Christian friends to confess sin and pray for one another. To help us get specific, we have a list of fifteen sins that we grill one another on: “Have you struggled with sexual immorality this week?” “Have you engaged in covetousness?” And so forth and so on.

We often joke about doing accountability in heaven. In heaven, of course, our bodies and our conduct will be perfect. Accountability in heaven will mean that after every sin category is listed, we will answer in the negative: “Any anxiety?” “No.” “Any deceitfulness?” “No.”

What a day that’ll be. But what if we longed to have the perfect week on this side of glory? Every so often, one of us will say they’ve had a pretty good week, in that they only have to confess something in four or five sin categories. But what about wanting – not in a driven, self-reliant way, but in a “I want to please God” way – to go oh fer fifteen?

What would it be like to, by God’s grace, go an entire week without feeling any regret or impatience or despondency? How freeing would it be to go an entire week without self-adulation or gossip or poor self-image? I tell you what it would be like: it would be like a slice of heaven here on earth.

Alas, I can’t even go an afternoon without clogging up my sin spreadsheet. But still I strive for that perfect week. And still I await a time and place when all who believe in Jesus will go oh fer fifteen.