I bet that title got your attention.

My new found toy the Google Reader brought to my attention a wonderful post on accountability by Rev. Eric Costa at Reformation Theology. I think this quote from the post is at the heart of what he’s trying to get across.

If you’re part of an AG (accountability group) that employs pride, guilt, or fear tactics, you’re confessing to the world that you want to be able to justify yourself before God and others. For you, it’s about being “good enough.” But the Gospel says that you’ll never be “good enough.” You’re a sinner, and you’ll always sin. Every day. More frequently than that, even.

Being that our ‘AG’ is in it’s infancy I think it timely and providential for Rev. Costa to have written his post. It is all too easy for us (me) to fall into this way of thinking. Of trying to balance our scale of righteousness. As he exclaimed, “Devilry!” and how true that is. One of the commenter’s to his post said, “This last point is the most “practical” of them all, when it comes to what you do in your AGs. Foster an atmosphere/environment of graciousness. Assure each other that you’re not there to be perfect people, but to be sinners forgiven by Christ.”

I agree with everything that’s been said, but I still need to flesh out the “how” when it comes to dealing with a repetitive sin like lust. It’s one that as a man I can never seem to get away from. It lurks around every corner and even if you’re not trapped into something like pornography you can barely watch 5 minutes of TV without seeing something that brings on a lustful thought. So what does an AG do with something like this? What are we called to do with a brother who habitually sins? I would hope that we would look at verses like:

Luke 17:4
If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”

and

Matthew 18:21-22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

But I know all too often I want to take someone to task, look around my personal plank and with finger extended shrilly point at their splinter. All too often I see Matthew 18:15-17 as THE WAY that we’re called to handle a bothers sin.

Matthew 18:15-17
15″If your brother sins against you,[b] go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.