“Between the Lines: The Value of Accountability”
Romans 3:1-20
Cliff, while flying hot air balloon, realized he was lost. He reduced his altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." The woman below replied, "You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between forty and forty-one degrees north latitude and between fifty-nine and sixty degrees west longitude." "You must be an engineer," said the balloonist. "I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "Everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea of what to make of your information, and the fact is that I am still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help so far." The woman below responded, "You must be in management." "I am," replied the balloonist. "But how did you know?" "Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have risen where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep. And you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
Isn’t it amazing how easily and quickly we hold others accountable for our problems? This is not a new phenomenon; it has always been a problem. Even the Apostle Paul addressed it centuries ago when he told the church at Rome there was tremendous value in personal accountability. Let’s begin where Paul begins.
First, there is AN ATTITUDE TO EXAMINE. The first 20 verses of Chapter Three of Romans portray a trial. In chapters 1 & 2 Paul had laid out the case. He demonstrated that sin and evil were rampant in the world, proved that it is due to the fact that people refused to acknowledge God, and then proclaimed that everyone sinned, including Gods people. God, the judge, is now looking at His people, the defendants, asking, “How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?” How would you plead? Very few people claim they do not sin or have not sinned. Rather, today we admit we’ve sinned but WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY for our sin. We’re really just following the example of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When God asked Adam what went wrong, he blamed Eve who, in turn, blamed the serpent. It’s not macho to admit we are wrong; it’s a sign of weakness. After all, in our society it is survival of the fittest. This is why we have image consultants, spin doctors, and public relations firms. We need to look good.So instead of accepting responsibility, we prefer to find excuses; we PLAY THE BLAME GAME. And there are plenty of places to spread the blame. We try to blame THE DEVIL. Remember comedian Flip Wilson? One of his cute, loveable characters always fell back on, “The devil made me do it.” And the Bible, at a quick glance, even seems to support the theory. In Luke 22:3 we read: “Then Satan entered Judas…and (he) went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus.” We also blame SOCIETY – “Society forced me.” “Everybody’s doing it.” Sex outside of marriage, tax evasion, drinking, gambling… When a college athletic program is caught cheating, one of the first media and or administrative responses is, “Hey, every college does it, because the rules are terrible.” (They may be but they are still the rules.) Catch the reasoning? Remember how Scripture portrays Pilate condemning Jesus? “Wishing to satisfy the crowd Pilate delivered him up to be crucified.” And then there are the sins of omission, which are really the opposite of “everybody is doing it.” Have you ever said, “I would, but nobody else is doing it?” So we fail to fight pornography, are reluctant to speak for the sanctity of life; after all, we don’t want to be out there all alone! And we blame our ENVIRONMENT. We point to our physical & emotional surroundings - and blame our parents, neighborhood, school, wife or husband. I think of the times when our boys would be fooling around at the dinner table and I’d knock over the milk – and then say, “Now look what you made me do!” And we point to our genetic make up – “It’s the way I am. It’s the way God made me.” So committing adultery because someone has a high sex drive is OK; participating in immoral sex, often between adults and minors or children, is okay because God gave someone those feelings; or abusing someone because a person is just simply born with a bent towards anger is OK. Then, too, we blame the HIERARCHY – “I was just following orders.” So some Enron workers shredded documents, some soldiers slaughtered villages, young people commit murder to gain entrance into gangs, and pledges for fraternities or sororities drink alcohol until they go into a coma and die, and a pitcher throws at batter because the manager “ordered” him to. Some even tend to blame the POLITICAL PARTIES – The left blames the puritanical right for being to rigid and uncaring while the right blames the liberals for being too loose and irresponsible. And some use LANGUAGE as an excuse: we just need to get our terminology right. We say, “It’s really not sin.” Then we rename sin. We only made a ‘mistake’; we ‘goofed’, made an ‘error’. We re-label marriage as ‘partnerships’, or stealing or ‘misappropriation of funds’. We’re not prejudiced but we just have ‘cultural differences’; we do not break the Sabbath but rather ‘spend time with the family’. It’s not adultery but ‘making love’ or ‘going to bed’; it’s not an issue of pornography but of ‘freedom of the press’; it’s not selfishness but ‘rights’. Listen, we can put the label “aspirin” on a bottle of poison but it is still poison.
And we wonder why the world is in chaos. That’s precisely Paul’s point – the world is the way it is because ALL have sinned and ALL are guilty. So for Paul there is AN ACCOUNTABILITY TO ENJOIN. There is something we must know. God wants our attention. Paul’s hearers were wondering, since all are guilty, was there no advantage to being a Christian? Paul emphatically said, “There certainly is! “(You) have been entrusted with the very words of God.” WE ARE PRIVILEGED. There is an advantage to being a Christian. While the door to heaven is open to all, we have the divine instructions, the guide to show us the way, truth, and life. For we have the oracles, the Word, the revelation of the Almighty God. We have it in our language, and teachers and preachers and study guides abound. We can know God, His will, and His plan. We can know His purpose and power for our lives. In the Word – in Jesus Christ – we have the very means of salvation – the power of God unto salvation!
But because we do WE also HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY. We are not only custodians of the Word, inheritors of Jesus Christ; we are to live in obedience to Him. With privilege comes responsibility. In fact, Paul said (verse 19): “Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses and to bring the entire world into judgment before God.” WE ARE ACCOUNTABLE TO GOD, through His Word and the law. Do you prize the Word? Is it your guide? Do you treasure Jesus Christ? Is pleasing and glorifying Him the chief goal of your life? Jesus said that the law could be summarized this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” How about it? How are you doing? How do you plead? “Well,” you’re thinking, “nobody can be perfect!” Exactly!
So Paul declared that there is AN ACTUALITY TO EMBRACE. Verse 20: “For no one can ever be made right in God's sight by doing what his law commands. For the more we know God's law, the clearer it becomes that we aren't obeying it.” In other words, WE ARE NOT LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES. It is only when we know what we ought to do and who we ought to be that we can recognize we do not measure up. The Bible, throughout, testifies to this fallen nature. Jer. 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” 1 Jn. 1:8: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
So Paul summarizes our condition (Vs. 9): we are all “under sin”. The word for “under” means, “to be dominated by or under the authority of.” Paul continues by showing that sin controls our minds (no one understands), our hearts (no one seeks God), and our wills (no one does good). We are poisoned by sin. We are under the influence of an evil dynamic. It has become part of our nature. Our nature is corrupt. Sin has spread through its every part. As someone aptly wrote, “Sin is the pit into which we have fallen, but it is too deep for us to escape. It is the quicksand into which we have foolishly blundered but from which we cannot extricate ourselves. It is the death we have entered but from which we cannot restore ourselves to life.”
Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story entitled The Emperors New Clothes. A certain emperor was very fond of appearances and clothing so when some men offered to weave him a rare and costly garment, he agreed. He was especially pleased that the garment would be invisible to all but the wise and pure in heart. So he commissioned the new garment at a great cost. These men were, however, con men. So they began sitting at the looms, pretending to be weaving. The emperor’s curiosity was soon aroused so he sent his chief minister to check on the progress. Seeing no cloth on the busy looms, but not wanting to be thought unwise and impure in heart, he returned to the Emperor with a report about the fabulous beauty of the cloth. Eventually the weavers asked for more money. So the Emperor sent his second chief minister who returned with an even more enthusiastic report. Next the Emperor himself went to see the progress. Though he, too, saw nothing, he did not want to appear stupid, so he proclaimed the clothing excellent and beautiful. He even gave the weavers medals. Finally, on the day of the grand parade the con men dressed the emperor in his nakedness and then skipped town. As the emperor paraded before all the people au naturel, the whole populace joined in praising his beautiful clothing, lest they be thought of as fools. So the absurd parade continued until, at last, a little child was heard to say, “The emperor has no clothes!” At once the emperor, and everyone else, knew the truth. The emperor was exposed in all his nakedness. The emperor felt the shame of nakedness – the same shame Adam and Eve felt when they sinned in the Garden of Eden. They no longer wanted to be in God’s presence. It’s the same shame we feel when we fail to measure up, when we stand exposed to others in all our emotional and spiritual nakedness. The VALUE OF ACCOUNTABILITY is that WE SEE OURSELVES AS WE TRULY ARE – sinners before a holy God.
Listen now to Hebrews 4:13: “For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from him. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes. This is the God to whom we must explain all that we have done.” This is why THE LAW IS called A MIRROR – through the law, through the Word, we see ourselves as we really are. I can try to fool myself and tell you I have a head full of wavy hair – but as soon as I look into this mirror, I see myself as I truly am. When we look into the mirror of Jesus Christ, we realize we are not living between the lines.
To make matters worse, Paul emphasized that LIVING BETWEEN THE LINES IS IMPOSSIBLE ON OUR OWN. It is only when we try so hard to be and live as we were created that we realize we cannot. Trying to make ourselves right with God will never work. In Hockey there is a statistic called the plus-minus. If a player is on the ice when his team scores a goal, he gets a plus; if he’s on the ice when the other team scores a goal, he gets a minus. The goal, obviously, is to have a plus balance. In life, no matter how many plusses we accumulate through our good deeds and works, there will never be enough to overcome the minuses accumulated through our sin. It’s good to be good and do good deeds and works, but it’s just like Monopoly Money. You can have a boatload of Monopoly Money, but try to cash it in at Chemical Bank. It’s worth absolutely nothing! It has its uses in the game we call life, but it is not real currency and it does not work in our economy’s domain. So doing good deeds has its uses in our domain, but GOODNESS IS NOT THE CURRENCY OF GOD’S DOMAIN. You and I are accountable to God and His standards. How do you plead?
Hebrews 9:27 states: “And just as it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment…” We are accountable to God – and God has declared us guilty. But do not fear – this is to our advantage because OUR ACCOUNTABILITY BRINGS US TO JESUS CHRIST. Remember the cross. “And just as it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment, so also Christ died only once as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again but not to deal with our sins again. This time he will bring salvation to all those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Get rid of your shame. Plead guilty – and focus on the cross; admit your inability to meet God’s standard, to live in between the lines – and remember Jesus. “I – I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. Return to me for I have already redeemed you.” Thank you Jesus. Amen.
